Arminghall

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Arminghall is a village in the English county of Norfolk, around three miles (5 km) south east of Norwich.

[edit] Archaeological interest

In 1929 a prehistoric timber circle and henge monument site was discovered near the village by Gilbert Insall who had been taking air photos of the area in search of new archaeological sites. Whilst flying at around 2,000 feet (600 m) he noticed cropmarks of a circular enclosure made of two concentric rings with a horseshoe of eight pit-like markings within in. The entire site was around 75 m in diameter.

The site was visited by O. G. S. Crawford a week later who pronounced it to be the Norwich Woodhenge but it was not until 1935 that it was first excavated, by Grahame Clark.

His work established that two circular rings were ditches, the outer one 1.5 m deep and the inner one 2.3 m deep, with indications of a bank that once stood between them. The pits in the middle were postholes for timbers that would have been almost 1 m in diameter. The site dates to the Neolithic, with a radiocarbon date of 3650-2650 Cal BC (4440±150) from charcoal from a post-pit. The henge is orientated on the mid-winter sunset, which when viewed from the henge, sets down the slope of nearby high ground, Chapel Hill.