Thornborough Henges North Yorkshire

Ladybridge Farm sits alongside Nosterfield Quarry, both sites sit within North Yorkshire's largest ancient monument complex - The 6,000 year old Thornborough Henges - a collection of monuments that sprang up towards the end of the Stonehenge - recently featured on BBC TV's Time Flyers and Britain: A natural History.

After three years of denying that the quarry proposal would damage archaeology of national importance - an extremely rare Neolithic camp that is thought to cover much of the 109 acres at Ladybridge, Tarmac Northern Ltd were forced to ask for the delay, in order to carry out further investigations with English Heritage.

Since initiating discussion regarding proposals to extend Nosterfield Quarry in 2002 Tarmac Northern Ltd have been confronted with a growing wave of protest from an international heritage community concerned that a site of international importance was being destroyed. Even BBC presenter Dr Mark Horton, Head of Archaeology at Bristol University has spoken out against Tarmac's plans.

The proposals announced in 2002 would ultimately strip away almost all of the land surrounding the Thornborough Henges and the other scheduled monuments in the complex - a suggestion highlighted on the home page of campaign group TimeWatch website.
Campaign group TimeWatch have been at the fore of the pro-heritage campaign and North Yorkshire County Council has confirmed the groups claims that the quarry proposal is contrary to several council policies - it is in the wrong place, comes at a time when Yorkshire is not in need of further gravel stocks and will destroy nationally important archaeology.

However, the final decision has yet to be made, in the mean time Tarmac have started work stripping back more of Ladybridge in an attempt to prove the entire site is not nationally important.

The campaigners whilst being happy that the application is so close to being rejected are keen to emphasise the battle is not over. They have emphasised that Tarmac knew this site existed on Ladybridge Farm for more than ten years – it is a continuation of the same settlement located on Nosterfield Quarry just yards away. This was quarried in 1995, despite it being the “largest collection of Neolithic artefacts of this type so for found in the North of England.” (Tarmac 1995). This is a fact Tarmac has failed to acknowledge.

Instead Tarmac has only really said two things about Ladybridge Farm; the site is around half a mile away from the nearest henge, and any archaeology on Ladybridge is “thin and scattered”. TimeWatch have been keen to point out it is less than 20m from the nearest nationally important archaeological site – the one quarried by them ten years ago and the source of the above quote, at that time the archaeologists said this was all the more important due to the close proximity to the henges.

www.timewatch.org

Tarmac have applied for planning permission for the quarrying of land close to the Triple Henge complex at Thornborough. Key information and campaign latest at the Friends of Thornborough website

The current quarry has already destroyed hundreds of archaeological features including the only known Mesolithic double pit alignment in the world and around 25 pagan graves. The proposed area is ten metres away from "the largest concentration of Neolithic features discovered in the North of England" yet miraculously, Tarmac don't think there will be much archaeology on the site.

Look at the heritage action website - http://www.heritageaction.org/ for more details. This was one of THE places to be in the Neolithic Pagan calendar - people travelled here from all over Britain to be involved with ceremonies that involved Solar, Lunar and Stellar alignments, burial of high status individuals and "deposition" of valuable objects in water - one axe came from Penzance. The application site includes a water deposition area - the last remaining one. The application area includes a "ritual" settlement - the last remaining one.