Issue no 40, December 1998

Two more English battlefields - both of them among the 43 sites listed in English Heritage's Battlefields Register - have been threatened by new development proposals.

Inverted tree found inside timber ring

An inverted oak tree pushed into the ground with its roots pointing up at the sky has been discovered on a beach on the North Norfolk coast surrounded by a ring of timber posts.

The oval ring of 54 posts, close-set to form a near-continuous wall around the inverted oak, lies between the high and low water marks, and has been preserved by regular immersion and burial in shifting sands and clays since it was first built, possibly in the Bronze Age. It re-emerged recently as a result of coastal erosion.

The eerie symbolism of the upside-down tree, stripped of bark and wrapped in a tendril of honeysuckle, clearly marks the discovery as some form of ritual structure. Francis Pryor, archaeological director of Flag Fen and an expert in waterlogged Bronze Age remains, said the tree resembled a `table with fingers' which could have been an altar. `The obvious explanation is that you'd have a body there, and the sea would come in and take the body away.'

The site, which is without known parallels, was `the most extraordinary archaeological discovery' he had ever seen. `I was absolutely staggered when I first saw it. I had goose-pimples. You could appreciate the whole thing at a glance,' he said.

The structure, at Holme-next-the-Sea near Hunstanton, has not yet been firmly dated by dendrochronology, but strong pointers to a Bronze Age date include distinctive tool-marks on the wood, the absence of sawing and of non-native species, its location in dated Bronze Age peat levels, and the recent discovery nearby of a Bronze Age axe.

The ring of posts, recorded by Mark Brennand of the Norfolk Archaeological Unit with funds from English Heritage, consists mainly of oaks split in half with the straight side facing in - as if the structure was supposed to be viewed primarily from the inside. It contains two possible blocked entrances.

According to Mr Brennand, further excavation - for which funds have yet to be secured - would establish, amongst other things, whether human remains or artefacts lie buried under the inverted tree. Time, however, is running out. `The sea is being extremely destructive at the moment, eroding the peat in massive chunks. Preservation in situ is not an option.' he said.

Chatham warship `interred in a shrine'

Asurvey of ship's timbers found underneath the floor of a late 18th century workshop at Chatham Docks in Kent suggests they may represent the remains of an important warship interred there by dockyard workers in a kind of shrine.

The timbers were found some years ago during restoration of the workshop, and were initially thought to have been placed in position in the 1790s simply as a means of strengthening the floor, or for storage. Neither explanation makes sense, however, according to Robert Prescott of the Archaeological Diving Unit at St Andrews University, who has recently conducted a full survey of the timbers.

Not only did the tightly-packed timbers make the floor unnecessarily strong, he said, but dockyards had no shortage of more convenient places to store recycled timber.

Instead, the evidence is beginning to point to a less prosaic possible explanation. All 170 timbers appear to come from one ship - a large warship, or `ship of the line'. Carpenter's marks indicate it was built in England rather than being, say, a French prize. Also, the timbers seem to have been taken from every part of the ship including outside skin planking, frames, and timbers from each deck, as if to represent the whole ship.

`My feeling is that this was an important ship that was built at Chatham and later broken up there, which the workers wanted to save somehow in a kind of shrine,' Dr Prescott said. `That desire may have been especially strong if it had been built by the fathers or grandfathers of the people who were breaking it up.'

No other ships are known to have been preserved in this way, making the Chatham `interment' a truly remarkable event - although one that need not necessarily have been recorded if the impetus had come from the dockyard workers rather than from naval management.

Eventually, it may be possible to identify the ship. About a dozen Chatham-built ships-of-the-line were broken up around the time the workshop was built, and carpenter's marks on the timbers - analysis of which continues - can often be deciphered to indicate a particular ship. The timbers of Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, for example, are known to have been scratched with the name of the ship, to help them be identified when they were moved from the carpentry workshop to the construction yard.