To the north of Milfield, Northumberland the A697 cuts through a cluster of
ring-ditches centred at NT933347. Discovered during aerial survey by
Professor N. McCord, these were included in Dr A. Harding's survey of the
ritual henges and related monuments of the Milfield Basin (Harding 1981,
101). Subsequent aerial reconnaisance by Mr T. Gates has increased the
number of visible ring-ditches to at least eleven and, of these, three types
may be tentatively isolated (fig. 1). The smallest appears to have a
diameter no greater than 3.5 m, but with a ditch some 2 m in width (3
examples); in the second type the ditch appears less than a metre in width,
but enclosing a larger area estimated at between 9 and 20 m (3 examples). A
single example (Site 1 below) lies outside these dimensions and it was this,
together with an example from the second group, that was chosen for
excavation in 1982 and 1983.