This is a multi-period ritual and funerary complex on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, comprising a Neolithic/early Bronze Age henge monument, four Bronze Age round barrows, and a section of Roman road. The henge and barrows date broadly to c. 2500–1500 BC, while the road is part of the Roman route running across the downs, in use from the later 1st through 4th centuries AD. The Roman road cuts across or skirts the earlier prehistoric monuments, a common pattern in this densely-monumented chalk landscape.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The Roman component is a minor but informative element: a rural through-route across the North Wessex Downs linking settlements and likely connecting to the network around Cunetio (Mildenhall) and Verlucio. Its alignment over an existing prehistoric ceremonial landscape illustrates how Roman engineers routinely reused or overlaid earlier monumental terrain rather than avoiding it.
The site is known largely from earthwork survey and aerial photography rather than open-area excavation, with the barrows and henge surviving as upstanding monuments and the road traceable as an agger and cropmark. No substantive published excavation of the Roman road segment at this location is recorded, and finds assemblages specific to this stretch are sparse.
This is a multi-period ritual and funerary complex on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, comprising a Neolithic/early Bronze Age henge monument, four Bronze Age round barrows, and a section of Roman road. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
A henge, four Bronze Age barrows and part of a Roman road 500m south west of Fox Covert is classified as a Roman site — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Section of Roman Road 560m north east of Beckhampton Buildings (0.7 km), Round barrow 1260m NNE of Baltic Farm, 75m south of Roman Road, forming part of a barrow cemetery situated on North Down (2.3 km), Three Roman burial mounds, a Bronze Age bowl barrow, a pagan Saxon inhumation cemetery and a short length of Roman road on Overton Hill. (4.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
Aubrey Research generates detailed historical reports for any location in Britain, incorporating Roman heritage, Domesday Book records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and much more. Enter a nearby address to begin.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain — drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around A henge, four Bronze Age barrows and part of a Roman road 500m south west of Fox Covert