The Legacy of Nateby

Okay...this one's for John as requested over at the forum. (Yes...the link's still there in the right hand column and you still don't need to register to leave a comment, start a subject, post a response or ask a question etc. Well...I'm nothing if not optimistic.)

Anyway...few residents of the Fylde and Wyre (despite our best efforts to inform them otherwise) realise that Nateby is sitting on top of an archaeological goldmine. But it is, and examples of our ancient history beneath this village can be found in banjo-shaped earthworks (most likely Iron Age settlements), a Romano/British road, a henge ten times the size of Stonehenge and even a rare prehistoric construction known as a pile settlement. (We’ve even produced a slideshow of some of the more prominent earthworks that can be found on the right hand side bar of this website, but somehow we get the feeling that nobody’s bothered to look yet.)
Let’s start with the road.
In 1995 several sections of it were excavated by John Salisbury and Neil Thompson of the Pilling Historical Society. It was eighteen feet wide, cambered and surfaced with cobblestones. True to the construction of Roman roads everywhere it had a ditch running along either side. In October 2003 two denarii, a silver ‘Tiberius’ and a bronze ‘Claudius’, were discovered on its surface thus confirming its antiquity.

The road originally ran from Garstang, through Nateby and Out Rawcliffe towards Hambleton before reaching an old ford across the Wyre that once connected Wardley’s Creek to Stanah.
Because it’s underground, of course, it’s difficult to spot.
The henge, on the other hand, is plainly on view. Or at least, part of it is. In the field to the east of Nateby Lodge on the corner of Hoole Lane is an embankment, approximately six hundred and fifty feet in diameter. This earthwork loops around the lodge, creates a dip in Rawcliffe Road and then continues back on itself in a perfect circle.
Hopefully the aerial photograph below should help explain matters.

In February 1996 P. Johnson of the University of London Archaeological Unit took a look, and recorded it as a henge, estimating its age as roughly 2,500 BC.
Also in 1996 a team of excavators, once again under the guidance of the Pilling Historical Society, dug into another suspicious mound close to Humblescough Farm. About two feet below the surface they unearthed a large amount of timber, as can be seen in the photograph below.

What they’d discovered (at least in Neil Thompson’s view) was a pile settlement that had once stood at end of a stretch of water known as Ainspool Lake. (Personally we’re more inclined to believe that it was lakeside settlement similar to Star Carr, but that's a debate that'll no doubt run forever.)
It seemed that our local tribe had felled the trees around the lake and placed them on the bed in rectangular sections. Once their artificial island had been constructed, they threw up a bank of earth for additional defence. Still visible in this embankment today are three entrances that the Celts left open to accommodate wooden causeways.Later that same year Pilling Historical Society conducted a second excavation. This time post holes belonging to a round house were discovered.

It was estimated that the pile settlement could have held up to twenty such buildings. This was obviously either a sizable village or the home of an important chieftain.Numerous other discoveries have been made around Nateby, from Roman brooches to Celtic Axes, mediaeval signet rings and Neolithic hammers. And no doubt there are hundreds more still waiting to be excavated. So next time you’re driving home please try to remember that that annoying bump in the road that keeps damaging your exhaust might have been put there thousands of years ago, and wasn’t designed to annoy you personally.