Water gods, weapons and wood...

Find out more about the Bronze Age with a trip to Flag Fen and discover the world of the ancestors!

Cross over the Shanks Millennium Bridge and turn left along the River Nene back towards the city. After approx. 1/3rd mile a path to the right leads to the Flag Fen Bronze Age Centre. If you wish to visit the centre the detour will only add just over ½ mile to your journey. There is also a café and toilets here.

From Flag Fen retrace your route back to the River Nene and continue your way along the top of the flood bank to the city. Passing under the Perkins Parkway you will find yourself once more on the Embankment and at the Key Theatre - the start of the ride.

Francis Pryor discovered Flag Fen in 1982

The boundary between wet and dry landscapes has been extremely attractive for settlement since prehistoric times because of the great mixture of natural resources that were readily to hand. Abundant fish and wildfowl could be found in the fen and animals grazed on the lush fen margins. A mosaic of fields and drove ways designed to control vast livestock herds replaced dense fen edge woodland, largely cleared by the Bronze Age.

During the Bronze Age, huge wooden piles (of alder and other wetland species and also oak) were driven into the soft fen mud to create an alignment, around a kilometre long, across the Flag Fen basin.

The preserved remains of the huge timber monument

As you look across to the Peterborough Power Station, imagine 5 rows of vertical posts stretching across the low-lying wet fen. There were between 50 and 60 thousand posts in a straight line all the way across. In the lowest lying, wettest area was a platform between 2 ½ and 3 acres in area, also constructed from timber. Apart from a few roundhouses either end of the alignment there are no buildings and only very few trees obscuring the open fens and your horizon.

Try to imagine the enormity of this construction and how important it must have been to the people who over a period of around 400 years placed in the region of 10 million pieces of wood here.

A mural shows how the wooden posts would have looked

As far as we know, Flag Fen was built by farming communities in the area. These communities were very successful farmers and kept large numbers of cattle and sheep. They did not possess actual money and it was farming that provided the wealth. This was used both to construct the post alignment and to acquire the thousands of metal, stone, ceramic and other objects that were then deposited among the posts of the alignment, most probably as offerings during religious ceremonies.

On the dry land to the left of the post alignment was a (now re-constructed) long straight drove way bounded by a ditch and bank. On the banks were planted a mixed stock-proof hedge of Hawthorn, Sloe and Dog Rose. The purpose of the drove way was to lead animals down to the open summer grazing at Flag Fen without interfering with people or animals along the way. To the right, on the north side would be open marsh leading out to the sea.

Bronze Age Roundhouse

Flag Fen is one of the few places in the world where real prehistoric wooden structures can be visited in situ within their wetland context. The visitor facilities and reconstructed landscapes at Flag Fen also offer a unique insight into prehistoric society. The impressively complete fossil skeletons of Jurassic sea monsters can be seen at Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery. The story of fenland drainage, brick making, and changes to the local environment is also told at the museum.