The Bronze Age in Biddenham

A reconstruction of a Bronze Age round house at Flag Fen [Cambridgeshire] October 2011

The Bedfordshire Historic Environment Record [HER] contains information on the county’s historic buildings and landscapes and summaries of each entry can now be found online as part of the Heritage Gateway website. Flint tools continued to be used throughout the Bronze Age and some flints found in Biddenham Loop [HER 18912] are thought to be early Bronze Age. Two flints discovered near Biddenham may be late Neolithic or early Bronze Age [HER 16223]. Two late Bronze Age socketed axes were found while ploughing at the corner of Days Lane and Bromham Road early in the Second World War [HER 16283].

The remaining Bronze Age evidence in Biddenham is from crop marks. Marks north-west of Windmill Hill [HER 1867] show a ring ditch overlain by a double-ditched trackway and roughly rectangular enclosures. Ring ditches are often the remains of round barrows and six cremations, not inside urns have been found. The overlying features could belong to the later Iron Age.

Cropmarks north-west of Biddenham golf course may show another ring ditch [HER 14978] and another has been identified north of Bromham Road [HER 1868]. A third ring ditch has been identified north of Bromham Road [HER 730]. It lies to the west of the other two ring ditches. West of Gold Lane another ring ditch has been identified as well as two separate roughly rectangular enclosures and linear features [HER 1868]. Much of this area was disturbed in the 1980s by the creation of the A428 Bromham Bypass.