The New Stone Age in Biddenham

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. Some early Neolithic artefacts were found in the Biddenham Loop during fieldwork [HER 18911]. They were found in the same area as Mesolithic implements. In this same area a late pit, segmented ditch and possible settlement have been identified [HER 18914]. Finds have included a polished axehead, animal remains, an arrowhead, axe trimming flakes, a blade, cereal grain, flakes and assemblages of flint items. Particularly interesting is a structure thought, from post holes, to have been a rectangular building. The HER notes: “structures of this period are uncommon nationally and all the examples within Bedfordshire are round in form”.

A broken Neolithic polished axe head made from gneiss [HER 7447] was found on a gravel terrace of the River Great Ouse in rubble from an adjacent field. A number of finds from the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age come from Biddenham. Two flints were found near the village [HER 16223] and a concentration of flints occurs in the Biddenham Loop [HER 18912]; these include a barbed and tanged arrowhead, a knife and a re-touched flake.