Slap-bang in the middle of Inspector Morse's territory as well.
The news first surfaced in 2008 ...
TVAS News - Oxford
Recently, a ditch discovered back in March has now been identified as being part of a very rare monument type called a ‘henge’, which was created in the late Neolithic and Bronze Age (c. 2300 BC) round the same time as Stonehenge. The ditch excavated here is up to 8m across and at least 2.5m deep, curves only very slightly and based on the small part of the plan so far recovered, would have enclosed an area of at least 150m diameter, encompassing all of what is now Keble College and the Pitt Rivers Museum.
As reported by This is Oxfordshire / Oxford Mail
http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news ... ntal_find/
The news then mysteriously disappeared from the TVAS site. But can still be found in the Web.Archive ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20090218060 ... ord-2.html
The henge then disappeared as well, under a prime building site worth millions.
Authorities recently sanctioned the public release (through the Oxford Mail, on Isis Day, 17th July, 2008) of the astonishing news that a huge henge, measuring at least 150 metres diameter, had been discovered less than half a mile to the north of Carfax, at the centre of Oxford. The massive megalithic site, far bigger than Stonehenge, had been realised, they claim, when builders were preparing land behind houses in St Giles for the new ‘Kendrew Quadrangle’ development by St John’s College.
Archaeologists determined that the circular henge was surrounded by a moat, 8 metres wide and 2.5 metres deep and that this ancient ‘fortified’ island encloses all of present-day Keble College as well as Pitt-Rivers Museum:
In quick-smart fashion the builders, upright and square, Kingerlee ... were requested to fill it all in and get on with the job, which they are. In March 2008, a heap of up to 40 bodies were unearthed during the groundwork phase. By law, even for an Oxford money-bags like St. Johns, work had to stop.
St. John’s College is extremely rich. It is said that a traveller could walk from St. John’s, Oxford to St. John’s, Cambridge without stepping off this institution’s wallet. Alumni include the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion, inventor Jethro Tull, poets and writers A.E. Houseman, Robert Graves, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, fugitive from justice, Tony Blair, and (nearly because he failed the entrance exam) the camel-riding hero T.E. Lawrence (Morse, however, did get through.)
Very close to the Oxford Henge long barrows, round barrows, and other ritual sites have been discovered, in what is St Giles Church now known as the University Parks, and under Wycliffe Hall, in Summertown, under Ss. Philip and James Church in Woodstock Road and on Port Meadow. The site is only a stone’s throw (not one of those big ones. If it is I ‘ent chuckin’ it!) from the 12th Century, St. Giles Church, which might help to explain the dismay that social and religious historians have long expressed regarding the necessity of this large church so close to St. Mary Magdalen’s Church, which is also outside the old city boundary. Was St. Giles built on the henge site, or on top of something associated with it perhaps?
Now you see it…Now you don’t: The Oxford Henge
https://ellisctaylor.com/2015/10/23/now ... ord-henge/