Fieldwalking in Churton, supervised by Phllip Miles in 2006.

With many thanks to my friend Helen, who is shown second from the left in the very blurred image at the top of this 2006 article, for sending me a copy of this.  Phillip Miles , for the Chester Archaeological Society, supervised a field-walking expedition to two of the fields behind Churton, just north of Farndon, and made some very significant discoveries.

Aerial survey and metal detecting had already identified some interesting features in the fields above and to the east of the River Dee (see photos below), thought to belong to Neolithic, Bronze Age and Romano-British periods.  The fieldwork, carried out with permission from the landowner, confirmed that the land has a lot more prehistoric data to offer.

Although the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in northeast Wales and the borders along the Dee are most noticeably represented in the landscape by burial and ceremonial monuments, the narrative of everyday working life in prehistory is embedded in the surface scatters of stone tools that remain in fields and on hillsides. These were the tools that people used every day in their subsistence strategies, and are the intimate toolkits of their livelihoods.

The analysis of the findings was underway at the time of the article, so no findings were reported, and it will be interesting to follow up on this to see what was concluded (if the analysis was published).  It was also suggested in the article that there could be scope for future work in Churton, although it is unclear at the moment if this took place.

Possible Neolithic enclosure in the fields behind Churton

Possible barrow cemetery near Knowl Plantation to the west of Churton