Grant funding of £700,000 has been provided through the Countryside Stewardship Heritage Service – Defra’s partnership with Historic England. It will support archaeological work at the nationally significant site and help protect evidence that has survived for around 3,500 years. Farming Minister Stephen Morgan announced the funding during a visit to Flag Fen on Thursday 10 September.
A unique prehistoric landscape
The project is expected to give visitors a deeper understanding of the people who lived in the Flag Fen landscape and built its remarkable timber causeway and platform. Archaeologists will focus on the post alignment on the western (Fengate) side, recording newly uncovered evidence and exploring what it can reveal about the purpose and development of the monumental structure.
Flag Fen sits at the centre of a unique prehistoric landscape in the Flag Fen basin. The site’s timber platform and causeway were constructed during the Bronze Age, when the surrounding environment was changing from dry land into marshland. The scale, complexity and exceptional completeness of the remains make Flag Fen one of the most important Bronze Age platform sites anywhere in the world.
The timber structures provide a rare insight into the ingenuity of prehistoric communities. Faced with a changing climate and increasingly wet conditions, the people who lived in the area adapted to their new surroundings by building substantial wooden structures across the marsh. The causeway enabled movement through the landscape and may also have had social, ceremonial or practical significance.
Serious risk
However, the future of this evidence is under growing threat. Flag Fen has been included on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register since 2012. Changes in groundwater levels are causing the surrounding peat to dry out, placing ancient wood and other organic remains at serious risk of decay. Once exposed to oxygen, materials that have been preserved in waterlogged conditions for thousands of years can deteriorate rapidly.
Recent evaluation excavations confirmed that organic remains, including worked ancient timber, are already degrading. Project partners have warned that around 40% of the site’s buried archaeology could be at serious risk of being lost within only a few months. The new excavation will therefore provide an urgent opportunity to investigate, document and preserve information before environmental change causes irreversible damage.
Response to a climate crisis
Jacqueline Mooney, General Manager of Flag Fen Archaeological Park, said the funding would allow archaeologists to collect evidence that is currently missing from the understanding of why the Bronze Age settlers built the causeway.
She described the structure as “a monumental example” of how people responded to a climate crisis 3,500 years ago. Rather than simply retreating from the transforming landscape, the community adapted its way of life, using ingenuity to survive and prosper in a marshland environment.
Community focus
The excavation will also create opportunities for local people to take part directly in the project. Volunteers will include members of the surrounding community, university students, young carers and people who have previously participated in surveys at Flag Fen. Progressive training will enable volunteers to develop archaeological skills, with the longer-term aim of helping them become supervisors and tour leaders.
This community focus is central to the wider ambition to revitalise Flag Fen and strengthen its links with the Peterborough area. One of the project’s key objectives is eventually to remove the site from the Heritage at Risk Register. Alongside protecting the archaeology, partners hope to develop Flag Fen as a major visitor destination where Bronze Age history can be brought to life through interpretation, public engagement and reconstructed prehistoric landscapes.
Historic England’s Co-CEOs, Claudia Kenyatta CBE and Emma Squire CBE, said the site was both rare and nationally significant. They also highlighted its potential to strengthen Peterborough’s cultural profile and generate economic benefits for the local community.
Globally significant archaeology, close to home
The new funding has been welcomed by Peterborough City Council and Andrew Pakes, MP for Peterborough. Council leader Cllr Shabina Qayyum described Flag Fen as a unique attraction that gives families the opportunity to experience ancient archaeology close to home. Pakes called it one of Peterborough’s greatest treasures and a site of global historical significance.
For Farming Minister Stephen Morgan, the excavation represents an important investment not only in archaeology but also in public access and the natural environment. He said Flag Fen had survived for thousands of years and that the funding would help protect the history beneath the ground while encouraging more people to discover the secrets of Britain’s ancient past.
A race against climate change
As work begins, archaeologists will be racing against environmental change to capture evidence that may otherwise disappear forever. The findings could help answer long-standing questions about the purpose of the timber causeway, the people who built it and the ways in which Bronze Age communities responded to a changing climate.
By combining excavation, conservation, training and community involvement, the project aims to secure Flag Fen’s future. It will also ensure that one of Britain’s most extraordinary prehistoric sites remains a place where visitors can explore the achievements of ancient communities – and consider how people have adapted to environmental challenges across the centuries.
This article is based on a government press release, edited by East Anglia Bylines.
More from East Anglia Bylines
Bylines Network Gazette is out!
The latest Bylines Network Gazette is out now. Become a Friend of Bylines Network or upgrade to a paid Substack subscription, and you will get access to a vital collection of citizen articles and stories.
Journalism by the people, for the people.
![Bronze age](http://</a>Flag Fen bronze age roundhouse <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_Fen_Bronze_Age_Roundhouse.jpg"> image by Midnightblueowl. via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)</a>){kind=link}
![Iron age](http://</a>Flag Fen iron age roundhouse <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Flag_Ben_Iron_Age_Roundhouse.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original"> image by Midnightblueowl. via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)</a>){kind=link}