Timber across the water

As the Fens grew wetter, people here built a kilometre of timber across the marsh, repaired it for centuries and lined it with offerings.

1 kmCauseway from Fengate to Northey
60,000+Upright timbers
300+Metal objects placed in the water
< 1 yearMust Farm lived in before the fire

Explore in 3D · Flag Fen

Rows of posts across the fen

The causeway ran about a kilometre from Fengate towards Northey, rebuilt over centuries.

Drag to turn · a simplified model, not a survey

Fields and droveways

By the Middle Bronze Age, around 1500 to 1150 BC, Fengate was laid out with ditched fields, boundaries and trackways running down to the fen. The layout points to herds moving with the seasons between the wet fen pastures and the drier gravel.

The Flag Fen causeway

From about 1300 BC people drove rows of posts into the marsh between Fengate and the island of Northey, now Whittlesey. The alignment ran for around a kilometre and used more than 60,000 upright timbers. It was rebuilt and repaired for centuries, with the last timbers added shortly after 900 BC. Beside it, people placed over 300 bronze objects in the water, many of them broken on purpose first.

Must Farm: a village caught by fire

Two kilometres south, at Must Farm quarry, a cluster of round houses stood on stilts over a slow river. Within a year of being built, fire destroyed them and they collapsed into the silt, which preserved them. The main excavation in 2015–16 recovered log boats, a wooden wheel and a bowl of porridge with its spoon still in it.

Timeline

1500–1150 BCFengate field system and droveways in use.
c.1300 BCFirst double row of posts at the narrowest crossing to Northey.
c.1100 BCSlashing swords in the Wilburton style are deposited.
c.950–850 BCMust Farm is built and burns down.
Shortly after 900 BCThe last causeway timbers are added.
2015–16Main excavation at Must Farm by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit.
2025A 15 m replica causeway opens to visitors at Flag Fen.