Arminghall is a small village and former

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

in the

English county The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, around southeast of

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

, now in the parish of Caistor St Edmund and Bixley, from April 1935 until April 2019 it was in

Bixley Bixley is a former civil parish now in the parish of Caistor St Edmund and Bixley, in the South Norfolk district of Norfolk, England. According to the 2001 census and 2011 census it contained 60 households and a population of 144. It covered ...

parish. Most of the houses in the village are located close to the church, which lies just west of the B1332 road from Norwich to

Poringland Poringland is a village in the district of South Norfolk, England. It lies south of Norwich city centre and north of Bungay. Its population has rapidly grown in the past 50 years. It covers an area of and had a population of 3,261 living in 1 ...

. Syfer Technology, an electronic components manufacturer, is based at Old Stoke Road, close to the

River Tas The River Tas is a river which flows northwards through South Norfolk in England - towards Norwich. The area is named the Tas Valley after the river. The name of the river is back-formed from the name of village of Tasburgh (E. Ekwall, English-R ...

. In 1931 the parish had a population of 108.

History

The name 'Arminghall' means 'Nook of land of Ambre's/Eanmaer's people'. The exact form of the personal name is uncertain. Arminghall was recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

as ''Hameringahala''. On 1 April 1935 the parish was abolished and merged with Bixley. In 2019 Bixley parish was abolished to form "Caistor St Edmund and Bixley".

Arminghall Henge

In 1929 a prehistoric

timber circle In archaeology, timber circles are rings of upright wooden posts, built mainly by ancient peoples in the British Isles and North America. They survive only as gapped rings of post-holes, with no evidence they formed walls, making them distinct fro ...

and henge monument site was discovered 1½ miles (2½ km) northwest of Arminghall village by Gilbert Insall VC who had been taking air photos of the area in search of new archaeological sites. Whilst flying at around 2,000 feet (600 m) he noticed

cropmark Cropmarks or crop marks are a means through which sub-surface archaeological, natural and recent features may be visible from the air or a vantage point on higher ground or a temporary platform. Such marks, along with parch marks, soil marks an ...

s of a circular enclosure made of two concentric rings with a horseshoe of eight pit-like markings within it. The entire site was around 75 m in diameter. The site was visited a week later by O.G.S. Crawford, who pronounced it to be the Norwich

Woodhenge Woodhenge is a Neolithic Class II henge and timber circle monument within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in Wiltshire, England. It is north-east of Stonehenge, in Durrington parish, just north of the town of Amesbury. Discovery Woodheng ...

but it was not until 1935 that it was first excavated, by

Grahame Clark Sir John Grahame Douglas Clark (28 July 1907 – 12 September 1995), who often published as J. G. D. Clark, was a British archaeologist who specialised in the study of Mesolithic Europe and palaeoeconomics. He spent most of his career working at ...

. His work established that two circular rings were ditches, the outer one 1.5 m deep and the inner one 2.3 m deep, with indications of a bank that once stood between them. The pits in the middle were

posthole In archaeology a posthole or post-hole is a cut feature used to hold a surface timber or stone. They are usually much deeper than they are wide; however, truncation may not make this apparent. Although the remains of the timber may survive, most p ...

s for timbers that would have been almost 1 m in diameter. The site dates to the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

, with a radiocarbon date of 3650-2650 Cal BC (4440±150) from charcoal from a post-pit. The henge is orientated on the mid-winter sunset, which, when viewed from the henge, sets down the slope of nearby high ground, Chapel Hill.

References

External links

Arminghall ChurchArminghall
on

Genuki GENUKI is a genealogy web portal, run as a charitable trust. It "provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland". It gives access to a large collection of information, with the emphas ...

Arminghall Henge on The Modern AntiquarianArminghall Henge on the Megalithic PortalArminghall Henge in Virtual Reality
* Villages in Norfolk Archaeological sites in Norfolk Former civil parishes in Norfolk South Norfolk {{Norfolk-geo-stub