Record six-month dig planned at Flag Fen before peat dries out

October 17, 2026EnglandConservationShare

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Key facts

• Flag Fen, near Peterborough in England, preserves a Bronze Age timber causeway roughly one kilometre long and about 20 m wide, built from around 22,000 posts
• The causeway was constructed about 3,300 years ago to connect two areas of dry land as water levels rose across the fen
• Excavation director Mark Knight of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit says the structure served communication and trade, maintaining movement of people and animals across the wetland; earlier interpretations saw a ritual monument or a place to deposit metalwork or the dead, and Knight argues it was most likely all of those at different times
• The monument shows at least 400 years of repairs, rebuilds and alterations, preserved because wet, oxygen-free peat protected wood and other organic material
• Knight warns that a section of the causeway closer to the surface is drying out more quickly and will be gone within a couple of years if it is not excavated
• Flag Fen has been on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register since 2012; drought conditions allowed a peatland fire to break out at nearby Holme Fen about 11 miles away
• A six-month dig, described as the largest area ever examined over the monument after 40 years of mostly small keyhole trenches, is due to begin next year with £700,000 in funding from the Countryside Stewardship Heritage Service, a partnership between Defra and Historic England

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