Arminghall is a 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

, now in the parish of Caistor St Edmund and Bixley, in the

South Norfolk South Norfolk is a local government district in Norfolk, England. The largest town is Wymondham, and the district also includes the towns of Costessey, Diss, Harleston, Hingham, Loddon and Long Stratton. The council was based in Long S ...

district, in the county of

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

, England. It is around southeast of

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

. 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 South Norfolk district of 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 l ...

. Syfer Technology, an electronic components manufacturer, is based at Old Stoke Road, close to the River Tas. 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

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 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 a ...

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 Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford (28 October 1886 – 28 November 1957) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain and Sudan. A keen proponent of aerial archaeology, he spent most of his career as t ...

, who pronounced it to be the Norwich Woodhenge but it was not until 1935 that it was first excavated, by Grahame Clark. 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 This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

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

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

, 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
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