Members of Canterbury Archaeological Trust returned to Ringlemere Farm in the summer of 2007, and although nothing was found to compare with the famous Ringlemere Gold Cup (see CA 208) found in 2001 by metal detectorist Cliff Bradshaw, now on display in British Museum, considerable further detail was added to the landscape context for that find.
According to Keith Parfitt, CAT’s Field Director, it is now known that the large henge-barrow, into which the Bronze-Age cup had been placed, formed just one part of a complex of prehistoric monuments on the valley side adjacent to the Durlock stream. Plough damage has long ago removed any associated barrow mounds, but the positioning of early Roman field boundary ditches in relation to the mounds suggest that they were still visible as upstanding barrow mounds in the 1st century AD and provided useful boundary markers.
Evidence that the barrows were still influencing human behaviour four centuries later comes from the south-western side of the main barrow(Monument 1), where excavations revealed an early Saxon cemetery, founded in the 5th century and containing over 50 graves. Six more inhumation burials of similar date were found during the 2007 season forming a discrete group to the north of Monument 3.
