Three vast Neolithic earthwork rings strung across a North Yorkshire plateau, the last of them only opened to visitors in 2024
Access unclearno public right of way confirmed — check locally before setting out
Earthworks onlybanks, ditches and platforms — read the ground, not walls
For years only two of Thornborough’s three prehistoric henges were open to the public; English Heritage secured the northern henge for visitors as recently as September 2024, so you can now walk out to all three. Neolithic farmers built each ring about 4,500 years ago — a henge, meaning a wide earthwork with the ditch dug just inside the bank rather than outside, the reverse of a fort, one clue that these monuments were built for ceremony rather than defence. The three rings, each around 250 metres across, sit in a line running for over a mile across the plateau, and their banks, once as much as four metres high, were plastered with gypsum, a soft white mineral dug nearby, so they would have gleamed white above the grass. Two of the three, the northern henge and the central one, have their southern gateways aligned with the midwinter sunrise, the same idea built into Stonehenge, and the group is sometimes nicknamed the Stonehenge of the North. Conservation work is under way in places. Ripon, a few miles south, makes a good base for exploring more of the area.
