Monument record 0688503000 - Quarry site W of The Lea, Denham

It is assumed that the earlier ring ditches/round barrows and field system were visible and still in use in the later Bronze Age and early Iron Age, despite the lack of later pottery from the ditch fills. The smaller oval barrow seems to have been the focus for the inhumation burial of an adolescent or young adult (aged under 25 years) in a grave at the centre of a small subrectangular ditched enclosure with an entrance in the middle of the north side. The grave was aligned NW-SE, with the head at the NW end and the skeleton was poorly-preserved with less than 25% of the total bone surviving. The enclosure ditch was cut by an early Roman ditch. Within the earlier field system to the south, a very poorly-preserved cremation burial (only 1.5g of human bone) was deposited in a shallow pit within an oval hollow, 6.9m long, 5.35m wide and 0.35m deep, interpreted as a natural feature or a possible pond barrow.
A roundhouse 10m in diameter with eaves drip gully, east-facing entrance porch and internal support postholes was constructed between the larger barrow and the field system, and a square 4-post structure, presumably a granary or similar storage building, was constructed within one of the earlier fields or paddocks to the south. Other clusters of pits and postholes are assigned to the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age on the evidence of pottery from fills or stratigraphy.
A ditch with later prehistoric pottery was found in cutting the recharge ditch at the eastern edge of the excavated area, so it is possible that other activity was taking place to the east, outside the excavated area. See report for detail (B2).