Mount Pleasant henge

Mount Pleasant henge is a Neolithic earthwork enclosure in Dorset, south-west England. It lies south-east of Dorchester near the village of West Stafford. The site survives as low banks and ditches, though much has been worn down by centuries of ploughing and weathering. Stuart Piggott identified it as a henge in 1936 after noticing its distinctive layout. A Bronze Age barrow called Conquer Barrow sits on top of one of the banks. The enclosure is egg-shaped, stretching about 370 metres along its longest side. The site is important because it belongs to the ‘superhenge’ group, sharing features with places like Durrington Walls. A 1969 geophysical survey found two entrances and a smaller inner henge at the south-western end. Excavations in the 1960s uncovered grooved ware pottery and children’s skeletons in the ditch. The inner enclosure held five rings of postholes arranged in a cross shape, with spaces that may once have held stones. Geoffrey Wainwright’s work showed that a massive timber palisade once stood inside the main bank, enclosing twelve acres. Today the henge appears as grassy banks and hollows in a quiet field. The remains of the timber palisade run just inside the outer earthwork, marked by a narrow trench. Two narrow entrances once allowed entry through the palisade, each less than a metre wide. The inner posthole rings suggest a timber circle similar to those at The Sanctuary and Woodhenge. The site gives a sense of the scale and organisation of late Neolithic ceremonial building.