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>> A Man-Made Landscape
The light Breckland soil, so easy to clear and to
plough, has attracted settlers since prehistoric
times, especially when it is found next to a river as
at West Stow. One of the earliest settlement sites in
Britain was discovered just a few miles to the west,
and this part of the Lark Valley has the greatest
concentration of prehistoric settlements in East
Anglia.
All our information on the first settlers comes
from archaeology. The excavations of the early
Anglo-Saxon settlement at West Stow were carried
out between 1965 and 1972, but an Anglo-Saxon
cemetery had been investigated on West Stow heath
in 1865. We know that Mesolithic hunters camped
on the low hill and made tools here. Neolithic
people cleared the woodland for their fields and so
began to form the Breckland heaths. They buried
their dead in a burial mound within the present Park
boundary. Black flint from the mine at Grimes
Graves came down the Icknield Way with traders,
and this route was still in use in the Bronze Age.
![Arial photo from 1976](4.jpg)
Above: view from the air,
1976, 3 years before the
Park opened. From left
to right: gravel is being
taken to form the lake;
the motorbike scrambling
track is visible on the
heath; three reconstructions have been built on
the hill, rubbish is being
dumped on the site of the
old sewage beds; the car
park is taking shape
(Made by the Director General of the Ordnance Survey)
Iron Age technology and climatic changes
combined to advance the rate of woodland clearance for farming in the area. Small Iron Age farms
can be found all along the Lark Valley and one was
excavated at West Stow, revealing circular huts and
ditched enclosures. This area was the home of the
Iceni tribe, famous for Queen Boudicca who fought
against the Romans.
![Arial photo from 1991](5.jpg)
Above: View from the air
1991, 15 years later. From
left to right: lake with islands
well established; more trees
are growing on the heath: six
reconstructions on the hill;
the Visitor Centre and car
park are complete
(Made by ADAS Aerial Photography Unit)
Please note: as the original
purpose of this photograph
was to show up crop details
the colours may seem
unusual.
The Roman settlement pattern was rather
different, with much larger settlements like the
rural market centres at Icklingham and Mildenhall.
At West Stow there were pottery-kilns making
wares for the region.
The Anglo-Saxon settlement discovered here
dates from soon after the end of the Roman period,
around AD 420. These farmers lived in three or four
family groups of houses, each with its hall as a
community building. They stayed here up to the
time when their famous King Raedwald was buried
in his ship with much of his treasure at Sutton Hoo,
about AD 625. Some time later the village site on the
hill in the present Park was gradually abandoned in
favour of a new settlement, further east. at the site
of the modern West Stow village.
In medieval times there was some farming on
the hill. Around AD 1300 major storms resulted in the
loose sand of the Breckland being blown over the hill
site, covering it with a protective blanket of sand
which helped preserve it for archaeologists,
Since that time we do not have as much
information on the West Stow site; it seems that the
heaths were over-grazed and became increasingly
unstable. The shifting sands became a prominent
feature, destroying any crops in their way and turning much of the area into a desert-like country
inhabited mainly by rabbits and sheep. Eventually
the Breckland was taken over by huge country estates, where Scots pine windbreaks were planted to
try to stop the sand blows.
The Culford estate owned the area of the
present Park in the early 1800s and sold it to the
local council in 1886 for use as a sewage farm for
Bury St Edmunds. A pump house, for circulating
sewage around the lagoons, was built near the river.
This enabled coal-carrying barges to supply the
engines, since the River Lark had been made navigable almost as far as Bury St Edmunds. The sewage farm took up the eastern half of the site, until it
was eventually replaced by a modern treatment
works in 1953.
The empty site was used as a rubbish dump
for Bury St Edmunds during the 1960s and early
'70s, when visitors to the excavations could follow
rubbish freighters there. Gravel was extracted
from the west of the site and televised motorcycle
scrambling took place on the central heath.
In 1979 West Stow Country Park was opened.
The rubbish tip had been filled in and landscaped,
the gravel pit had been turned into a lake and
scrambling had stopped. The project was financed
by the Borough Council and the Countryside
Commission. The Anglo-Saxon reconstructions
had been started by the West Stow Anglo-Saxon
Village Trust, set up after the excavations closed in
1972. In 1988 a visitor centre was opened to help
present the story of this man-made landscape to
the general.public.
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