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Ancient monument

Blick Mead

Amesbury, Wiltshire

A warm spring that may make Amesbury Britain's oldest settlement.

Blick Mead is a spring on the edge of Amesbury whose water stays at a steady temperature and turns the flints in it pink. Excavators found 31,000 worked Mesolithic flints in just 16 square metres, with bones of boar, deer and giant wild cattle.

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When
From c. 8820 BC
Where
51.1720, -1.7700
Group
Circles & monuments

Visiting

Amesbury town, a short walk from the A303.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Britain by Cale Mills
From the book

The Ledger of Lost Britain

Amesbury is a small town in Wiltshire, about three kilometres from Stonehenge. It is not much to look at. Yet a team from the University of Buckingham, which has been digging at a place called Blick Mead, on the edge of the town, says that it may be the longest continuously occupied settlement in the country.

The Romans arrived in AD 43. For most people that is where the history of Britain begins. But by the time the legions landed, people had already been living on these islands for thousands of years. They had hunted, farmed, mined flint, dragged stones across the country, raised a hill by hand, and buried their dead in great tombs. They left no written words. What they left was the ground itself. Every place in this book can be visited, or has been dug up, or is in a museum.

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