Bronze Age Monuments and Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon Landscapes at Cambridge Road, Bedford

At Cambridge Road in Bedford, a gravel ridge between the River Great Ouse and Elstow Brook held burial monuments long before the Romans arrived. One Bronze Age ring ditch was associated with a pit containing three crouched burials; nearby stood a smaller barrow with another grave. When archaeologists excavated 14.45 hectares ahead of development in 2004–05, those burials proved to be only one chapter in the site's history.

Andy Chapman and Pat Chapman trace the ground through Iron Age boundaries, the edge of a Romano-British settlement and Anglo-Saxon buildings and burials. The changes can be followed in ditches, pits, wells and graves, even where later activity disturbed earlier traces. Medieval cultivation eventually left its own marks. The report brings these separate episodes together to show how one stretch of land was used, divided and re-used over many centuries.