Thornborough Henges: History behind the 5,000 year Yorkshire landmark that looks eerily similar to the crop circles in M. Night Shyamalan film Signs

The Thornborough Henges are an ancient monument system that encompass the three aligned henges and are positioned on a raised platform above the River Ure near the village of Thornborough in North Yorkshire.

The landmark includes many large ancient structures including a cursus, henges, burial grounds and settlements.

It is thought that they were part of a Neolithic and Bronze Age ‘ritual landscape’ which compare to Salisbury Plain and date from between 3500 and 2500 BC.

Their unique shapes have drawn visitors from all over the country for years and the now public site is managed by English Heritage. The third henge remained in private ownership until February 2024 when it was acquired by the charity.

The monument complex has been known as ‘The Stonehenge of the North’ - here is everything you need to know about its rich history according to the English Heritage website.

History of Thornborough Henges

More than 5,500 years ago the three unique identical and prehistoric circular earthen enclosures, also known as henges, were built by farming communities. It was a location where people gathered for ceremonies and funeral rituals for at least 2,000 years.

There are less than 100 surviving henges across Britain and Ireland. The importance of the North Yorkshire henges remained into the early Bronze Age, when burial grounds were built.

The henge in the centre was built on a rectangular enclosure known as a cursus at an earlier period. It is undetermined why these elongated and relatively narrow enclosures were built but it is thought that they were formalised gateways across the countryside.

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The earliest henge ran across the highest part of the plateau, and the line of the henges formed a right angle with it. The cursus was at least 1.2km long and around 44 metres wide.

While we do not know the exact date that the Thornborough cursus was built, other cursus monuments were built between around 3600 and 3400 BC, in the early Neolithic period.

The south-east entrance causeway was situated exactly where a causeway was located along the northern ditch of the cursus; this implies that the older monument was intentionally built into the layout of the henges. However, most of the cursus was destroyed by quarrying in the 1950s.

There is potentially another cursus monument in the shape of a rectangular ditch in aerial photographs, which is located west of the northern henge. An oval enclosure and a triple-ditched barrow which includes many burials also date back to the early Neolithic period.

Each of the three henges is around 250 metres in diameter and similar to other henges across Britain, they are each enclosed by an earthen bank. They originally stood four metres tall and were broken by two opposing entrances.

In modern times, the henges are eroded and have been damaged by quarrying and ploughing, but the northern henge is comparatively well preserved. Its dense tree cover has protected it from intensive agriculture.