West Woods


West Woods is a large wood, located near the market town of Marlborough in the English county of Wiltshire, United Kingdom. Its area is approximately. It is open to the public, and is popular with visitors in the Spring due to the large number of bluebells which cover the forest floor.

Background

West Woods was once part of the Royal Hunting Forest of Savernake until the bounds were changed in the 1330s. Along with Savernake and Collingbourne Woods it now forms part of Marlborough Woodlands. The woods are a very extensive area of beech woodland. West Woods is approximately one fifth of the size of Savernake and was clear felled in 1928, then later replanted. The Woods have been visited since before the Bronze Age supplying flints and later charcoal facilities.
near Clatford in Wiltshire

Archaeological interest

In July 2020, it was announced that West Woods was the origin of the sarsen stones, used to create Stonehenge. Archaeologists analysed a core from one of the stones, taken in 1958, and compared it to different sarsen outcrops around the country. The whereabouts of the core was unknown until it was returned from the USA by Englishman Robert Phillips in 2019.
West Woods also contains a Neolithic long barrow, and is bisected by an ancient earthwork known as the Wansdyke, dating back to the 5th or 6th Century BC.
In February 2007 the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society conducted the first of a series of surveys which revealed considerable detail about West Wood and the surrounding areas, producing evidence covering a range of different time periods including Mesolithic, Neolithic, post Medieval and undated. This report was published on the official WANHS website within a subheading covering the organisation's reports. The report discusses the findings of four seasons worth of field work and includes detailed maps and tables of discoveries found. Two different versions of the report are available and the second is considerably longer.

Nearby places