Mayburgh Henge

Mayburgh Henge is a large prehistoric monument on a hill south of Penrith.

It consists of a bank, now covered with trees, 117m in diameter. The outer ditch is interrupted to the east by an entrance that faces the henge of King Arthur's Round Table, about 400m away. Mayburgh's bank is made of pebbles taken from the nearby river and has no inner ditch from which the material for the rampart was taken - a technique otherwise only known from other henges.

Its estimated that the bank contains c20,000 tons of stones (despite many being taken away over the years for other uses. The bank is up to 4.6 metres. Contained within it is a single monolith 2.7 metres high.


No proper excavation has been done here, so it is difficult to date the henge with any certainty, but the presence of Neolithic and Bronze axes found near the site indicate a date in the Neolithic or Bronze Age (3000 - 2000BC).