Aerial photography in low winter light on 10th December 2009 shed new light on the possible character and significance of this circular earthwork enclosure. The site was first recorded in *** but was rejected as an antiquity both by the Ordnance Survey and CPAT in their Funerary and Ritual assessment. That said, the earthwork is extremely slight even on winter aerial photographs and may not be clearly visible at ground level.

The enclosure sits at 420m O.D. on land falling gently to the south, almost central to the sources of two rivers: the Mule, 350m to the north-east and the Ithon, 300m to the south-west. To the north are the quite extensive Bronze Age barrow cemetaries on Crugyn Bank, crossed by a later Cross Dyke, while the barrows at Two Tumps lie to the east. Thus the enclosure occupies a significant place in the topography of the western Kerry Ridgeway, but is slightly removed and isolated from the cluster of Bronze Age monuments to the north. The local topography of the site is characterised by a curving dry valley, a minor feeder to the source of the Ithon. It begins at a spring marked by boggy ground just alongside the enclosure, and the enclosure is sited within a slight arc of this dry valley, using the topography of the spring and a river terrace to the south. Thus the spring and the dry valley may have been deciding factors in the choice of location.

The enclosure comprises a low circular or oval embanked earthwork c.40m diameter, with no ditch. There appear to be two opposing entrances to the south and north; that to the south coincides with a slight earthwork of an oblique trackway which crosses part of the south-west side of the enclosure and slights it. That said, this southern break lies directly opposite the northern break, suggesting two original entrances. The bank is broad and neatly executed, with rounded terminals at the entrances. Therefore, it seems likely that the enclosure is not a ring barrow but a henge, or hengiform monument of the Neolithic period. As such it would be something of a rare monument in this part of upland Powys (image refs: AP_2009_3732-34).
T. Driver, RCAHMW