HAT has awarded £100 for a project based at Swelling Hill Pond, situated between Ropley and Four Marks, a beautiful hill-top pond surrounded by idyllic nature and fed by an ancient chalk spring. The pond has seen intense human activity since the Mesolithic (12,000 years ago) through to the Modern Day. Its uses include a settlement and flint source in the Stone Ages, a ritual and religious site in the Roman period, a meeting place and watering hole for medieval farmers, a brick kiln in the 1600s-1700s and the site of a Victorian cottage row- now since lost. However, much remains mysterious, and finds found during the pond’s dredging in the 1970s- although enticing (coins, pottery vessels, axe heads and a Georgian riding cape) have been entirely lost.
Ropley History Network and Archive (RHN&A) – part of Ropley Society asked for £100 from HAT to cover the Post Excavation Activity costs. This would ensure the excavation runs to proper legal and research standards and allow the creation of a resource of open and free access information for locals, archaeologists and researchers. The implications and results of the excavation have many uses beyond just the village. They can inform how ponds and springs were used throughout human history and what Stone Age
The excavation took place 1-4 May 2026 and while the reports will follow initial observations are ‘over 200 people came along to visit and understand more about the dig, the history of human activity at the Pond and the pond itself’ the main take away so far is ‘ results from the excavation have provided conclusive evidence of Mesolithic occupation. Finds included Microliths (small arrowheads), a possible axehead and a strike-a-light (a flint tool for fire-starting). Swelling Hill Pond is now on the map of Mesolithic sites in England- demonstrating the importance of clay-capped-downland in the period, a geography until recently considered barely occupied in the period. This was the first excavation focussed on Mesolithic archaeology in East Hampshire in over 50 years’.
