UNTIL a row over nearby quarrying recently put them in the news - well, the Yorkshire news anyway - probably few people had heard of the Thornborough Henges, three large prehistoric earth circles between Ripon and Bedale.

Chris Scarre, professor of archaeology at Durham University, describes them as "one of the most remarkable"

groups in Britain. He highlights them with a full-page aerial view, a diagram and two maps - one which alas, showing the general location, misspells Middlesbrough). Pointing out that the bank-and-ditch circles are the largest set of henges outside Wessex, he says they demonstrate the often large scale of prehistoric construction work. Of their purpose he suggests they "may have been the work of Neolithic communities coming together in these special sacred locations from a wide surrounding area".

Pity there isn't a lot more that he, or anyone else, can tell us.

No-one can accuse the Durham prof of parochialism, for his own region doesn't claim a place in this wide survey.

Even Yorkshire fails to make quite the perhaps-expected mark, with nothing from the North York Moors national park, that veritable open-air museum of prehistoric England, of sufficient status to claim attention.

But from just outside the national park, the relatively-recent discovery of a timber-chambered mortuary at Street House, near Loftus, does find a place. A diagram of it, and an illustration of a similar mortuary elsewhere, shows it to have been a fascinating structure.

Like the Thornborough Henges, however, its impact pales beside that of many of the other monuments featured.

Sadly our North Country has little to compare with Stonehenge, Avebury Rings or, even more so, some of the extraordinary megalithic art that decorates monuments in Ireland.