“Around 40% of Flag Fen’s precious buried archaeology is at serious risk of being lost forever in just a few short months,” says Jacqueline Mooney, general manager of Flag Fen Archaeological Park. That urgency sits behind a £700,000 grant for a major new excavation at the site near Peterborough, where archaeologists are preparing to uncover and record more of one of Britain’s most important Bronze Age places. For the city, it is the kind of funding that does more than preserve old timber. It keeps a local story alive before the evidence slips away.

Flag Fen is no ordinary heritage attraction. The site revealed a remarkable timber causeway and platform built roughly 3,500 years ago, and few Bronze Age structures of that sort survive anywhere in the world. Its scale and condition have long made it nationally significant, even if it does not always get the attention given to bigger-name destinations. That standing has not kept it safe. Historic England has had Flag Fen on its Heritage at Risk Register since 2012, and recent evaluation work confirmed what specialists feared: ancient worked wood and other fragile organic remains are deteriorating as groundwater levels drop and the peat begins to dry out.

The new excavation will focus on the western post alignment, with teams recording fresh evidence and trying to answer a question that still hangs over the site: why did Bronze Age settlers in the Peterborough area build such a monumental wooden route through wet ground in the first place? What is found will not simply go into an archive. Partners say the work will help reshape how Flag Fen is interpreted for visitors, giving people a fuller sense of the engineering, belief and day-to-day survival behind the causeway. In plain terms, this is about turning a threatened site into a stronger public story.

The grant is being awarded through the Countryside Stewardship Heritage Service, which is run through Defra’s partnership with Historic England. Farming Minister Stephen Morgan marked the announcement during a visit to the site on Thursday 10 September, saying the government wanted to protect “the incredible history beneath our feet” while also helping more people discover it. Mooney said the dig would recover missing evidence from Peterborough’s Bronze Age past and could not have come much later. She has also pointed to the wider meaning of the site, arguing that the causeway shows how earlier communities adapted when the ground beneath them turned to marsh and survival depended on ingenuity.

For local people, the project is meant to be hands-on rather than fenced off. The excavation will create volunteering opportunities for residents, university students, young carers and people who have already helped with earlier surveys. Training will build step by step, with the aim of helping some volunteers move into supervisor and tour leader roles. That gives the scheme a second value beyond archaeology. Public funding is not only paying for careful recording of the past; it is also backing local skills, confidence and a stronger connection between the site and the community around it. That matters in a place like Peterborough, where heritage can too easily be spoken about as a nice extra rather than part of local identity and opportunity.

There is also a longer game at work. Project partners want Flag Fen removed from the Heritage at Risk Register and developed as a stronger destination for Peterborough, one that lifts the city’s cultural profile and brings more visitors through the gates. Historic England co-chief executives Claudia Kenyatta and Emma Squire said the site is a remarkable asset for the area and that better recording now can help secure its future. Local political backing has been firm. Council leader Cllr Shabina Qayyum described Flag Fen as a unique family attraction on the city’s doorstep, while Peterborough MP Andrew Pakes said the funding had arrived at a critical moment as environmental change speeds up decomposition. Their case is straightforward enough: if Peterborough wants to keep hold of one of its greatest historic assets, the work has to happen now.