During the late Bronze Age, between 1,100 BCE and 800 BCE, a settlement was built in the wetlands near Whittlesey, to the east of Peterborough (UK). The settlement comprised wooden roundhouses (at least 5) with thatched roofs, supported above the wetlands on a series of thick wooden stilts.
     Sometime shortly after their construction, estimated at a year, a devastating fire occurred and the whole settlement collapsed into the water below, gradually being covered and preserved in a thick layer of non-porous river silt. It lay undisturbed for thousands of years until its discovery during the construction of a nearby brick quarry.
     The latest research into the archaeology of the site is being conducted by a team from the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, led by Mark Knight. As well as the burnt timber structures, hundreds of other artefacts have been uncovered including textiles, wooden objects and metalwork.
     In reply to the site being named as Britain's Pompeii, Mark Knight is quoted as saying "In broad terms the site fits the allegory perfectly: a snapshot of a once living community, stopped at a moment in time". He went on to add however "In terms of its temporality, we can imagine that the settlement took a matter of weeks to build, months to occupy, days to burn and years to decay, anything but a moment in time".

Edited from Gizmodo (12 June 2019)