British archaeologists claim frogs' legs for the English

British archaeologists digging about 1.5 kilometres from Stonehenge have made a discovery that appears to overturn centuries of received wisdom: frogs' legs were an English delicacy around eight millennia before becoming a French one.

The revelation was made public on Monday by a team who have been digging at Blick Mead, near Amesbury in Wiltshire.

In April they discovered charred bones of a small animal, and, following Natural History Museum assessments, it was confirmed there was evidence of toad bones being cooked and eaten. "They would have definitely eaten the leg because it would have been quite big and juicy," said the team leader, David Jacques, a senior research fellow in archaeology at the University of Buckingham.

The bones, from a Mesolithic site Jacques is confident will prove to be the oldest continuous settlement in the UK, have been dated to 7,596BC-6,250BC.

Mesolithic Wiltshire man and woman, Jacques said, were also eating huge pieces of aurochs (wild cattle) and wild boar, red deer and hazelnuts. "There were really rich food resources ... they were eating everything that moved. But we weren't expecting frogs' legs as a starter," he said.

Jacques said the finds pointed to evidence of near 3,000-year use of the site.