Details

The monument is Cow Green long barrow. It is located on a gently sloping
north-east facing hillside immediately above the steep-sided valley of the
Lyvennet Beck. The monument includes an earth and stone mound up to 33m long
orientated ENE-WSW. It is up to 2m high and 16m wide at the eastern end but
reduces in both width and height towards the western end where it measures up
to 1m high and 7m wide. The monument is not known to have been excavated.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Long barrows were constructed as earthen or drystone mounds with flanking
ditches and acted as funerary monuments during the Early and Middle Neolithic
periods (3400-2400 BC). They represent the burial places of Britain's early
farming communities and, as such, are amongst the oldest field monuments
surviving visibly in the present landscape. Where investigated, long barrows
appear to have been used for communal burial, often with only parts of the
human remains having been selected for interment. Certain sites provide
evidence for several phases of funerary monument preceding the barrow and,
consequently, it is probable that long barrows acted as important ritual sites
for local communities over a considerable period of time. Some 500 long
barrows are recorded in England. As one of the few types of Neolithic
structure to survive as earthworks, and due to their comparative rarity, their
considerable age and their longevity as a monument type, all long barrows are
considered to be nationally important.

Cow Green long barrow survives well and remains unexcavated. The monument is
one of only 20 long barrows recorded in Cumbria and as such it lies outside
the distinct regional groupings of these monuments found in the Cotswolds, the
downlands of Wessex, and the Wolds of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It will
contain undisturbed archaeological deposits within the mound and upon the old
landsurface beneath it.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Darvill, T, MPP Single Monument Class Descriptions - Long Barrows, (1988)

Source: Historic England