Details

The monument includes a Neolithic long barrow, a member of a wider group of
prehistoric monuments in this area of the Yorkshire Wolds.
The earth and chalk rubble barrow mound, which is orientated east-west, is 50m
long, 13m wide, and up to 1m high at its eastern end, tailing off to the west.
Although no longer visible at ground level, ditches, from which material was
excavated during the construction of the monument, existed to both north and
south of the barrow mound. These have become in-filled over the years but
survive as buried features 6m wide and 40m long.
The barrow has twice undergone partial excavation. In 1865 the antiquarian
Canon Greenwell found three burials, including an adult crouched inhumation
and two collections of fragmentary and disarticulated bones from a number of
individuals in the mound. All the burials were found toward the eastern end
of the mound. Sherds from a number of Neolithic pots were also found. In 1958
the barrow was re-excavated by T G Manby. He found remains of mortuary
structures which predated the mound and burnt remains which indicated that
cremations which were found had been burned at the site. Numbers of worked
flints, including fragments from an axe, were also found.

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.

Although this barrow has been partially excavated and altered by agricultural
activity, it will retain further archaeological information concerning its
structure and use and its relation to the environment in which it was
constructed.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Greenwell, W , British Barrows, (1877), 487
Manby, T G, 'Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society' in The Excavation of the Willerby Wold Long Barrow, , Vol. 29, (1963), 173-205

Source: Historic England