Details

The monument includes a bowl barrow situated on a plateau which gradually
declines eastwards to the River Avon valley. It is some 150m west of the A345,
north of Countess Farm buildings. The barrow mound survives as a slight
earthwork 0.5m high but the diameter of this is now difficult to define on the
ground being in an area of additional later earthworks and having been reduced
in height by ploughing. The mound is surrounded by a ditch from which material
was quarried during its construction. This has become infilled over the years
but survives as a buried feature which is visible on aerial photographs and
from which the overall diameter of the barrow can be calculated to be c.30m.

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

A small number of areas in southern England appear to have acted as foci for
ceremonial and ritual activity during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods.
Two of the best known and earliest recognised areas are around Avebury and
Stonehenge, now jointly designated as a World Heritage Site.
The area of chalk downland which surrounds Stonehenge contains one of the
densest and most varied groups of Neolithic and Bronze Age field monuments in
Britain. Included within the area are Stonehenge itself, the Stonehenge
cursus, the Durrington Walls henge, and a variety of burial monuments, many
grouped into cemeteries.
The area has been the subject of archaeological research since the 18th
century when Stukeley recorded many of the monuments and partially excavated a
number of the burial mounds. More recently, the collection of artefacts from
the surfaces of ploughed fields has supplemented the evidence for ritual and
burial by revealing the intensity of contemporary settlement and land-use.
In view of the importance of the area, all ceremonial and sepulchral monuments
of this period which retain significant archaeological remains are identified
as nationally important. Bowl barrows, the most numerous form of round
barrow, are funerary monuments dating from the Late Neolithic period to the
Late Bronze Age, with most examples belonging to the period 2400-1500 BC.
They were constructed as earthen or rubble mounds, normally ditched, which
covered single or multiple burials. They occur either in isolation or grouped
as cemeteries and often acted as a focus for burials in later periods. Often
superficially similar, although differing widely in size, they exhibit
regional variations in form and a variety of burial practices. There are over
10,000 surviving bowl barrows recorded nationally and at least 320 in the
Stonehenge area. This group of monuments will provide important information
on the development of this area during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age
periods.

Despite the reduced height of the bowl barrow 150m west of the A345, it will
contain archaeological remains and environmental evidence relating to the
monument and the landscape in which it was constructed. Aerial photographs
have shown that the ditch fills survive undisturbed, while deposits located on
the Bronze Age ground surface will survive beneath the area disturbed by
cultivation.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other

Source: Historic England