This site is entirely user-supported. See how you can help.
We don't have any photos of this monument yet. Why don't you be the first to send us one?
If Google Street View is available, the image is from the best available vantage point looking, if possible, towards the location of the monument. Where it is not available, the satellite view is shown instead.
Latitude: 51.1792 / 51°10'45"N
Longitude: -1.7962 / 1°47'46"W
OS Eastings: 414339.766822
OS Northings: 142239.762
OS Grid: SU143422
Mapcode National: GBR 4ZW.W54
Mapcode Global: VHB5B.TM8C
Entry Name: Bowl barrow 100m north of the A303 on Countess Farm
Scheduled Date: 25 April 1995
Source: Historic England
Source ID: 1009143
English Heritage Legacy ID: 10421
County: Wiltshire
Civil Parish: Amesbury
Traditional County: Wiltshire
Lieutenancy Area (Ceremonial County): Wiltshire
Church of England Parish: Amesbury St Mary and St Melor
Church of England Diocese: Salisbury
The monument includes a levelled bowl barrow situated on a gentle south facing
slope 100m north of the A303 and west of Countess Farm buildings. The barrow
is now difficult to identify on the ground. However, the ditch which surrounds
the mound, and from which material was quarried during its construction,
survives as a buried feature and is visible on aerial photographs from which
the overall diameter of the barrow can be calculated to be 15m.
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
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 having been levelled by cultivation, the bowl barrow 100m north of the
A303 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
Other
Source: Historic England
Other nearby scheduled monuments