Details

The monument comprises a round cairn, part of a dispersed group of cairns
situated on Craddock Moor on south-east Bodmin Moor.
This cairn survives as a near-circular mound, 9m diameter and 1m high,
composed of heaped small and medium-sized stones up to 0.5m across. The mound
is built across a slight natural scarp in the valley's SW-facing slope;
consequently the mound appears higher, reaching 1.5m, above the ground level
on the SW side. That sector has also been subject to some stone robbing,
truncating the SW side of the mound, leaving its edge irregular and revealing
many larger stones, up to 0.75m long, in the lower levels of the mound and the
surface formerly covered by its SW edge. Beyond the exposed stone of this
disturbed SW sector, this cairn's mound is largely turf-covered and intact.
This cairn has been surveyed but it has not been archaeologically excavated.
It forms part of a dispersed group of seventeen cairns. The group is situated
in the floor of a broad valley, near to a Prehistoric embanked avenue and at
the NW edge of an extensive area of funerary and ceremonial monuments typical
of the early and middle Bronze Age (c.2000 - 1000 BC) on the Craddock and
Rillaton Moors.

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

Bodmin Moor, the largest of the Cornish granite uplands, has long been
recognised to have exceptional preservation of archaeological remains. The
Moor has been the subject of detailed archaeological survey and is one of the
best recorded upland landscapes in England. The extensive relict landscapes of
prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval date provide direct evidence for human
exploitation of the Moor from the earliest prehistoric period onwards. The
well-preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, field
systems, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains
provides significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land
use through time. Round cairns are funerary monuments covering single or
multiple burials and dating to the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC). They were
constructed as mounds of earth and stone rubble up to 40m in external diameter
but usually considerably smaller; a kerb of edge-set stones sometimes bounds
the edges of the mound. Burials were placed in small pits, or on occasion
within a box-like structure of stone slabs called a cist, let into the old
ground surface or dug into the body of the cairn. Round cairns can occur as
isolated monuments, in small groups or in larger cemeteries. Their
considerable variation in form and longevity as a monument type provides
important information on the diversity of beliefs, burial practices and social
organisation in the Bronze Age. They are particularly representative of their
period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered
worthy of preservation.

This round cairn on Craddock Moor has survived substantially intact despite
the earlier actions of stone robbers along its SW edge and it will retain many
of its original features, including burial deposits. The cairn's importance
is further enhanced by its situation within a wider grouping of differing but
broadly contemporary classes of funerary and ceremonial monuments on Craddock
Moor, demonstrating well both the diversity and the organisation of burial
practice and ritual during the Bronze Age.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
CAU/RCHME, The Bodmin Moor Survey, Unpubl. draft text. Ch.4, 1.3, fig 17
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1291.01,

Source: Historic England