Details

The monument includes a long barrow set on the floor of a valley immediately
south of a tributary of the River Avon. The barrow mound is orientated
east-west and survives as a low ovate earthwork 50m long, 30m wide and 1m
high. Although no longer visible at ground level ditches, from which material
was quarried during the construction of the monument, flank the mound to the
north and south. These have become infilled over the years but survive as
buried features c.3m wide.

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.

The 180 long barrows of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset form the densest and
one of the most significant concentrations of monuments of this type in the
country. The Hebden Farm long barrow is important as, with no record of
excavation and despite levelling of the site by cultivation, much of the
monument including the ditches and buried ground surface will survive intact
and have potential for the recovery of archaeological remains. Such buried
features may also produce environmental evidence relating to the period during
which the monument was constructed. The importance of the site is enhanced by
the fact that an additional long barrow survives 150m to the north-west. Such
pairs are rare and give an indication of the density or length of time during
which areas were populated during the Neolithic period.

Source: Historic England