Details

The monument includes two levelled bowl barrows, located 200m SSW of
Rollestone Camp. They are aligned north west to south east and are situated on
a broad chalk plateau which declines gradually south west to the valley of the
River Till and south east to Winterbourne Stoke Down. The barrow mounds are
now difficult to define on the ground. Each of the mounds is surrounded by a
ditch from which material was quarried during its construction. These have
become infilled over the years but survive as buried features and are visible
on aerial photographs from which the overall diameters of the barrows are
calculated to be 14m in the case of the north western barrow and 10m in the
case of the south eastern barrow. The barrows appear to have been confluent.

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 having been levelled by cultivation, the two bowl barrows 200m SSW of
Rollestone Camp 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

Books and journals
Grinsell, LV, The Victoria History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume V, (1957), 190
Grinsell, L V, The Victoria History of the County of Wiltshire, (1957), 190

Source: Historic England