Details

The monument includes a henge and the bowl barrow known as Round Hill. The
henge does not survive as an upstanding feature but its construction ditch has
been identified from aerial photographs and survives as a buried feature
beneath modern horticultural land. It encloses a roughly circular area and
has an external diameter of c.80m. Opposing entrances have been identified on
the north-west and south-east sides and, formerly, a bank followed the outer
edge. The centrally placed bowl barrow includes a roughly circular earthen
mound with an average diameter of c.30m and a height of c.3m. No recorded
excavation of the barrow has been carried out but its form assigns it to the
Bronze Age.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 10 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Henges are ritual or ceremonial centres which date to the Late Neolithic
period (2800-2000 BC). They were constructed as roughly circular or oval-
shaped enclosures comprising a flat area over 20m in diameter enclosed by a
ditch and external bank. One, two or four entrances provided access to the
interior of the monument, which may have contained a variety of features
including timber or stone circles, post or stone alignments, pits, burials or
central mounds. Finds from the ditches and interiors of henges provide
important evidence for the chronological development of the sites, the types
of activity that occurred within them and the nature of the environment in
which they were constructed. Henges occur throughout England with the
exception of south-eastern counties and the Welsh Marches. They are generally
situated on low ground, often close to springs and water-courses. Henges are
rare nationally with about 80 known examples. As one of the few types of
identified Neolithic structures and in view of their comparative rarity, all
henges are considered to be of national importance.

Twford henge is a good example of a Class II henge which, although disturbed
by past and current agricultural practices, nevertheless retains substantial
archaeological remains, both in the buried ditch and on the old land surface
preserved beneath the later bowl barrow.
Bowl barrows are prehistoric funerary monuments which date from the Late
Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age (c.2400-1500 BC) and were constructed as
hemispherical mounds of rubble or earth covering single or multiple burials.
Sometimes ditched, they occur either in isolation or grouped as cemeteries and
often acted as foci for burials in later periods. Often superficially
similar, though differing widely in size, they exhibit regional variations in
form and a diversity of burial practices. There are over 10,000 surviving
bowl barrows recorded nationally, with many more having already been
destroyed. Their considerable variation of form and longevity as a monument
type provide important evidence on burial practices and social organisation
among early prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of
their period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered
worthy of protection. Round Hill bowl barrow is a large and reasonably well-
preserved example which, although it has suffered some damage to its profile,
is still largely intact. Both the barrow and the henge are important not only
in their own right but as elements in a wider prehistoric ritual landscape
which survives in the surrounding area.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
AFY 31-33, St Joseph, J K,
Brown, A G, (1993)
NMR 3328/2,5,9,14,15, Pickering, J,

Source: Historic England