Details

The monument is a bowl barrow located towards the north-westerly edge of the
summit ridge of Iron Hill. It includes a slightly oval mound of earth and
stones up to 1m high with maximum dimensions of 14m by 12m. There is a kerb of
11 pink granite boulders around the southern part of the barrow and socket
holes indicating the location of a further 7 kerbstones removed during the
1980's from the barrow's northern part. The monument is not known to have been
excavated.
A drystone wall and adjacent post and wire fence crossing the barrow are
excluded from the scheduling, but the ground beneath these features is
included.

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

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, sometimes 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 diversity of burial practices. There are over 10,000 surviving bowl
barrows recorded nationally (many more have already been destroyed), occurring
across most of lowland Britain. Often occupying prominent locations, they are
a major historic element in the modern landscape and their considerable
variation of form and longevity as a monument type provide important
information on the diversity of beliefs and social organisations amongst early
prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period
and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of
protection.

Despite recent removal of kerbing stones from the monument's northern half,
the bowl barrow on Iron Hill survives well. It is a rare survival in Cumbria
of an unexcavated example of this class of monument and will contain
undisturbed archaeological deposits within the mound and upon the old land
surface.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Darvill,T., MPP Single Monument Class Description - Bowl Barrows, (1988)
RCHME, Westmorland, (1936)
SMR No. 2903, Cumbria SMR, Mounds at Iron Hill, Crosby Ravensworth, (1987)

Source: Historic England