Details

The monument includes a bowl barrow set on a prominent hill-top in an area of
undulating chalk downland. The barrow mound is 15m in diameter and 1.5m high.
It is of conical shape with steep sides and may represent a Romano-British
burial mound. Although no longer visible at ground level, a ditch, from which
material was quarried during construction of the monument, surrounds the
mound. This has become infilled over the years but survives as a buried
feature c.2m 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

The Mount Wood monument might either represent a Roman barrow or a Bronze Age
bowl barrow. Roman barrows were constructed as steep sided conical mounds
usually covering one or more burials generally believed to be those of high
ranking individuals. The burials were mainly cremations, although inhumations
have been recorded, and were often deposited with accompanying grave goods in
chambers or cists constructed of wood, tile or stone sealed beneath the
barrow mound. Occasionally the mound appears to have been built directly over
a funeral pyre. Roman barrows are rare nationally, with less than 150
recorded examples, and are generally restricted to lowland England with the
majority in East Anglia. The earliest examples date to the first decades of
the Roman occupation while the majority were constructed in the early second
century AD.
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 2400-1500bc. There are over 10,000 surviving
bowl barrows recorded nationally occurring across most of lowland Britain.
Whichever class of barrow it represents, the Mount Wood monument survives well
and has potential for the recovery of archaeological evidence and
environmental remains relating to the period in which it was constructed.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Ferrell, G., MPP Single Monument Class Descriptions - Roman Barrows, (1988)

Source: Historic England