Details

The monument includes a long barrow situated on the South Dorset Downs below
the crest of a north facing slope overlooking the valley of the South
Winterbourne. During the Bronze Age, the long barrow acted as a focus for the
development of a round barrow cemetery.
The barrow, which is aligned east-west, has a mound composed of earth, chalk
and flint with maximum dimensions of 25m by 15m and a maximum height of
c.0.5m. To the north and south are ditches from which material was quarried
during the construction of the monument. These are no longer visible at ground
level, as they have become infilled over the years, but they will survive as
buried features 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

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 examples of
long barrows and long cairns, their counterparts in the uplands, are recorded
nationally. 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 long barrow 200m north west of Longlands Farm survives comparatively well
and will contain archaeological and environmental evidence relating to the
monument and the landscape in which it was constructed. A later round barrow
cemetery appears to focus on the location of the long barrow.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 432

Source: Historic England