Details

The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located
c.65m above sea level below the summit of a low plateau between two wide,
shallow river valleys. The western river drains into the River Lymn, and that
to the east is a tributary of The Beck. Although the monument cannot be seen
on the ground, it is clearly visible from the air as a cropmark on aerial
photographs. It appears as an elongated oblong enclosure aligned north west-
south east, some 60m long by 35m wide. The cropmark representing the
surrounding ditch has rounded corners and its circuit is unbroken, a form
which is thought to indicate an example of a simpler type of this monument
class. The central enclosure would have been the focus for mortuary activities
including the exposure of human remains, and structures and deposits relating
to this activity will survive as buried features.
The monument is situated less than 3km south of both the Skendleby group of
long barrows and the pair known as Deadmen's Graves.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 5 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, generally with
flanking ditches. They acted as funerary monuments during the Early and Middle
Neolithic periods (3400-2400 BC), representing the burial places of Britain's
early farming communities, and as such are amongst the oldest field monuments
surviving 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 activities preceding the construction of the barrow mound,
including ditched enclosures containing structures related to various rituals
of burial. It is probable, therefore, that long barrows acted as important
spiritual sites for their local communities over considerable periods of time.
The long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds and their adjacent regions have
been identified as a distinct regional grouping of monuments in which the
flanking ditches are continued around the ends of the barrow mound, either
continuously or broken by a single causeway towards one end. More than 60
examples of this type of monument are known; a small number of these survive
as earthworks, but the great majority of sites are known as cropmarks and
soilmarks recorded on aerial photographs where no mound is evident at the
surface.
Not all Lincolnshire long barrows include mounds. Current limited
understanding of the processes of Neolithic mortuary ritual in Lincolnshire is
that the large barrow mound represents the final phase of construction which
was not reached by all mortuary monuments. Many of the sites where only the
ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as representing monuments
which had fully evolved mounds, but in which the mound itself has been
degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In a minority of
cases, however, the ditched enclosure will represent a monument which never
developed a burial mound.
As a distinctive regional grouping of one of the few types of Neolithic
monuments known, these sites are of great value. They were all in use over a
great period of time and are thus highly representive of changing cultures of
the peoples who built and maintained them. All forms of long barrow on the
Lincolnshire Wolds and its adjacent regions are therefore considered to be of
national importance and all examples with significant surviving remains are
considered worthy of protection.

Although the buried remains of the Neolithic long barrow north of Grebby Hall
cannot be seen on the ground, they are clearly visible from the air and will
retain rare and valuable archaeological deposits on the buried ground surface
and in the fills of the ditch. These will provide important information
concerning the dating and construction of the barrow, and the sequence of
mortuary ritual at the site. Environmental evidence preserved in the same
contexts will illustrate the appearance of the landscape in which the monument
was set.
The monument is situated less than 3km south of both the Skendleby group of
long barrows and the pair known as Deadmen's Graves and may be an outlying
example of a wider group associated with the River Lymn.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Burl, A, The Stonehenge People, (1989), 30
Other
discussion, Jones, D, (1995)

Source: Historic England