Details

The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located
c.115m above sea level on the eastern valley slope of a tributary of the River
Bain. It is situated in an area of arable land known as Heath Road Field.
c.575m south west of Manor Warren Farm, Welton le Wold. Although the monument
cannot be seen on the ground, its uninterrupted ditch is clearly visible from
the air as a cropmark on aerial photographs. The monument is aligned east-west
and measures approximately 55m long by 30m wide. The ditch has slightly convex
sides and rounded ends and its form is thought to represent a simpler type of
this class of monument in which the ditched enclosure set aside for mortuary
activities would not have been elaborated by the construction of a large
earthen mound. The remains of structures associated with these activities will
survive as buried features.
The monument is one of a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows associated
with the Bluestone Heath Road which is thought to have originated as a
prehistoric trackway.

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 Neolithic long barrow south west of Manor Warren Farm has been
degraded by ploughing, it will retain valuable archaeological and
environmental evidence on and in the buried ground surface and within the
fills of the encircling ditch. These deposits will provide rare information
concerning the barrow's dating and construction and the sequence of mortuary
ritual at the site, and will illustrate the nature of the landscape in which
the monument was set.
The long barrow is one of a number of similar monuments associated with the
valley of the River Bain and with the Bluestone Heath Road which is thought to
have originated as a prehistoric trackway. These associations indicate the
ritual significance of this location and pose wider questions concerning
riverine and land communications, and settlement patterns during the
prehistoric period.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Bonnor, L D, Griffiths, D W, Skitter to Hatton 4050mm diameter pipeline, 1993, (1993)
Other
discussion, Jones, D, (1995)
Oblique monochrome photograph, Everson, P, 2942/42, (1980)

Source: Historic England