Details

The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located
some 135m above sea level below the summit of a broad plateau between the
sources of the Waithe Beck and the River Bain. Although the barrow cannot be
seen on the ground it is clearly visible from the air and has been recorded on
aerial photographs as a cropmark in an arable field to the south of a small
plantation known as Far Dickey Crook.
It appears as a trapezoidal enclosure aligned north east-south west,
delineated by a ditch measuring c.42m in length by 26m wide. The ditch is not
thought to be broken by a causeway, a form representing a simpler type of this
monument class in which the enclosure set aside for mortuary activities was
not elaborated by the construction of a large earthen mound. Structures and
deposits associated with these features will survive as buried features.
The long barrow is one of a number of similar monuments associated with the
valleys of the Waithe Beck and the River Bain, and with High Street which
originated as a prehistoric trackway and which lies approximately 800m to the
west.

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.

The long barrow 530m west of Moor Farm will retain rare archaeological
deposits on the buried ground surface and in the fills of the ditch. These
will provide valuable information relating to the form and construction of the
monument, the period of its use and the sequence of funerary rituals at the
site. Environmental evidence preserved in the same deposits will illustrate
the appearance of the landscape in which the long barrow was constructed and
used.
The barrow is one of a number of similar monuments in the area whose
associations with the valleys of the Waithe Beck and the River Bain, and with
the adjacent prehistoric trackway indicate the ritual significance of the
location. The frequency of these monuments has wider implications for the
study of Neolithic demography and settlement patterns in the region.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Burl, A, The Stonehenge People, (1989), 30
Phillips, C W, 'Archaeologia' in Excavation of Giants' Hills Long Barrow, Skendleby, Lincs., , Vol. 85, (1936), 37-106
Other
discussions, Jones, D, (1995)
oblique monochrome photograph, Everson, P, 2978/33-36, (1979)

Source: Historic England