Details

The monument includes a prehistoric field system extending across a midslope
hollow on the south west flank of Samson Hill, on southern Bryher in the Isles
of Scilly.
The field system is defined by rubble and slab-built walls up to 0.5m high,
most of which incorporate spaced edge-set slabs, called orthostats, along
their midline, rising to 0.9m high. Where the walls run along the contour they
appear as stepped banks, called lynchets, caused by soil movement on the
gradient against the banks' uphill sides and away from their downhill sides, a
process accelerated by early cultivation. The walls' orthostats generally
remain visible along the lynchets but the lynchet formation has left them
appearing as a facing along the downslope sides.
The field system is defined to the south east by a wall descending the steep
slope north east - south west, visible over 40m running almost directly
downslope with a slight stagger near the centre of its course; its alignment
is extended beyond this monument to the present coast by the line of a
relatively recent field wall. The surface of the midslope hollow north west
from this wall is subdivided by a series of at least three lynchetted
prehistoric walls, 10m-20m apart, running south east - north west along the
contour and ending at a ridge of rocky outcrops which runs down the hillside
defining the north west limit of the field system and the natural hollow
containing it.
Beyond this monument, further prehistoric field system and settlement remains
survive at a lower altitude, from 290m to the WNW on Heathy Hill, and in the
adjacent inter-tidal zone of Great Porth. Coastal erosion has revealed another
prehistoric settlement site at the eastern foot of Samson Hill, 290m to the
ENE. The summit dome of Samson Hill contains a group of broadly contemporary
funerary cairns and an entrance grave, from 30m to the north, and another
large entrance grave is located amid the rock outcrops of Works Carn, 50m to
the south east on the hill's southern midslope. The field system and
settlement remains, cairns and entrance grave are the subjects of separate
schedulings.

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 Isles of Scilly, the westernmost of the granite masses of south west
England, contain a remarkable abundance and variety of archaeological remains
from over 4000 years of human activity. The remote physical setting of the
islands, over 40km beyond the mainland in the approaches to the English
Channel, has lent a distinctive character to those remains, producing many
unusual features important for our broader understanding of the social
development of early communities.
Throughout the human occupation there has been a gradual submergence of the
islands' land area, providing a stimulus to change in the environment and its
exploitation. This process has produced evidence for responses to such change
against an independent time-scale, promoting integrated studies of
archaeological, environmental and linguistic aspects of the islands'
settlement.
The islands' archaeological remains demonstrate clearly the gradually
expanding size and range of contacts of their communities. By the post-
medieval period (from AD 1540), the islands occupied a nationally strategic
location, resulting in an important concentration of defensive works
reflecting the development of fortification methods and technology from the
mid 16th to the 20th centuries. An important and unusual range of post-
medieval monuments also reflects the islands' position as a formidable hazard
for the nation's shipping in the western approaches.
The exceptional preservation of the archaeological remains on the islands has
long been recognised, producing an unusually full and detailed body of
documentation, including several recent surveys.
Regular field systems are one of several methods of field layout known to have
been employed in the Isles of Scilly from the Bronze Age to the Roman period
(c.2000 BC - AD 400); closer dating within that period may be provided by the
visible relationships of the field boundaries to other classes of monument
with a shorter known time-span of use, or by their relationship with an
earlier recorded sea level.
They comprise a collection of field plots defined by boundaries laid out in a
consistent manner, along two dominant axes at approximate right angles to each
other. This results in rectilinear fields which may vary in their size and
length:width ratio both within and between individual field systems. The
fields are bounded by rubble walls or banks, often incorporating edge- or end-
set slabs called orthostats. Within its total area, a regular field system may
be subdivided into blocks differing in the orientations of their dominant
axes.
Regular field systems may be associated with broadly contemporary settlement
sites such as stone hut circles. Some regular field systems on the Isles of
Scilly contain a distinctive association, rarely encountered elsewhere,
whereby certain of their field boundaries directly incorporate or link cairns,
entrance graves and cists in some groups of prehistoric funerary monuments.
Although no precise figure is available, regular field systems form one of the
three principal forms of prehistoric field system, along with irregular field
systems and some groups of prehistoric linear boundaries, which survive in
over 70 areas of the Isles of Scilly. They provide significant insights into
the physical and social organisation of past landscapes and they provide
evidence for the wider contemporary context within which other nationally
important monuments were constructed.

The prehistoric field system on Samson Hill survives well, clearly displaying
the character of its walling and the nature and extent of the prehistoric land
division. Its context in its contemporary landscape is well illustrated by the
nearby field system and settlement sites at Heathy Hill, Great Porth and
eastern Samson Hill, giving an unusually broad view of prehistoric land
allotment across a wide altitude range extending into now-submerged levels.
The proximity of this field system to the cairns and entrance graves on Samson
Hill demonstrates the organisation of land use and the relationship between
farming, funerary and ritual activities among the prehistoric communities that
used this monument.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Parkes, C/CAU, AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7395, (1988)
Ratcliffe, J/CAU, Scilly SMR entries PRN 7307.01 & 7682, (1991)
Title: 1:2500 Ordnance Survey Map; SV 8714
Source Date: 1980
Author:
Publisher:
Surveyor:

Source: Historic England