Details

The monument includes a long barrow situated on a north east facing slope
overlooking the Frome Valley. The long barrow is situated c.600m to the
north west of a broadly contemporary causewayed enclosure located at the
eastern end of Maiden Castle and 500m to the south of another long barrow.
The long barrow has a mound, aligned NNW by SSE, composed of earth, chalk and
flint. The mound is visible as an earthwork 25m long, 12m wide and c.0.45m
high, but it is known from a previous survey to have maximum dimensions of 30m
in length and 15m in width. The mound is bounded on either side by a ditch
from which material was quarried during the construction of the monument. The
quarry ditches, which were identified during field survey in the 1960s, have
since become infilled, but will survive as buried features c.5m 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.

Despite some reduction by ploughing, the long barrow immediately north west of
Maiden Castle survives comparatively well and will contain archaeological and
environmental evidence relating to the monument and the landscape in which it
was constructed. The long barrow represents the only extant survival of its
class close to the broadly contemporary causewayed enclosure at Maiden Castle.

Source: Historic England

Sources

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

Source: Historic England