Details

The monument includes a prehistoric stone row and a grouping of prehistoric to
Romano-British funerary and settlement remains, including field system walls,
towards the centre of Par Beach, the shore fronting Higher Town Bay on the
south coast of St Martin's in the Isles of Scilly.
The stone row survives with three upright slabs, 1.3m-1.6m long, projecting
from the middle shore sand and roughly equally spaced over 15m east-west near
present Mean High Water level. The eastern slab is triangular, pointed at the
top, while the western two are rectangular; the long axis of each is roughly
in line with the overall row and each has weathered to give shallow vertical
grooves on the main faces. Their visible height varies with seasonal changes
in surrounding sand depth; under sand-scoured conditions in 1995 the tallest
slab, at the east, was exposed 1.12m high and the shortest, at the west, was
0.75m high. A small pit dug for environmental sampling in 1990 beside the
central slab revealed an early peat buried beneath the sand and adjacent to a
possible packing stone for the slab.
Prehistoric to Romano-British funerary remains are known from the western half
of the scheduling, largely as a result of early observations and limited
excavations during 1949 in an area of the middle shore since blanketted by
deep sand. The excavations revealed three small box-like funerary structures,
called cists, dug into an early land surface on the shore. One cist is 0.55m
square internally, defined by a single edge-set slab on each side; a covering
slab was displaced close by and the cist lay beneath remains of a rubble
mound. Cists of similar size and construction occur in dry-land contexts on
Scilly, with grave goods indicating a date in the 2nd millennium BC. The other
two cists are rectangular, 1.4m by 0.9m and 1.8m by 0.6m internally
respectively, each walled by both large and small slabs and accompanied by
several former covering slabs; the larger cist was dug into the interior of an
earlier, Iron Age, round house and retained its covering slabs in situ. These
cists match the dominant Romano-British cist-grave burial custom known
elsewhere on Scilly where they generally occur grouped in cemeteries. Other
such cists, some with skeletal remains, were recorded in this vicinity on Par
Beach by various observers from the later 18th to early 20th centuries; a
setting of three small edge-set slabs, 95m WSW of the stone row, is arranged
in two lines 1m apart, considered to be the upper exposed side slabs of
another cist.
The western half of the scheduling contains at least four early settlement
sites on the middle shore, three examined by excavation in 1949-51 and now
masked by shore sand, and a fourth visible in the mid-1990s. The excavations
revealed three separate foci of rounded or ovoid houses, each with thick
rubble walls faced by coursed and edge-set slabs. The earliest house,
associated with fragments of Bronze Age pottery, was ovoid, 6m by 2.75m
internally with a drain and sump in its floor and a slab-edged hearth. A later
house, associated with typically Iron Age pottery, was 5.2m by 4.6m
internally, paved around its wall's inner face and had a broad entrance facing
south west; a setting of post holes around the centre was disrupted by the
Romano-British cist-grave described above. The third excavated settlement
focus included a round house 6.1m in diameter, its wall's inner face rendered
with a mortar of local subsoil. On the clay floor was a central slab hollowed
to support a post; nearby was a slab-edged hearth in which were fragments of
Romano-British pottery and a small corroded ingot of tin. From 1m west of this
house were at least two adjoining rubble-walled ancillary buildings: one had
two almost straight walls converging on a 1m wide SSE gap blocked by a very
large rectangular slab; to the south west, slighter walling defined an ovoid
annexe associated with abundant evidence for burning. The fourth, unexcavated,
settlement focus occurs 78m south west of the stone row, where large slabs up
to 1.5m across form an almost complete circular arrangement 5.5m in diameter,
considered to mark the upper walling of an early round house now infilled and
surrounded by middle shore rubble. Situated 3m north of this round house, an
exposed flat slab has a pecked central hollow, typical of the post-bases used
in later prehistoric to Romano-British houses. Beyond these early settlement
foci, traces of early field system boundaries have been recorded extensively
on the middle shore throughout the scheduling and these are intermittently
exposed when prevailing conditions reduce the sand cover on the old land
surface into which the boundaries are set. The boundaries are visible as
rubble walls containing both flat-laid and frequent edge-set slabs, commonly
0.25m-0.5m long and rising 0.3m high; the limited exposures of these walls
generally show slightly curving courses, suggesting an aggregation of rounded
field plots. Because the early land surface subdivided by this field system
dips to the south at a far more gentle slope than the surface of the shore
sand that masks most of it, the early land surface and its field system will
survive beneath the increasing depth of sand from the middle to upper shore.
This is confirmed by successive early soil and peat horizons which are exposed
along the lower edge of the middle shore and which sampling boreholes have
shown to survive intact at increasing depths beneath the sand from the middle
to upper shore of Par Beach within and beyond this scheduling; analysis has
shown these peats to range in date from the 5th millennium BC to the early 1st
millennium AD.
Nearby but beyond this scheduling, further prehistoric settlement and funerary
remains survive extensively on the higher ground of eastern St Martin's and
remains of a 2nd millennium BC settlement are located behind English Island
Point at the eastern end of Par Beach.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

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.

The area of Par Beach in this scheduling contains a rich and varied survival
of remains from the later Neolithic to the Romano-British period (from c.2500
BC to c.AD 400); their association with a sequence of buried soils and peats
rich in early environmental data makes a major contribution to our knowledge
of developing land use in such low lying terrain of the pre-submergence
land-mass of Scilly and has provided a testing ground for sampling techniques
designed to enhance this knowledge. The stone row, a form of ritual monument
dating from the later Neolithic to early Bronze Age (c.2500 - 1500 BC),
survives well as a rare example of this class of monument in the far south
west of England and one of the earliest structural features known on Scilly.
The scheduling also includes one of the few locations with extant remains of
prehistoric or Romano-British cist burials wholly or largely preserved beneath
present shore sand, the survival of examples partly excavated being confirmed
by subsequent photography of the intact cist walling. The cists from these
successive periods show the development of their distinctive burial structure
while their proximity to broadly contemporary settlement sites and field
systems demonstrates the physical relationships between religious and domestic
activity at this low level of the early landscape. Although affected by
coastal erosion along the lower edge of the middle shore, the early land
surfaces containing the extensive settlement and field system remains in this
scheduling have been shown, by bore holes for environmental sampling, to
survive intact beneath the deeper sand cover higher up the shore. There, the
wide range and date of settlement features confirmed by excavation, including
the only early example of smelted tin from Scilly, will be complemented by
unusually good preservation of datable environmental evidence in the buried
soils and peats, as analysis of their samples has demonstrated. The features
of this scheduling are given wider relevance in understanding the organisation
of the early landscape by their proximity to the broadly contemporary
settlement and funerary remains at higher levels on eastern St Martin's and on
the coast behind English Island Point.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)
Ratcliffe, J, Sharpe, A CAU, Fieldwork in Scilly Autumn 1990, (1991)
Ratcliffe, J, Sharpe, A CAU, Fieldwork in Scilly Autumn 1990, (1991)
Ratcliffe, J , Straker, V, The Early Environment of Scilly, (1996)
Ratcliffe, J , Straker, V, The Early Environment of Scilly, (1996)
Russell, V, Isles of Scilly Survey, (1980)
Russell, V, Isles of Scilly Survey, (1980)
Russell, V, Isles of Scilly Survey, (1980)
Russell, V, Pool, P A S, Excavation of a Menhir at Try, Gulval, (1964)
Beagrie, N, 'From Cornwall to Caithness. Aspects of Brit Field Archaeology' in Excavations by Bryan and Helen O'Neil on the Isles of Scilly, (1989), 49-54
Beagrie, N, 'From Cornwall to Caithness. Aspects of Brit Field Archaeology' in Excavations by Bryan and Helen O'Neil on the Isles of Scilly, (1989), 49-54
Tylecote, R F, 'Cornish Archaeology' in The History of the Tin Industry in Cornwall, , Vol. 5, (1966), 30-33
Other
Butcher, S A, AM7 & scheduling maplet for SI 849, 1971,
Butcher, S A, AM7 and scheduling maplet for SI 849, 1971,
CAU, Scilly SMR entry for PRN 7706, (1991)
CAU, Scilly SMR entry PRN 7660, (1991)
Higher Town Bay, St Martin's, Fletcher, M/RCHME, RCHME Survey of sites in the inter-tidal zone - March 1997, (1997)
Ratcliffe, J & Parkes, C/CAU, Fieldwork in Scilly: September 1989, (1990)
Ratcliffe, J & Preston-Jones, A, Scilly SMR entry PRN 7705, (1991)
Ratcliffe, J/CAU, Scilly SMR entry for PRN 7758, (1995)
Thorpe, C/CAU, AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7149, (1988)
Thorpe, C/CAU, AM 107s for Scilly SMR entries PRN 7147, 7302, 7303, (1988)
Title: 1:2500 Ordnance Survey Map; SV 9315
Source Date: 1980
Author:
Publisher:
Surveyor:

Source: Historic England