Details

The monument includes a long barrow situated on a gentle west facing slope
below the crest of a spur. The barrow is orientated east-west but has been
much distorted by previous cultivation and now appears almost circular in
plan. The mound is 40m long and 34m wide at the centre where it reaches a
maximum height of 0.7m. Although no longer visible on the surface, quarry
ditches will flank either side of the mound and will survive as buried
features 3m wide. Early reports record two earthfast stones at the east end
of the mound which may have formed part of a terminal chamber or blind
entrance, but these are no longer visible.

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 erosion from past cultivation, Lad Barrow long barrow will contain
archaeological information about Neolithic beliefs, economy and environment.

Source: Historic England