Details

The monument includes three bowl barrows, aligned south east by north west,
situated on a ridge overlooking a dry valley to the west, with distant views
over the Bere Valley to the south.
The barrows were all recorded by L V Grinsell in 1959 and the Royal Commission
on the Historical Monuments of England in 1970. Each has a mound composed of
gravel and earth, with maximum dimensions of between 26m and 40m in diameter
and between about 0.3m to about 0.9m in height.
Each barrow mound is surrounded by a ditch from which material was quarried
during the construction of the monument. The ditches have become infilled over
the years, but each will survive as a buried feature 2m 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

Bowl barrows, the most numerous form of round barrow, are funerary monuments
dating from the Late Neolithic period to the Late Bronze Age, with most
examples belonging to the period 2400-1500 BC. They were constructed as
earthen or rubble mounds, sometimes ditched, which covered single or multiple
burials. They occur either in isolation or grouped as cemeteries and often
acted as a focus for burials in later periods. Often superficially similar,
although differing widely in size, they exhibit regional variations in form
and a diversity of burial practices. There are over 10,000 surviving bowl
barrows recorded nationally (many more have already been destroyed), occurring
across most of lowland Britain. Often occupying prominent locations, they are
a major historic element in the modern landscape and their considerable
variation of form and longevity as a monument type provide important
information on the diversity of beliefs and social organisations amongst early
prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period
and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of
protection.

Despite some reduction in height caused by ploughing, the three bowl barrows
650m south west of Bere Down Farm survive comparatively well and will contain
archaeological and environmental evidence relating to the monument and the
landscape in which it was constructed.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 437
Grinsell, L V, 'Procs Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Soc.' in Dorset Barrows, (1959), 89

Source: Historic England