The Grey Mare & Her Colts Long Barrow View all content for The Grey Mare & Her Colts

Walked here from Black Down where I parked up. How I found the long barrow I will never know - pure luck - after deciding I was nowhere near it, I stumbled over it, hidden away behind a hedgerow, round a farmer's gate. Spoilt, after a long acquaintance with Stuart Piggott's masterful restoration of West Kennet Long Barrow ~ why can't it happen here? This site begs to be carefully restored in an age and culture which is beginning to value the living heritage of prehistoric monuments - a heritage which extends into the now & into the future. I would guess before the days of hedgerows that this once substantial barrow was extensively visible to those travelling the Dorset Ridgeway and related track ways, it seems to be perched on the side of a down, but the modern fields make it difficult to work out the syntax of the prehistoric topography. Wayland's Smithy is a bit like that too I think. The folklore behind the naming of the Grey Mare barrow does not appear to have been recorded, a shame if so, that link with the past gone then. Folklore is so important.

Posted by m6 4th September 2014ce

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