There are a number of barrows here, probably six or seven scattered around.
We passed a pair of large tumuli at SU519832, which must've once been part of the necropolis of Blewbury Down, for here we are between the Ridgeway and the line of Grim's Ditch. A shufti of the O/S map reveals almost an alignment of tumuli, some in pairs, that seem to run parallel to Ridgeway. All are visible from it as you ride along.
The pair I admired at SU519832 were in a vast field of corn and has somehow escaped being ploughed over. The farmers here just cultivate around them in a wide strip and avoid any damage at all.
They are not particularly big nor clever, nor do they have any outstanding features but evidence of our prehistoric past lying there in today's landscape for all to see -despite modern farming methods- still gives me a little tingly thrill.
Two Bronze Age bell barrows known locally and in early archaeological publications as 'The Warrior Mounds' or 'The Warrior Barrows' situated at SU 5196 8326. The barrow mounds both survive as upstanding stone and earth mounds measuring 23 metres in diameter and standing up to 2.5 metres high. The mounds were originally surrounded by gently sloping berms 5 metres wide which have been obscured by later ploughing. Beyond the bern edges lie quarry ditches from which material was obtained during the mounds' construction. These have become infilled over the years but are known from earlier excavation and aerial photographs to survive as buried features 3 metres wide. Excavations carried out in 1848 and 1935 in the vicinity of the barrows produced finds from several periods including Iron Age and Roman pottery fragments, the cremated bones of a woman and child, a male skeleton, and Early Bronze Age dagger and an important selection of early Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery.
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