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England
Bartlow HillsRound Barrow(s)
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This is the largest barrow in Britain and very few people know of it. This Romano-British site at Bartlow is on the Essex/Cambridgeshire border at TL 586453. Originally the largest group in Europe when there were seven enormous barrows here. Then the now disused railway came through and flattened four of them! The largest survivor is 45 feet high and the highest in Britain. The wooden staicase gives access to the top without causing erosion. You can then look down on the other two giants. Many suberb artefacts have been recovered and are now in Colchester Museum (Bartlow was formerly in Essex). Access is via a footpath, but it is not well marked. Bartlow is a small crossroads hamlet with few houses. Look for the "Three Hills" pub and the path is beyond the entrance to the big house next door. It seems incredible that this magnifent and enormous site is so little valued locally. The largest barrrow is second only in size to Silbury Hill (excluding mottes and castle mounds) and if Bartlow were in Wilts rather than Cambs there would be hundreds of visitors every day. Go there and be amazed! |
Posted by Earthstepper2nd September 2003ce Edited 1st November 2003ce |
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Mildenhall: treasure chest said to have been concealed by Oliver Cromwell in the barrows known as the Three Hills, or in pits near them. Proc. Suffolk Inst. Arch. 4 (1864), 289.Collected onto p31 of Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation L. V. Grinsell Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38. |
Posted by Rhiannon14th June 2007ce Edited 15th June 2007ce |
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There seem to be various traditions relating to skipping in Easter week, from various places around the country. In Cambridgeshire, Good Friday seems to have been the day singled out. "An eighty year old woman of Linton recalled in the 1930s that in her youth the villagers of Linton and Hadstock used to skip on Good Friday to Bartlow Hills to join in the fun of the fair held there." p107 in 'Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore' by Enid Porter (1969). |
Posted by Rhiannon 24th October 2005ce |
In 1016 King Edmund Ironside fought and lost to the Danish invader Cnut at a place called Assundun. This was traditionally taken to be Ashdon, just south of Bartlow Hills .In the parish of ASHDON, sparated from Bartlow, in Cambridgeshire, only by a small rivulet, are four large contiguous Barrows, called the BARTLOW HILLS, from their situation being not very distant from Bartlow Chuch. These are vulgarly regarded as the tumuli raised over the slain in the battle fought between Edmund Ironside, and the Danish King, Canute, in the year 1016; but as this tradition is not supported by any historical authority, it cannot be considered as deserving of credit.(p380 of 'The Beauties of England and Wales, Or, Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive' by John Britton and others, 1801. It's online at Google Books.) Cnut rather kindly built Ashdon church over the graves of the English, and created Bartlow Hills as the resting place for his own fallen warriors. It's true and if you want further proof, Camden reports in his 'Britannia' of 1610 that: "Dane-wort which with bloud-red berries, commeth up heere plenteously, they still call by no other name than Danes-bloud, of the number of Danes that there were slaine, verily beleeving that it blometh from their bloud."The tradition is rather like the one we have of poppies growing on the WW1 battlefields. Danewort is thought to be dwarf elder (Sambucus ebulus). (Actually the battle is now thought to have been in Ashingdon, some way away. And of course, the barrows aren't Danish. They're generally referred to as (shh) Roman - you can't deny the wealth of Roman artefacts discovered there! but to be fair they were probably rich native people who were buried in the traditional British style through their own choice). (info from 'Albion' by Jennifer Westwood, p103) |
Posted by Rhiannon 7th April 2004ce Edited 29th July 2007ce |
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The Heritage JournalKite aerial photographs of the Bartlow Hills by Bill Blake. |
Posted by Littlestone29th May 2011ce Edited 29th May 2011ce |
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