John Strachey quoted 'an old Tradition that 2 Kings had a Battle, the one being possessed of ye hill, I presume Tedbury, made a great slaughter of ye Other in Murders bottom* which is under Tedbury from rolling stones upon them and hanged ye Prisoners in Hangmans Lane whence they brought ye Stones and heaped them over ye dead in ye West Feild barrow.'
The West Field barrow is on Barrow Hill, but as Strachey tended to be confused on his compass points he may have meant the long barrow on Murtry Hill.
From the late great L V Grinsell, in 'Somerset Barrows- Revisions 1971-87', volume 131 (1987) of Som Arch Nat Hist journal.
Perhaps there were once quite a few long barrows in this area - there was definitely the one at Fromefield, and there may have been one here 'opposite' Murtry Hill - on the hill suspiciously named 'Barrow Hill'.
In 1825 B M Skinner wrote of the latter: "a vaulted tumulus similar to that at Stoney Littleton, which has been nearly destroyed for the sake of procuring materials for the roads, and where quantities of human bones were found."
An earlier commentator, Strachey, refers to the barrow in 1737: "..here is a stone 8ft long and 2ft square now lying down but probably upright formerly..".
Anglo-Saxon burials were found in the same kind of area in the 1920s, but if anything wouldn't it be that they were reusing an older burial site - the Anglo-Saxons didn't go in for 'stone vaulted tumuli'?
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