Bushy Park Barrow forum 1 room
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Bushy Park Barrow

FAO Bruce

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pure joy P
pure joy Dec 17, 2003 17:25:26

I realise that the US military offices were there, but ironically this is reported to be the only barrow in the London area that has actually been excavated and proved to be a barrow. If you read my posts this seems pretty clear.

‘Prehistoric London’ by Nick Merriman (1990 – ISBN 0112904475) says that “the only definate prehistoric burial mound (or ‘barrow’) in the London area used to be in Teddington, and was excavated by a group of antiquarians in 1854. It was originally nearly 30m across and 4 m high, and contained at least one central burial (probably a cremation) which yielded a bronze dagger and flints, and various other burials inserted into the mound as later date. Unfortunately, only a few flints survive from this poorly-recorded excavation.”

F foster
foster Jan 8, 2005 11:32:46
Replying to pure joy

The barrow was just outside thw park near the Teddington gate, along Sandy Lane. It was just west of the entrance to SHAEF Way. An electricity sub-station now stands on the site, but the remains if the very edge of the barrow can be seen in the garden of a house next to the sub-station.
The barrow itself was removed about 1860 by the railway company which was laying the line at the time. The earth, about 2000 tons of sand, was used to make the railway bridge between the High Street and Broad Lane. A patch of brick-red burnt earth, probably what is left of the cremation, lies under the pavement at the top of the bridge on the Broad Street side.
There was not a ditch around the barrow, but an ancient ridge, on which it stood, leads under the park wall into the park itself, and may have connected it with a ring-ditch there, from which the material for the barrow perhaps came.
Tjhere is a coloured picture of the Bronze age knife blade found in the barrow in the Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Volume 1.

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