Clandon Barrow

Clandon, round barrow (SY/656890) 2.25 miles SW of Dorchester, 0.25 mile E of Winterborne St Martin and the B3159 from Upwey to the A35. Finds in Dorchester Museum.

This is a large bowl-barrow, over 80 ft. in diameter and nearly 20 ft. high. It contained one of the richest and finest groups of grave offerings in Wessex. The barrow was dug in 1882 and its main burial never reached. Above this, however, there was a pile of flints among which were a bronze dagger, a lozenge-shaped gold plate, a shale mace-head with decorative gold studs, a cup carved from a lump of amber and a pottery incense cup. These belonged either to the primary burial or to a cremation added later. Above these there was another cremation deposited in a fine collared urn, and near the top there were 2 skeletons in stone-lined graves which may be Romano-British or pagan Saxon.
The gold lozenge plate should be compared with that from Bush Barrow, Normanton (Wiltshire). Parallels in shale to the amber cup have been found in Wiltshire (in Salisbury Museum) and also in amber from the Hove Barrow (Brighton Museum).
The mace-head is one of the most remarkable objects of this period in Britain. It is cushion-shaped, perforated to fit on to a wooden handle and with five gold-covered conical plugs let into it. It suggests that at least 1 burial in this barrow is that of a chief. Date, c.1,700 1.400 BC.