Wash Common Barrow Cemetery

Nearest town:
Newbury (2km NNE)
OS reference:
SU454648
OS sheet:
174
Latitude:
51° 22' 47.59 N
Longitude:
1° 20' 51.32 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Wash Common Barrow Cemetery by ginger tt

Memorial to Civil War dead on top of one of the eastern barrows

Image credit: Ian Freeman
ginger tt
ginger tt May 11, 2009
Image of Wash Common Barrow Cemetery by ginger tt

The 2 Bowl barrows to the east of the site. Both have plaques commemorating the Civil war dead on the top.

Image credit: Ian Freeman
ginger tt
ginger tt May 11, 2009

Articles

Wash Common Barrow Cemetery

ginger tt
ginger tt May 11, 2009

A group of five round barrows on Wash Common. Probably of Bronze Age origin, although local tradition identifies them as burial mounds for soldiers killed during the English Civil War Battle of Newbury.
The individual monuments comprise: a circular enclosure defined by bank with external ditch (possibly a saucer barrow?); a large bowl barrow surviving to 2.7 metres in height, surrounded by a ditch; another bowl barrow previously described as being 2 feet high and 22 paces across, but which has been destroyed and two further bowl barrows, and measuring 1.6 metres in height

Folklore

Wash Common Barrow Cemetery
Barrow / Cairn Cemetery
ginger tt
ginger tt May 11, 2009

Confusion as to the dating of these barrows occurred with the dedication of the area as a Recreation Ground on Jubilee Day 1897 by the Mayor of Newbury, Robert Long. Two of the mounds in the barrow cemetery have dedication stones on them, one of which is ‘Sacred to those who fell in the Battle of Newbury, Sep 20 1643’. From this local legend grew that the three burial mounds contained the dead of that battle, one for the Roundheads, one for the Royalists and one for the horses, but it is believed that the Civil War dead were buried on Round Hill some 300 yards from the barrow cemetery.

Sites within 20km of Wash Common Barrow Cemetery

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