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
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.
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