Another view of ‘Bully Hills’ near Tathwell, Lincolnshire.
Image credit: Me
Images
View of ‘Bully Hills’ near Tathwell, Lincolnshire. Apparently unexcavated, imagine what could lie within.
Image credit: Me
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
The sky puts all our earthly monuments into their proper perspective, I think.........
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Bully Hills in distance with unusual sculpture on sign!
Image credit: Princejasu
You can’t beat a bit of Bully..... according to the great Jim Bowen. Sitting a’top one of the barrows (can’t recall which barrow, to be fair) I reckon he’s right.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
A fine cloudscape above this wondrous linear barrow cemetery. Can’t say fairer than that.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
The word which comes to mind is.... bliss.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Articles
It is very difficult to imagine that something like this could survive, in an area that has very few visible remains. This site could easily look like several piles of agricultural waste. It’s nice to think that there could be perfectly preserved burials in them thar hills.
From the A16, take the turning to Haugham then bear right along the road to Tathwell. In a field to the right is a linear round barrow cemetery along a hillside ridge, six stand close together with one further away to the North-east. Travel a little further down the road to get an excellent view of them along the horizon.
As far as I’m aware, these barrows have never been excavated but I recieved an email from a guy who had a conversation with an old man who had lived nearby. The old farmer described that as a young man he witnessed his father being involved in digs to find out what was in the mounds saying that they found no objects but that they revealed that a lot of burning had taken place on every mound and presumed they were used as beacons.
The Bully Hills, Tathwell.
These artificial mounds consist of a group of six, lying in close contiguity to one another, and of a detached one removed a few hundred yards from the others, now surrounded by a tuft of trees. They are from 8 to 10 feet in height, and being conspicuously situated on the brow of one of the higher Wold hills, near the village of Tathwell, have long attracted considerable attention, particularly as the remains of two small circular earthworks on an adjoining elevation (consisting of six slightly-raised concentric rings about 180 feet in diameter, usually assigned to the Danish period), in conjunction with these tumuli, have naturally led to the supposition that some conflict between the Saxons and the Danes occurred here, the entrenchments indicating the position of the defendants – the tumuli the graves of the chiefs who fell in the contest.Other reports have also long been floating about in the vicinity respecting these hills, as retailed by nursery-maids, to the great delight of their juvenile charges, and of course all are connected with hidden treasure. The following reason, for instance, why these mounds are termed “Bully Hills” is really too good to remain unrecorded, although we fear it will not satisfy the doubting mind of every ethnologist and archaeolgian who may come to examine these remarkable earthworks, enquiring what race found them, and when?
It had ever been believed that they covered an immense treasure, and at length a certain farmer, probably by the aid of a judicious dream, was led to dig into one of them, when, after much toil, deep below the surface he found a vast chest, which from its great weight clearly contained some very heavy substance – probably gold! To drag this from its long entombment the said farmer borrowed all the bulls of the district, and yoking them to an iron chain nearly half a mile in length urged them on. The bulls began to pull; but alas! alas! the chain broke – the animals were scattered in the greatest confusion over the hill side – in fact there was a regular “bouleversement” of them, and the mysterious chest sank into the earth deeper than ever, leaving only a reminiscence of this transaction in the term the mounds still bear of “Bully Hills!”
It may be considered presumptuous, perhaps, to doubt the correctness of any part of the above charming bit of local folk lore; otherwise, we might have ventured to suggest that, as several bubbling springs are termed “Bully” springs from the French “bouillant” or boiling, so these hills may have received their appellation from “boule” or “boulet” (a ball), indicative of the rotundity of their outline.
I really don’t think his statements about Saxons and Danes are any better than the pronouncements of “nursery maids” but there we are. From the ‘Stamford Mercury’, 17th July 1857.
Topics
Sites within 20km of Bully Hills
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Tathwell Long Barrow
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Beacon Plantation
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Donington on Bain
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Boswell Barrow
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Grim’s Mound
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Burgh Top 3
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Burgh Top 1&2
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Burgh On Bain Long Barrow
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Spellow Hills
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West Ashby Henge
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Winceby Stone
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Hagworthingham Barrow
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Ring Holt
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Luford Barrow
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Giant’s Hills Long Barrow
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Deadmen’s Graves Long Barrows
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Mill Hill
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Hoe Hill Long Barrow
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Ash Hill Long Barrow
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Bully Hill
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Butterbumps Barrow Cemetery
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