Longbarrow A – 2.3.2003
Sounds like a Radiohead album! Richmond Park is a pretty unique place for London (although Richmond-ites would demand that they are in Surrey not London). It is huge and pretty wild, and offers distinct possibilities for saddo’s like me who want to find some ancient history on our doorsteps. I would love to live on Dartmoor, in Aberdeenshire, on Orkney, et al, with history oozing out of every pore, but currently I don’t so I’ll have to do with anything vaguely mound like in Richmond Park.
Of all the others around, this does fit the bill more. The general Richmond Park info board has a symbol for ‘ancient heritage’ and has the symbol where Longbarrow A is. And I reckon that if you look very, very closely at the OS Explorer map 161 you can see a small ‘tumulus’ symbol (but without the word tumulus). This looks pretty much like a longbarrow and is pretty easy to find. It’s really quite nice to see something so old, yet so close to millions of passing cars per year. Fortunately, although it is on two small paths, it is a decent stones throw from the main path where most people run and cycle – if it was on this main path just one Sunday on march would be enough to trample it into dust – is this where half of London goes on a Sunday? How far would a shiny mountain bike fit up a man’s arse?