Fieldnotes – 15 September 2010
Came by this site earlier today, so stopped and had a look.
No easy way in so climbed over the hedge onto the reservoir from the road. Completely overgrown and unless you knew there was a barrow here, you would dismiss it as just a small spinney. The reservoir looks like it was built in the 1940’s and I would imagine it feeds an MOD site rather than the village of Box.
The “visible” barrow like the reservoir is very overgrown with three trees growing on top of it, a horse chestnut and two oaks, along with much elder and hazel. The mound stands about 2.5m high and about 20m in diameter. The surrounding ditch is more defined on the north east, about 5m wide and up to 0.5m deep but you cannot get a good impression of it due to the undergrowth. It would appear that this one barrow must have been twice the size of the other two, very similar to the bowl barrows found a few miles away at Colerne Park
Really needs a site visit in the depth of winter when the vegetation was died back.
Although not listed on the MAGIC website, there are a number of other round barrows within a mile of here, but the two I visited on the Kingsdown golf course were extremely reduced. Will revisit the area later in the year to get a better impression of the pre-history.