Images

Image of Three Kings Barrows (Round Barrow(s)) by Chance

View looking towards the barrow from the reservoir

Image credit: Chance - Sep 2010
Image of Three Kings Barrows (Round Barrow(s)) by Chance

The barrow stands about 2.5m high and is about 20m in diameter. Three mature trees now top the barrow

Image credit: Chance - Sep 2010
Image of Three Kings Barrows (Round Barrow(s)) by Chance

The barrow is made up of compacted soil and local stone

Image credit: Chance - Sep 2010
Image of Three Kings Barrows (Round Barrow(s)) by Chance

The barrow stands about 2.5m high and is about 20m in diameter. The remains of the surrounding ditch can be seen in the foreground.

Image credit: Chance - Sep 2010
Image of Three Kings Barrows (Round Barrow(s)) by Chance

Overall view of site. The lone barrow lies at the left of the line of trees with the reservoir stretching from the hedge line.

Image credit: Chance - Sep 2010

Articles

Three Kings Barrows

Visited 25.6.11
Taking a minor road south off the A365 between Box and Corsham we just about managed to park on a grass verge at the junction. The field hedge here is very high (way above head height) and I could see no way into the field from the roadside.
Eventually I managed to scramble up the bank (using the ‘Box (A4)’ road sign for support) and was just about able to peer through the hedge into the field.
The field was under long grass and waht I thought was the Barrow appeared as a long low mound approximately 0.5 metres high.
However, reading Chance’s report it looks like I may have been looking at the wrong part of the field!

Three Kings Barrows

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.

Folklore

Three Kings Barrows
Round Barrow(s)

Only one barrow is visible, but there are three round barrows here. Unfortunately two of them are now tucked under the spoil mound of a reservoir, but according to the Scheduled Monument record, they are untouched and safe under there.

Folklore in Box tells us they are the burial mounds of three kings.

Miscellaneous

Three Kings Barrows
Round Barrow(s)

Details of Barrows on Pastscape

Three barrows, either Bronze Age bowl barrows or possibly Roman. By 1967 two of the barrows had been damaged by the construction of a covered reservoir. They are belived to survive beneath the spoil from the reservoir. The third barrow lies to the north east. It is 20 metres in diameter and 2.5 metres high. The surounding ditch survives in places up to 5 metres wide and 0.5 metres high. To the north west the ditch extends at a tangent to the barrow in a north easterly direction for 2 metres. There is a local tradition that three knights are buried in the barrows. Scheduled.

[ST 8334 6729; ST 8333 6726; ST 8332 6723] TUMULI [GT] [Two shown] (1) TUMULI [GT] [Three shown] (2).
Three bowl-barrows, 20-28 paces in diameter, 5-8 feet high, covered with trees and undergrowth, are described by Grinsell, who queries whether they are BA or Roman(3). There is a local tradition of ‘three Kings’ buried here(2). A 1956 description refers only to two flat-topped mounds, both 12 feet high, one with an irregular ditch, averaging a foot deep. The other was partly obscured by spoil from a reservoir which had been constructed on the site of a third barrow(4). (3-5)
Only one barrow can be identified, that surveyed at 1/2500 at ST 8334 6729. It is 2.5m. high and is surrounded by a ditch 1.0m. deep. The other two barrows are beneath the reservoir and its spoil and are shown as sites at ST 8331 6723 and ST 8332 6725 on the O.S.25”. (6)

Sites within 20km of Three Kings Barrows