Rhiannon

If you’re in the area, you might be interested in following this up, which I saw mentioned in an article on ‘Gloucestershire Barrows’ in the 1989 volume of the Trans Brist Glouc Arch Soc...

Just ‘round the corner’ from the Hoar Stone was the Jack Barrow – at SO957071, judging by its position on the map at old-maps.co.uk – on the land of Jackbarrow farm, in fact.

The barrow was destroyed/excavated in Victorian times – but the excavators “considerately” took the bones and reinterred them at the church in nearby Duntisbourne Abbots (at SO971078), popping a nice stone cross on top. I suppose their hearts were in the right place.

Cynthia Haddon has a picture on her standing stones page at
celiahaddon.co.uk/standing%20stones/gloucestershire.html

The engraving reads:
“These Rough stones taken
from the barrow,
Jack Barrow farm,
Cover the human
remains found therein
when it was opened 1875”.

I have not looked it up but more info should be available in an article in TBGAS vol 59 (1937) 334-337.

This site sounds rather interesting but I can hardly find any information on it – perhaps someone local can provide enlightenment. (The combination of barrow and spring attracted me – but of course may be totally coincidental).

Blood Hill is a round barrow only about a mile from Grimes Graves, on a path through Thetford Forest. It has a tantalising name – behind which there must surely be a good story? Some kind of prehistoric boundary bank is also associated with the mound.

A stone’s throw downhill is the holy well of St Helen (once contracted to ‘Tenant’s Well’ according to the smr) and the remains of her church (St Helen’s Oratory). The parish boundary (and the railway) run close by. A long distance footpath passes the site, so it should be quite accessible.

The water from the spring runs into the Little Ouse – if you look on the map there are a couple of other barrows nearby along this stretch of the river valley too.

This is an interesting letter from Richard Fenton, a lawyer and author who became friends with Colt-Hoare after meeting him at Stourhead House, as he recounts below. It gives rather an insight into the way barrows were excavated at the time.

Stourton, November 14, 1807.

MY DEAR CHARLES,

Here we still are, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the season, fascinated by the superior charms of this lovely place, where the absence of summer is so happily supplied by groves of evergreens, that winter cannot be felt.

Yesterday we partook of a treat, such as I had never been a guest at before. Hearing that it was in contemplation to open an immense tumulus with the popular name of Jack’s Castle, in the vicinity of that memorable spot where Alfred’s Tower rises, which had been always considered to have been a beacon, and probably might have been made use of for that purpose several hundred years after its first erection; I signified to the landlord, that if he thought there would be no impropriety in it, I should be happy to be present at this ceremony. He said he was well assured that nothing could be more gratifying to Sir Richard Hoare than the presence of any gentleman actuated by such curiosity; adding, that he would, with our permission, as it were from himself, get our wishes made known. This produced a most polite invitation from the Baronet, and we hastened to obey the summons.

The men employed to open those primitive sepulchres, and who by almost, constant experience are deeply skilled in the operation, had been sent early in the morning to prepare the work, which by twelve o’clock, when the company assembled, was in such a state of forwardness as to render every stroke of the pick-axe, and every motion of the shovel, highly critical and interesting, charcoal being perceived, the never failing criterion of its having been sepulchral. On this symptom the gentleman who presided at this business, and under whose eye the solemn process was graduated, descended into the opening that had been made, and by some minute, and to us mystic observations, feeling as it were the pulse of the barrow, was justified in pronouncing that “the consummation devoutly to be wished” was at hand; for no sooner had he pronounced this, than the cyst or factitious cavity, in which, instead of an urn, the ashes of the dead were deposited, was discovered, among which was found a stone hatchet, with a red blotch over part of it, as if it had been stained with blood, grown after a lapse of ages to look like red paint, time not having the power to efface it: this little weapon was highly finished. There was likewise a piece of a spear’s head, of brass or mixed metal, the produce of countries more civilized, the effect of barter, for it hardly can be supposed that a people who had the means of fabricating such a weapon of metal would submit to the slow and tiresome process of resorting to stone and flint.

Extracted from Richard Fenton’s ‘A Barrister’s Tour through Somerset . . .’ and taken from Richard Soar’s ‘Barn Elms’ website at
barnelms.com/

(Without the trees would this site have been intervisible with White Sheet Hill? Read petroglyph sid’s remarks on the link – Alfred’s Tower is very close to the barrow)

John Strachey noted in 1737:
“Years ago viz about 1724 or 1725, taking away several loads to mend ye highway the workmen discovered the bones of a large man by several smaller skulls, lying in a sort of chest having two great rude stones at head and feet, two side stones and a coverer. Some say a great number of bones. The barrow is overall, has a pit or hollow in ye top..“At ye east end are now remaining 2 upright stones about 3ft [or 8ft?] high which if opened might probably discover such another chest of skeletons..”

‘Murtry Hill’ could be a version of ‘Mortuary Hill’. The area belonged to monks at Henton, and a document mentions the tithes of ‘Mortuary’s Field’. (this is mentioned in PSASv57 – 1911).

for references see the Somerset Historic Envt Record at
webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/details.asp?prn=23161

Perhaps there were once quite a few long barrows in this area – there was definitely the one at Fromefield, and there may have been one here ‘opposite’ Murtry Hill – on the hill suspiciously named ‘Barrow Hill’.

In 1825 B M Skinner wrote of the latter: “a vaulted tumulus similar to that at Stoney Littleton, which has been nearly destroyed for the sake of procuring materials for the roads, and where quantities of human bones were found.”

An earlier commentator, Strachey, refers to the barrow in 1737: “..here is a stone 8ft long and 2ft square now lying down but probably upright formerly..“.

Anglo-Saxon burials were found in the same kind of area in the 1920s, but if anything wouldn’t it be that they were reusing an older burial site – the Anglo-Saxons didn’t go in for ‘stone vaulted tumuli’?

Info gleaned from the Somerset Historic Environment Record at webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/sop.asp?flash=true

Markings on the ground here (just south-east of Silbury Hill) were spotted in an aerial photograph in the 1950s. It was some time later in the 1970s that they were first investigated, when a trench for a pipe was being dug.

The then Avebury museum curator Faith Vatcher found traces of large holes which would have held 50cm diameter wooden posts – these perhaps would have been a massive 8m tall*. These outlined the larger westerly enclosure (350m long, 200 across). The other enclosure was rounder, and had slightly smaller posts (five for every 3 metres).

The map on the link shows the layout of what is known – the complex of double rings, curves and straight lengths, with maybe smaller rings to the south east. Although the stream cuts through it, it’s possible that this has changed since the late Neolithic when the enclosures were probably constructed.

Alasdair Whittle excavated the enclosures between 1987 and 1992. If you can find it, his 1997 report “Sacred mound, holy rings” should give the full story.

also see the record at Magic
magic.gov.uk/rsm/10380.pdf
for more facts and figures.

*mentioned in Pitts’ ‘Hengeworld‘

Marden not only had its huge banks and the Hatfield Barrow – it had another mysterious mound. You can see where it was on the picture of the map above (quaintly marked ‘site of tumulus’). William Cunnington described the 60m diameter feature in 1807 (he was Colt Hoare’s foreman and chief Hatfield Barrow Ruiner):

“Its vallum [bank] is slightly raised and the interior rises gradually to a low apex. On digging within the area we found a few bits of old pottery, and a little charred wood but no marks of any interment.”

Sixty metres is pretty big – only a little smaller than the size of Woodhenge. Mike Pitts (in Hengeworld) hints that the feature could have been a Woodhenge-style enclosure with posts, rather than a barrow.. but of course (in line with the general lack of investigation at Marden?) the spot has never been archaeologically examined...

Mike Pitts mentions the following in his ‘Hengeworld’ book:

In 1769, John Mayo (local vicar) wrote a letter to the Society of Antiquaries in London. A farmer had levelled part of the bank surrounding Marden the previous year and had found a human skeleton, which Mayo reckoned to have been a person “about 6ft 2 or 3 inches high.”

Interestingly, he also noted that “a great many Staggs Horns were digged up.” – of course, antlers have been found at many other neolithic sites (Avebury for example), having been used to dig out the giant ditches.

Stukeley believed that there’d been an avenue on the west side of Avebury – he recorded two remaining (now removed) stones of it where it joined the main circle, opposite the churchyard. He also noted many other boulders and suspicious looking depressions in the ground. He said it had crossed the Winterbourne stream (some stones subsequently being incorporated into the bridge), through where a row of houses were present on the south side of Bray Street, and headed out into “open plow’d fields” to join the Longstones. Stukeley imagined there would be a temple rather like the Sanctuary at its end, but he found nothing. Still, for those who would like to dream, he did predict the avenue, and as we know for many many years this was held to be a silly idea...

(unfortunately gleaned from Pitts’ ‘Hengeworld’ and not Stukeley’s own writings)

Stukeley was convinced that the avenue continued beyond Longstones Field to the south-west, eventually terminating on a low hill at Fox Covert (’a most solemn and awful place’). However, the archaeologists from Southampton aren’t convinced, and believe the avenue actually ended in Longstones Field, at or just beyond the cove, though ‘ambiguities remain’. Which is still an impressive 4km to the Sanctuary.

Arminghall is one of those sites that looks like nothing today, but in its time would undoubtedly have been pretty astonishing.

Like Woodhenge, its potential was spotted from the air by brave military pilot Gilbert Insall, who snapped it with his camera. Grahame Clark excavated it in 1935 – he found eight enormous post holes in the middle of the henge. Each was equipped with a slope to help manoeuvring (you can see these in the diagram posted by KK), and they were arranged in a horseshoe, with the open part next to the henge entrance.

The two holes that Clark excavated most thoroughly had post pipes nearly 1m across. Post pipes are the traces in the soil of rotted timber posts – so the oak timber posts must have been Enormous.

Considering Maud Cunnington thought her 85cm postpipes at Woodhenge translated into posts rising 7.5m above the ground and weighing 5 1/2 tons – well, Arminghall must surely have been a stupendous sight.

Though this may take some imagining considering its current environment.

(gleaned from Mike Pitts’ ‘Hengeworld’)

Stonehenge, Woodhenge,... but what about Coneybury Henge? (sacred to rabbits?) It’s less than a mile from Stonehenge itself. Ok, so it never had big stones with fancy lintels. But it sounds intriguing.

Julian Richards excavated the site on Coneybury Hill in 1980. I’m afraid it’s been ploughed so flat you wouldn’t be able to tell where it is without one of those geophysics machines. But if you’re driving up the A303 and reach the band of trees with the New King Barrows – well, it was into the next field to the south of the road there and was probably intervisible with whatever was going on at (the probably contemporary) early Stonehenge.

Richards found a c50m diameter ditch, which would have been a not inconsiderable 10ft deep, and which would have been surrounded by a bank. There was an entrance at the NE side, as the entrance is at Stonehenge.

A ring of small post holes circled the inside area(possibly 56, the same number as the Aubrey holes at Stonehenge) – and weirdest, within the circle were tiny holes which were the result of hundreds of little pointy-bottomed stakes being pushed into the ground.

(info mentioned in Pitts’ ‘Hengeworld’)

If you look on the map the site is not so very far from the end of the avenue, where it apparently met the river. Though whether you could actually see it, or whether there’s any relevance to that I know not.

I was intrigued to see the “Millbarrow” marked on a map in the papery TMA. Some searching revealed it had been a longbarrow north-east of Windmill Hill at SU094722, but was apparently destroyed by an uncaring farmer in 1863.

Aubrey drew it in his Monumenta Britannica. It was surrounded by stones – he called it ‘an orthostatic peristalith’ to be technical.

Stukeley also drew it in 1743, calling it ‘a most magnificent sepulchre’.

The barrow was just west of Winterbourne Monkton, and if you go to that village’s church you will see that the Reverend Brinsden’s grave is marked by a sarsen from the barrow – supposedly the capstone of the barrow’s chamber.

The site of the barrow was excavated in 1994, and the results are in volume 87 of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine.

I do think the reuse of sites is interesting. Iron Age people built the huge fort up here for defence, and in World War 2 the US Air Force appropriated the site for their anti-aircraft guns – so, it was still being used for defence millennia later.

Just so as you know if you visit – these were apparently where the hollows are around the edge of the fort interior. Possibly more interesting (but invisible) would be the traces of 40 hut circles found using geophysics inside the castle in 1996.

(WANHM excavation notes, vol93)

Thoughts on Silbury’s innards:

An account from ‘An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury’ by Henry Browne, 1823 (in Wilts Arch & Nat Hist Mag v95, 2002). It’s an eyewitness account of the 1776 dig.

“... This elderly gentleman [a Mr Hickley from Avebury] when a youth, was at Silbury Hill on the occasion of some miners sinking a large hole or well down the centre of it to the ground on which it began to be raised. In doing this they found a piece of timber continued down the whole way, evidently for a centre from whence to take the measurement of the hill in working it upwards.”

It was nearly 50 years after the event, so although you might expect some elaboration / misremembering – surely this isn’t an obvious yarn to tell? Wouldn’t you be more likely to come up with the old ‘skeleton / treasure’ option rather than a central timber?

Another contemporaryish account is interesting: James Douglas, in his 1793 ‘Nenia Britannica’ recorded that the Duke of Northumberland’s foreman of the work (a Colonal Drax) “had a fancy that this hill had been raised over a Druid oak, and he thought the remains of it were discovered in the excavation.”

And indeed, Richard Atkinson, leader of the 1960s BBCized dig thought that the 1776 shaft would probably have destroyed any central deposit at the base of the mound, and no doubt anything vertical in the core...

Phill Quinn’s ‘Holy Wells of the Bath and Bristol Region’ mentions a spring below Black Down. It was / is? at ST484580, in a field called ‘Hawkeswell Quoit’ – so presumably it was the Hawkeswell. But what’s this ‘quoit’? Isn’t that (bar referring to the game) a word for a standing stone? As Quinn says, it would be interesting if there was once a stone associated with the spring. Though perhaps we have got the wrong end of the stick in the pursuit of a good story.