formicaant

A very enigmatic place in the centre of the ancient landscape. Pronounced k’nijick by the locals it looks down over Tregeseal stone circle and other signs of long occupation.

At last I found the time to visit the “bumps”. They are just off the inland coastal path on top of a very steep hill. There are six barrows in this group, three large bowl barrows and what looks to me like three conjoined, into a triple barrow.
All of these barrows have been excavated, the biggest and most westerly has a huge crater in it’s summit and the middle of the triple has been completely flattened. The first two bowl shapes have seperate ditches, but share a bank between them.
These six mounds diminish in size from west to east. The biggest is on the crown of the hill, with the others running slightly downhill.
The “bumps” are a distinct set of 6 barrows on the south side of the Ridgeway just above the hamlet of Bincombe, Grinsell goes up to 60g in numbers for the parish of Bincombe. Some these have now been destroyed or largely ploughed out.

This single stone is visible from the Dorchester to Broadmayne road. It is however on private farm land along with the other stones that once may have formed a circle here. There are signs up here threatening legal action against trespassers, but apparently the people who live on the site will allow people on the place by prior arrangement.

These fieldnotes relate to the barrows in the pictures numbered 1 to 5. They are situated between Came down golf course and Bincombe hill barrows. These are one large bowl barrow, the western bell barrow about 90 feet in diameter and 20 in height, the eastern about 60 by 15 feet.
The west barrow has distinct platform or berm about 10 feet wide around the base, a ditch about 2 feet deep surrounds the whole monument. It is rather unkempt and has some damage from rabbit holes, it has also been excavated at some stage.
The eastern barrow looks to be in better condition, however it has been ploughed in the past and has lost it’s outer ditch.
I have included these here as they don’t really make sense on their own, they seem to be part of a huge barrow cemetery which covers the hillside in this area, including both Came sets , Bincombe and West/East hills.

There are actually six barrows on this site. The two western most are large,one bell and one bowl type in good condition, the most easterly of the group is also in fairly good nick. The rest of the barrows are very knocked about, they look to have been very roughly excavated in the past.
They are in a row from west to east along the ridge of a hill overlooking the village of Chaldon Herring or East Chaldon. They are very prominent on the horizon from the valley to the south below. There are barrows all along the spine of this hill including the Lord’s barow to the west.

A pair of heathland barrows, one large, one much smaller. The big barrow has a large cleft in the top of it, obvious signs of excavation. Both are covered in ferns and gorse, but in good condition. Both these barrows have very well preserved and prominent banks and ditches. These are unusual locally as most barrows are on farmed land and have been ploughed.
The ditch around the big barrow is about two metres deep, I couldn’t see over the lip of the bank while standing in the bottom of the ditch.
Access to these mounds is very easy as they are on Tadnoll and Winfrith nature reserve.

A pair of large bowl barrows on the ridge of a low hill. These are quite overgrown with scrub, the western one is about twenty feet high and fifty feet in diameter, the eastern one about a third smaller.
Both these barrows were excavated by E.Cunnington in the late 19th century. He found a crouched burial the eastern barrow with a pot and 6 flint arrowheads, these are very fine barbed and tanged variety and are called “Conygar” type arrowheads. They appear to be too delicate for use and seem to have been made for burial. The western barrow contained an inhumation and several cremations.
The position of these two barrows seems to be quite important, their placement in the ancient landscape appears to be no accident. To the north east the Mount Pleasant henge is in plain view, also a now lost large henge on the site of the bypass around Dorchester, called Flagstones would have been directly north.
Maiden castle can be clearly seen to the west, Came woods and Came down barrows are visible to the south and south west. Now obscured by houses and other buildings, map elevations show that both Maumbury rings and Poundbury hillfort would also have been in plain sight from these two barrows.
This pair of barrows are very accessible, they are several hundred yards only from a large housing estate. A public footpath runs straight past them. Although a busy road is only about two hundred yards away noise is minimal and the views from this site are well worth seeing.

A small group of round barrows below Flowers barrow hillfort. Also in this group are the adjacent Water barrows, which I will include here as well. These round barrows are on m.o.d. land used as tank gunnery ranges, which are usually only accessible at weekends, the roads are closed when firing is in progress. You can’t actually walk on this site, due to possible unexploded ordnance, but they are clearly visible from the roadside. It is possible to park in a nearby farm gate entrance.

This is a massive and quite confusing site. The outer ramparts are three miles in length and enclose an area of 210 acres. The confusion is in large part to do with the amount of quarrying that is and has taken place on this site. What look like banks are spoil heaps, only once you get to the outer edge of the hilfort does it become more clear what is going on.
It commands a hilltop with 360 degree views of the surrounding country. The easiest part to walk around is the northern end, where there is a large war memorial. This is a mainly bivallate hillfort, with a third bank and ditch at some lower points in the perimeter.
Within the interior is a modern stone circle, which I have included to show the stone which is still being quarried from this site. Most of the surrounding villages are built of this redddish stone.

I decided to have a closer look at the first barrow in this group. It’s a very unusual example, possibly unique, as it is a large bell barrow with a very wide platform or berm, a deep ditch and a two foot high surrounding bank. This has much more in common with disc type barrows which more normally contain a small mound within the banks. L.V.Grinsell picks this barrow out as being particularly unusual in his book. I have seen this barrow mentioned in other books, such as Dorset’s Archaeology by Peter Stanier as a unique example of a bell/disc barrow.

This is a large, mixed set barrows of different sizes and shapes. There are some very large bowl shapes, one bell and one probable pond barrow. Most of them are in good condition, only one has very obvious signs of excavation, it has been very bashed about and it is difficult to tell what shape it was originally.
The placing of the barrows on the spine of the hill gives excellent views both north and south. The island of Portland is in plain sight.
These barrows are in a long group which runs the length of the south Dorset ridgeway, this group extends from the Bincombe/Came set.
Between a bell shaped barrow and the eastern most barrows an ancient, sunken trackway runs down the hillside.

Only three barrows can be seen at the moment, the rest are obscured by the crops growing in the main field. The barrows are of the bowl type and are in good condition. West hill overlooks the hill of Chalbury, an early univallate hillfort.

There are five barrows on this site. The most substantial is a medium sized bowl barrow in the middle of the group to east of what remains of Deverel barrow.
Adjacent to it is a small, low saucer barrow, which may well have been ploughed in the past. Also close by are two small bowl barrows, just around the corner, up a farm track.
This site is not the most spectacular I’ve seen, but it’s archaeological importance cannot be underestimated. It, along with the now destroyed Rimbury barrow, show a significant cultural difference in the finds, from earlier local burials.

This is just around the corner, north-west, from the Valley of Stones. It is a hillside valley with what look like square celtic / Iron age type fields. Cutting through the field boundaries, down the centre of the valley is a well defined trackway. This looks to me as if it leads to and from an enclosure marked on O.S. maps and Magic.

Quite a long walk to get to these barrows. It’s a mixed set of various types, including one very low saucer shaped barrow, which looks like it’s been heavily ploughed in the past. All but one of the barrows have signs of clumsy excavation i.e big holes dug into the crowns of them. Two of the bowl shaped barrows have chunks of stone on their flanks, which could be their former contents.
On the plus side the views of Abbotsbury swannery, Chapel hill, the Chesil beach and Portland are well worth the effort of getting here. Abbotsbury castle hillfort is only about half a mile away.
Dotted around the edges of the escarpment these sit on are former quarry diggings, the hillside is made up of lime stone cliffs, which may well have been used in the building of nearby Abbotsbury.

This must be about the oddest place I’ve seen a barrow, the photo doesn’t show how truly steep the hill it sits atop is. If I’m feeling particularly insane one day I may walk up there and see the seaward barrow, I’m willing to bet the view is worth it.
The barrow itself is quite a large bell barrow, which looks like a pimple on an elephant on this great round hill.

Very easy to find, once you’ve been to the castle and well worth a look for the distant views of it alone. The barrows themselves are all bowl types of various sizes. The common is split in two by a road, the castle is visible from the western side, the eastern half of the Purbeck hills can be seen in it’s entirety from the barrows of the east side of the common.
One of the east side round barrows has obviously been excavated in the past, it has a large cleft in the top of it. Of the six barrows I could see, they appear to be in a row from west to east, parallel to the Purbeck hills to the north of them.

The photo I was able to take of this much messed about with long barrow had to be taken long distance from Ackling dyke as there is no obvious public access I could see to this site.

Another visit to this place, this time minus the sheep, so I felt it was o.k. to walk on it. The large bell barrow at first dominates the site, it has a large cleft in it’s top, and has clearly been excavated. The real stars of this cemetery are for me the four huge disc barrows (there are actually five, one is now obscured by a nearby wood), two of which must be two hundred feet or so across. The best view I had of the central, largest one was from the top of the big bell barrow. Only from this extra height can a shortarse like me get a full view of the size of this thing.It has two small mounds on it, one central and the other close to the eastern ditch. The outer bank now stands about two feet high with the inner ditch being about twice as deep.
Just to see one of these close up is unusual in Dorset but there are four to see here, one of which has clearly had it’s ditch cut through by the bank of the Ackling dyke. This is the rarest one as it is not round, but oval in shape , it also has twin mounds. The romans were obviously no respecters of ancient burial sites. A smaller example, perhaps seventy five feet across, has three small mounds within the banks.
Another of the more normal looking bowl barrows has a two foot deep ditch surrounding it very close to it’s base, this again is fairly unusual in these parts , as most have had the plough too close to them or it’s silted up.
Something must be said about pond barrows here, as there were three I could see, although at this time of year the long grass makes them hard to spot. They may well be the oldest burials on this ground, but are probably the most overlooked features in any landscape.
The added bonus to being on this site today, with nobody else about, were the half dozen or so hares I saw running about the place. Normally with dog walkers about , these shy creatures have long since legged it. Unlike rabbits these non burrowing native animals don’t knacker these old places by digging great big holes in them , the normans have a lot to answer for.
This must be one of the best preserved, most varied barrow fields in Dorset, it’s only rival for different types, is the Winterbourne Poor Lot on the south Dorset ridgeway.

I parked in a layby on the B3081 next to Ackling dyke, crossed the busy road, and headed south along the dyke down the hill to the barrows. This is a group of about 10 – 15 round barrows of various sizes, it’s difficult to say exactly how many as some can be seen in the distance. Unfortunately my camera can’t zoom in enough to photograph the more distant group and there is a crop in the field , I must come again in the winter to get close enough to see the remaining part of the cemetery.
The O.S. map shows some crosses on this site which are presumably where barrows used to be, indeed Grinsell shows more in his map from the 1930’s, I’m guessing these have now been ploughed out in the intervening seventy or so years.

This long barrows looks in pretty good nick. It sits between Blackdown and The Valley of Stones. It’s surrounded by ancient things, a cromlech,barrows and three stone circles. It’s not the most impressive of the local long/bank barrows, but is probably the most convenient and accessible one to visit.

I went here and the nearby quoit in September 2006, I’ve only just found the pictures again. You can probably see more of it in winter, when it’s not so overgrown. It’s difficult to know how much stone has been pinched over the years, but the basic outline is still there to see. It’s a very exposed site, when I was here, there was a low mist and drizzle, but still very atmospheric.

This large piece of what looks like Portland stone is on it’s own in a picnic area, off a minor road leading uphill from the east of Abbotsbury. It appears to be deeply buried in the ground, sticking out about two and a half feet .It’s about five feet by four feet and must weigh in at several tons, whether it’s megalithic is probably debateable, but it certainly didn’t get here , half way up a steep hill, by accident.
Ancient or not it looks like it’s been toppled from an upright position at some stage, as it sits at an odd angle. I couldn’t see any markings on it either old or new.

Another trip to this out of the way hillfort, it’s had a lot of scrub and brambles cleared from the western banks and ditches. The entrance to the fort is more complicated than I remembered, it may not of course be the original, but does look like it.
Once again there were no other people on the hill, not even the sheep are here now, just a lot rabbits and magpies for some reason.

I have just walked this site again and have spotted what appears to be an unlisted pond barrow. I’m aware that these are notoriously difficult to tell from sink holes and the like, but this appears to have a well defined bank surrounding the parts of it which are not near the footpath, which runs very close to it. It is only several hundred yards from the Rainbarrows themselves. Photos to follow, you decide!
These barrows are much easier to see since much of the scrub has been cleared in order to reclaim the area as heathland. This is part of the Thomas Hardy heath project, which aims to re-create the heath of Hardy’s youth, which became the fictional Egdon heath in his writings.
The name does not appear to have anything to do with rain but is an Anglicised version of Hraefn or Hraevn meaning raven in Anglo Saxon – see A.D.Mills – Place Names of Dorset.

This is a small group of round barrows of varying sizes.It is about half a mile south the seven barrows at Penn hill. Access to these barrows is quite easy as Rew lane can be driven or walked down at any time , it is however quite steep and rough. Rew itself is now just a small collection of houses running down a gravel track , but was once a village in its own right , it is now classed as a lost village.

This is quite an out of the way spot, but what a revelation once you get there.Getting there isn’t particularly difficult with an o.s. map, as it’s all on public foot paths.The route I took up here takes you past the remains of the earthworks of the roman aqueduct into Dorchester. The alternative name for this place is the seven barrows, at first I could only see six, and indeed could only photograph six. Four of the six visible are similar sized, with two low bowl types.The seventh barrow is in dense undergrowth in an adjacent copse, I could see it through the trees, it is of a similar size to the four bowl barrows I did take pictures of. This place is off the beaten track and I had it completely to myself, to the north can be seen the high chalk downland , which contains sites of ancient settlement, some of which I will walk again soon and put on T.M.A.
Very close to these barrows is The New Barn Field Centre , which has a reconstruction of an Iron age round house and gives demonstrations of ancient pottery making.

I could just about see this site from the road , it’s in a small copse. Sadly it was a bit too overgrown to take a photo of from the distance I was away from it.

Had a walk along the footpath here this afternoon , but sadly couldn’t see the barrow , which I think must be over the crest of a hill. I will try to see this barrow again at some stage , but I don’t like tresspassing as a rule , so I will have find out whose land it is and get permission.

These four similar sized round barrows are placed at right angles to the Ridge hill group .They run down the north facing slope of Great hill. Widely and equally spaced apart they do not appear to have either ditches or banks surrounding them.

Situated just below Ridge hill , with Maiden castle to the north east , this is almost certainly the only quadruple barrow in Britain. They are all the same size and are very close together , Grinsell says they share a common ditch , I couldn’t see this as there was a crop in the field. Just north of the four is another large , low round barrow with what appears to be a small standing stone next to it.
This quadruple barrow is only a few hundred metres west of a unique bell/disc barrow at the top of Gould’s hill.

This is a more subdued Dorset hillfort than either nearby Hod or Hambledon hills. It shows on the ground as a low bank from the footpath, the site itself is on private farmland. As I was feeling law abiding and being looked at by a bloke on a tractor in the next field, I decided not to climb the gate and go for a look.

What a monster climb it is to get up here , shows how unfit I am. A beautiful clear day , Hambledon is in clear view to the west , and is so massive it looks closer than it probably is. I think because of the steep climb , there are never many people up here ,only saw one bloke walking his dog in two hours. On the way up the hill I found a piece of worked flint near a badgers sett.

Visited this site again and have found another two barrows in the area surrounding the Hardy monument. One is very low and small and the land owner has circled it with wooden posts , as people used to park on top of it. The other is a much larger round barrow , sadly looking in quite a battered condition. This site is a local viewpoint and gets very busy in the summer , most of the damage done to this barrow is probably done by rabbits , which are abundant on this site , but some of it must be man made.

This is an island I know very well as I worked here for 5 years and can trace family back for several hundred years. I’m not surprised that Mr Hamhead couldn’t find many sites in this pock marked landscape , it is after all a giant quarry, from which many millions of tons of stone have been removed. The Culverwell site, which he mentions is difficult to access , but is well worth the effort. It is a mesolithic ” summer” camp of about 12000 years b.c.e. which has been a largely amateur labour of love , led by local archaeologist Susann Palmer. There is, albeit scant, evidence from paintings of the island that there was a major Durotrigian hillfort on the site of the Verne prison. The current prison is a converted Palmerstonian fortress , which when it’s defensive ditch was dug by convicts in the 1860 / 70 period, was found to contain a great many burials which showed sword and spear wounds. Artifacts recovered from these burials were of the iron age period, and it is reckoned to be a war grave. Contemporary roman documentary evidence (Tacitus) nicknames the island the “isle of slingers”, the nearby Chesil beach providing millions of pebbles as slingshot ammunition. Enormous caches of pebbles from chesil beach have been found in Dorset hillforts many miles inland.

This is a stunning place and a real rarity, most of the bank barrows in the country lay along the south Dorset ridgeway, of which this is a part. At the field margins and where a round barrow gets close to it’s northern side , signs of a ditch can be seen. From the top of the bank the Bincombe bumps set of round barrows can be seen on the southern horizon. To the east there are various round barrows and immediately south is Chalbury hilfort.The island of Portland looms large in Weymouth bay as it does from most of the ancient sites along the ridgeway of Dorset.

I think the best time to see this site is when the trees aren’t in full leaf. There is a definte combination of berm, ditch and bank surrounding the base of the barrow. I’m not sure I like the trees either but they do stop these barrows from being ploughed into oblivion.

This is a great and varied barrow cemetery , having most of the known types included in it .The Ackling dyke roman road runs right through it , indeed it cuts part of the oval ditch of a twin disc barrow off. It looks to me that this may have been a deliberate show of military power on the part of the romans , as a few yards movement could easily have avoided this. Most of the barrows on this site have been excavated , thankfully in a reasonably sympathetic way, it wasn’t done by the local vicar with a shovel .Burials of different types were found within the mounds along with grave goods.

Ackling Dyke:
Although not in itself “megalithic” , being of definite roman origin , this place is surrounded with ancient sites. Everywhere you look there are barrows , including the very impressive Oakley down barrow cemetery which has examples of just about every type of barrow known. It’s siting by the romans appears, at least to me to be a deliberate show of military strength , passing through a major cemetery and close to the great Dorset cursus as it does.

This grouping of barrows bridges the gap between Bronkham hill and Gould’s hill. Access is very easy as it’s on the south west coast path .The barrows themselves vary in size and condition , depending on how much they’ve been ploughed. Most of the barrows straddle the crown of the hill , however there is a very interesting set of three to the north , which are very close together and appear to share a common ditch. At the western end of this group are two very large bowl barrows , two pairs of bell barrows and several ploughed variants. The middle section contains an excavated large bowl barrow known as Ridgeway no.7 in which a bronze knife and a gold pommel were found. Unfortunately I think this barrow now has a hideous telecom aerial planted in the middle of it. Next to the barrow with the mast on it is a very large earthwork which is a modern covered reservoir.

This being “easter” weekend the range walks are open , so I took the trek up to the hillfort. Having only ever seen it from a distance it is surprisingly big up close. Today I can definitely see Woolsbarrow and Woodbury hillforts to the north. There is a nice set of three round barrows , known as the Water barrows locally , in the field below. Also another set known as the Ferny barrows can be seen at a lower level, I couldn’t easily stop to take a picture of them, but they are worth a look.
Both ends of this hillfort have three sets of ditches and banks which appear to mask the entrances as they appear now, although it’s difficult to know where the originals were. There is a lot of space between the outer and inner end banks , more so than many comparably sized Durotrigian hillforts in Dorset .The landslip which took the southern set of ditches and banks into the sea, appears to be slowly carrying on , the ground looks very unstable in places.
The long military use of this place doesn’t seem to have done it any lasting harm, it was taken from private ownership in 1943 c.e. with the promise that it would be given back, along with the two villages of Tyneham and Worbarrow which have been blown to smithreens in the intervening 60 odd years.The m.o.d. notice boards erroneously call this site a “roman” fort, the only post iron age structure on this site is a W.W.2 pill box on the cliff edge.

Access to this site has been greatly improved lately, it used to be a muddy scramble to get up to it. Park just down the hill from it in a long passing place. The views from the top of the hill are quite spectacular, nearby Woolsbarrow can be clearly seen to the southeast. Only part of the site can be walked upon as the rest is a working farm, there are houses and outbuildings here. At present only a single bank can be seen, the western and southern aspects are most accessible, apparently there was another ditch and bank which was quarried away for the gravel, which is still to be seen anywhere the ground is broken .

I visited this site again today, the more I look at it the less convinced I am about it being a hillfort. For one thing it’s not on much of a hill, I know that doesn’t rule it out, but it would be very unusual in Dorset. Also the banks look far too insubstantial for defensive use. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t have been an enclosure for animals, this is an area of very good grazing for livestock. I’m more than happy to be wrong about this but, as Moss says it is unique in the Wessex area.

There are five barrows in this group , which is part of the Dorset ridgeway chain, including Bronkham hill, Bincombe and Came. These barrows overlook Maiden Castle. I am keeping a close eye on the three middle round barrows in this group as they have been ploughed at least once in the last 5 years. According to magic they are scheduled ancient monuments, but I’m not sure who to inform about deliberate damage. They are very easy to see as they are on a “b” road from Weymouth, with a layby right next to them. I have counted the barrows from west to east , the first being the most westerly.The first of this group is a large disc barrow with pronounced outer bank and ditch, the eastern part of the ditch is now only apparent as a crop mark, having long been ploughed out.

This is quite a large hillfort even by Dorset standards and is practically unknown, probably because there is no public access, it is private property. It consists of a single ditch and bank with what appears to be a single southern entrance, it is roughly an elongated oval in shape. It is orientated on a north / south axis. The interior has apparently been excavated in the past, finds inluded “antique bones”, blades, axes and Roman coins. About half way down the east and west ramparts there are brick archways built into the banks, oh those wonderful Victorians. Because of the lack of public access it is in pristine condition, covered in mature native trees.

Although there is only one barrow marked on o.s. maps I saw three in a mile long stretch of the valley , driving south. I managed to walk to the mapped one , it is on a footpath a short walk uphill.
The second one I managed to photograph from a passing place on the narrow road , unfortunately I was unable to take a picture of a third as it wasn’t safe to stop. I’m not sure about the trees planted on the first barrow , it is quite low and may well have been ploughed in the past , so at least the trees make that impossible at the moment.

This whole hill is covered in barrows and holes in the ground. The barrows vary in size from tiny ( c.12 feet across) to the huge ( c.100 feet across). The biggest is a bell barrow with a robbed out middle, it appears to have been heightened by having the spoil from this hole piled upon the original mound. It has a ditch and bank surrounding most of it’s circumference, the only break is where the farm track cuts through it. Some of the holes directly mirror their adjacent barrows in size , some look like pond barrows. Many other barrows can be seen from this hill and there is a great sign which points you towards Hells bottom. The inland coast path on which it lays has plenty more barrows upon it. There is a curious shallow ditch and bank lined on one side with small upright slabs of Portland type stone, it could be a field division, but this looks unlikely due to its position.
The holes are solution holes, acid has eaten away the underlying chalk to form a depression. The ditch edged with stones is known to be an Anglo-Saxon boundary.

A long stretched oval multivallate Durotrigian hillfort , or rather half of one as the cliffside part of this fort has long since slid into the sea. It cannot always be walked upon as it is within the bounds of an M.O.D.firing range, it can be got quite close to along the coast path, when it is open. This would have been one of the most spectacular places to be in Dorset when it was in use , the isles of Portland to the west and Purbeck to the east are clearly visible , the view inland is uninterrupted for many miles. Bindon hill is to the west about a mile away and there are many barrows nearby.

This is one of the more unusual Durotrigian hillforts in that is built on a single hill in heathland. It is roughly oval in shape and has a low mound around its top edge and a ditch and bank about a third of the way down from the top. From its north eastern conrner the nearby Woodbury hillfort can be easily seen, to the south can be seen the high ridge of hills just inland from the coast. This entire site is covered in gorse and bracken which make its features a bit indistinct and difficult to photograph , however the last time I was here it was covered in 30 foot pine trees, as it is on forrestry commission land. It is built from a sandy soil which is full of flint, gravel and pebbles which must have made an excellent source of tool making materials and slingshot ammunition.