Impressively large bowl barrow, visible as you walk along the top of Whiteshoot Hill / Broughton Down through the trees. It is however under large-scale ploughing so expect it to get less impressive with each passing year.
Hampshire Treasures says "Also known locally as Bol's or Bald Turret. Average diameter 43m, height 3m."
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A fine place for a walk to burn off yuletide excess. Actually it was bitterly cold in the easterly wind today, but the view, the teeming birds and the barrows more than made up for that. And the enormous lunch on the way back in Stockbridge helped too.
Hampshire Treasures lists three barrows here, one bell and two saucers. The saucers were not obvious to me as the whole area is quite lumpy with old field boundaries and trackways, which makes it really interesting to clamber over. A good place to bring non-antiquarian family members as there's something for everyone. Having said that, there's no Primark.
The large barrow here has less distinct berm and ditches on the downhill side, though ploughing seems unlikely on this steep hillside. I make both berm and ditch to be narrow, about 3m each and ditch is no more than a foot depression visible on the surface.
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Three barrows in a loose triangle arrangement on top of a beautifully isolated and silent bit of downland with views all around. You can get here on foot, bike or horse as it's a spot where four byways and one bridleway meet. If you are unsteady on the old pins or using a wheelchair your best bet would be the 500m byway which crosses the paved road from Itchen Stoke to Abbotstone.
Sadly, they are being ploughed now and are not as grand as they might have been even just fifty years ago. Two undulations can easily be spotted against the west edge of the field. Pause here to enjoy the birdsong, the big open skies and the views. Ahhhh.
Oddly they are not scheduled, so no info in MAGIC. Hampshire Treasures has little to say but (probably following their LV Grinsell reference at P.H.F.C., Vol. 14, 1938-40, p.353) suggests two of the barrows "may be of the saucer type". Well, that didn't automatically seem the case to me. I could just as easily see these as bowls that got plundered for chalk and flints and then excavated and ploughed down gradually. There is also a reference to RAF aerial photograph
CPE/UK/1842/3154/5. I wonder how one finds these... I'm sure there is some MoD archivist out there who would love to hear from the likes of us.
I paced across the field and took some photos, gazed about the place and eventually reluctantly made my way back through some lovely old lanes to civilisation.
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I spent my lunch break strolling round the Bronze Age parts of the British Museum today and came home determined to look up the Badbury stone in Grinsell. It's a bit confusing as he doesn't use the name the Three Kings at any point, but the barrows in question are probably what he calls Shapwick 5, 6a and 6b (6a having yielded the stone). But although the Museum information says the barrow was destroyed, Grinsell puts it down at 9 feet high and I suspect it has not been destroyed since. Anyway here's his marvellous description:
"...nearly levelled 1845, but removal of the centre was watched by JHA [J H Austen]. About three inhumations, probably primary, two with food-vessels and one with an ornamented handled pot resembling those of Cornish type; up to 15 cremations (perhaps more), a few possibly contemporary with the inhumations, the majority clearly secondary and a few with E/MBA [early to middle Bronze Age] collared urns of a latish type; as far as can now be ascertained, none was LBA [late Bronze Age]. The barrow consisted of a central cairn of local sandstone blocks enclosed in a ring of flints, which was bordered by a massive wall of sandstone 30 feet diameter, outside of which was a ring of chalk about 15 feet wide, which must have originally covered the mound. The interments were probably all in the central cairn. In the centre according to Durden (not in the surrounding wall as often stated) was the well-known large slab of sandstone which was decorated with carvings of daggers and axes, the former of type similar to those from Stonehenge, conjectured to be of Mycenean type.
from "Dorset Barrows", 1959.
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One of the rarities left near home that I had never visited. I came out for a walk to St Mary's Church, Twyford and then up the hill and down the pleasant Love Lane with its view across the Hazeley hollow. At the end of the road you pop through into a ploughed (oh yes) field following the sign for the "Monarch's Way" and the barrow is up the slope on your right. You have to really walk up the edge of the field for a minute or so to see it.
There's very little left, poor thing, maybe 50cm height over the surrounding field. It would have been quite splendid in its prime at about 15m diameter. Maybe I should have paced over it to measure it out properly and look for any fragments of relic turned up by the plough, I didn't want to intrude. Like visiting a dying relative in hospital, you feel you ought really to just let them be and stop bothering them.
The Ordnance Survey don't seem to get their Sitef of ye Olde Antiquitief very accurate round here, showing this as a biggish mound and omitting the Twyford Pumping Station barrows completely.
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I came zooming down the hill early one Sunday morning on a bike ride with no particular destination in mind, trying to get home quick before the rainclouds caught me up, and suddenly spotted these two bumps in the sloping field alongside the road. Slammed on the brakes and took a couple of pictures. When I got home I found they are on MAGIC but not on OS maps. They are asymmetrical, lumpy and lovely (I must get out more). You'll see from the photos that they are at the bottom of a little scarp - why site them there rather than the more prominent top?
If you go up Hazeley Road from Twyford village, you will spot them on your right just after the pumping station. A little further up the road is where Hazeley Down mineral water comes from. I have given them a rather unromantic name but that's all I could think of, and the pumping station is not without its own charms. There are two other barrows nearby overlooking this formerly hazeley hollow.
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Pronounced Chezzit Head. This group of three bowl barrows, spaced quite widely, follow the line of one of the highest ridges in the area, on the south west side. There is a small car park by some trees near the highest point and if, from there, you walk along a path a little way away from the barrows, you can look down into Matterley Bowl, which is the site of an annual music festival which is constantly changing its name. It's also a very impressive natural undulation with a flat bottom - in about 1995 there was a vast crop "circle" here of a stick man with a football and a halo, over the gigantic words "Le Tiss for England" - anyway, back to the barrows. They have suffered a great deal but they once occupied an absolutely regal position over the downs. The sorry story is all told at MAGIC if you can bear to read it. Eeeh, it makes me mad, it does.
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This is a nice spot on top of the hills, with long views north into the upper Itchen valley and west across the sloping downs (well, you would have seen west at the time of construction, but there are now some tall trees). OS maps place ye Tumulus on the south side of the track, where there is just a very tiny bump that might be nothing to do with it. A much likelier candidate is the large mound with a bit of a ditch and a dimple on top on the north side of the track. But you never know...
25m diameter, 2m high. Sherds of Bronze Age pottery and worked flints emerged from the ditch, according to MAGIC. There's not much more that's known about it. It's in relatively good nick and is not being ploughed!
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One lonesome and battered bowl barow, but if you're going along Rhinefield Road west of Brockenhurst, you'll spot it. Unless you blink. I came cycling to the New Forest the other day with a friend down from London, and was very restrained in taking no diversions from the route for snapshots of other bumps.
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Second only to Slap Bottom in the Southern Silly Names League, once I'd spotted this on the map I had to visit really. Now that I've done so, I don't suggest you try to follow. It is pretty inaccessible for this part of the country! Parnholt Wood is gorgeous and well worth a visit but is just over the geological boundary into acidic, sandy soil (viz New Forest) with bogs and badass bracken everywhere. So don't stray off the rights of way kids. One noticeable thing about this barrow though is how its ditch has survived reasonably well. In these parts, ditches tend to have been silted up and ploughed over.
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This is an interesting place (having said that, there's nothing to see). Flash Earth and other aerial photos will show you, at some times of the year, a faint circle in crop marks, maybe 200m diameter. Hampshire Treasures calls it Iron Age, but offers no excavation evidence or finds to back that up. OS gives it Ye Olde Typeface, but only in the most recent maps. It is right next to the highest place for miles around, with steep sides to north and south, long views to the Isle of Wight, Danebury etc (Fawley Oil Refinery!) and big big open skies. It feels very much like the sort of place that made for neolithic causewayed mortuary enclosures, like Hambledon Hill. It doesn't seem a logical place to have a farm enclosure, and it would be rubbish as a defensive structure. But I have no more to offer than that. I would love to hear others' opinions of the place. Next door is a (19th Century)pyramidal white monument on top of a mound which is said by some to be a round barrow, though recent excavations have revealed nowt. Perhaps "excavations" involved radar only? To complicate maters further, I see no causeway in the crop mark, but then the circle is not completely exposed. Is there a square crop mark inside the circle, on the northwest side? Is there a larger patch of disturbed land on the east side, facing the "barrow"? Hmmm. One more thing to bear in mind is that there was an anti-aircraft gun placement up here in the Second World War and some of the crop marks may be down to that.
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These are two bowl barrows on top of the west-east ridge of chalk running between Winchester and King's Somborne. They are quite a decent size for this modest district and fairly well preserved by being in woodland for a long time. There used to be two distinct groups of bowl and disc barrows downhill to the north, all now sadly gone under the plough. The eastern one is next to a bridleway called Burrow Road, which probably took its name from the barrow (beorh). The western one is given the name Robin Hood's Butt by Hampshire Treasures. They are just over a kilometre apart but are so similar in size and position in the landscape that if they weren't constructed at around the same time, then one must have been modelled on the other. The grid ref I've given is for old Robin's Butt, which is easy to find if you are passing through in a hurry or can't get far from a car park through narrow footpaths. There is a small car park next door; facing away from the road, go right through the trees and on the other side of an old line of beeches is the barrow. It is about 20m diameter and 2m high, dimpled from excavation, and with a slight trace of ditch round the outside. There may even have been a bit of a narrow berm but it's hard to tell with big trees up close. When I visited there was a little vase of plastic flowers on top "in loving memory". Not a bad place to become a secondary Space Age cremation. But(t) its proximity to the car park meant I also found several broken beer bottles and one lens out of someone's sunglasses. This could be rich pickings for the 5000CE excavators (actually I tried to remove the rubbish as best I could without a trusty Sainsbury's bag).
Hants Treasures also claims there are two at the Burrow Road location (SU424295) but I've only seen one; maybe the other is still deeply overgrown. There is a Forestry Commission-signposted gravel road (with locked gate) going north into the wood off Sarum Road. Walk up that and just before it turns a little right, look on your right and through the trees you will spot a clearing full of barrow. I make the Burrow Road mound to be about 35m diameter and 3m high, and is dimpled on top from excavation.
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I was really chuffed to see that the butterfly folk who keep the nature reserve in excellent condition are now keeping the grass trimmed back on the two very flat barrows to reveal their location for the first time to casual visitors.
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A large bowl barrow with tree on top, left otherwise unmolested by the farmer. No real access but you can admire it from the bridleway that passes the south side of the field. Stop and peer over to your right just as it turns into a very narrow and overgrown fotpath. If you are Julian height you will be fine; I stretched and leant and stretched some more and just as I caught a glimpse through the hawthorns, I fell silently and gracefully into some stinging nettles. There are no dock leaves for miles! MAGIC says that excavations created a deep hollow which makes it look like twin barrows from some angles.
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There are, we are told, fourteen round barrows on the slopes below the hill fort. Some of these are fenced off, which is probably a wise move as they are all rather delapidated. I wonder how many others might have been on top and maybe got obliterated to make way for the hill fort. As Jimit reports, you can't see much of the fort because the top belongs to Lord Snooty and he has decided to plough it up, but you can see a nice causeway entrance. The view from there is now blocked by trees but if you go a bit further West you can see across to Danebury very clearly. The two forts must have made an impressive sight flanking the Test valley.
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Access is not really possible unless you are happy to climb through a cut bit of fence and past a "No public access" sign. If you do you'll be rewarded with this compact line of barrows at the edge of a steep but short drop. From west to east there is one largeish bowl barrow, two smaller bowls with shared ditch, another pair with a shared ditch, and a saucer barrow. Alas, my battery ran out here and I didn't get photos of the latter pair and the saucer barrow. There are also two marked as in the woodland further to the west, but it is hard to make out what might be man-made mounds when peering in from the bridleway. You can see across to Woolbury and Danebury and indeed all the views around here are breathtaking. The aspect that was important to the barrow-builders was very much towards the Test valley. The redoubtable Jimit informed me later in the pub that he thought there was easier access from the track that leads off the Clarendon Way towards the southwest, into Parnholt Wood.
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A saucer barrow, a disc barrow, and a bowl barrow, all arranged in a compact triangle. And then someone dug a forestry track through the middle of them at some point between the 1930s and the 1970s. Nice one. The arrangement is very unusual and definitely worth a visit I thought. Well, I didn't make it. They are well inside private woodland and although I decided to strike out for them for some guerilla photography along the track which actually bisects the barrows, I got spooked. I'm not one for that sort of thing (I'm a statistician you know!) and I usually feel at home in dense woodland but somehow it felt really hostile in there. When I hit a fence not marked on the maps, I legged it back the way I came as fast as I could.
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A small bowl barrow and a larger saucer barrow at the side of a field. Easy access from the bridleway down the edge of the field for a quick look. Hooray for the landowner here who has left the scheduled monuments alone. Having said that they have suffered in the past, but you can still make out the dimensions of it all. The arrangement is unusual in that the bowl barrow was raised second and overlapped the edge of the saucer barrow.
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This is one of those unusual mounds that are not scheduled ancient monuments, yet have been treated kindly by the modern landowners. OS says Tumulus in that alluring typeface but then they have been known to get it wrong. There is not much to see but a bump of about 50cm height in some rough pasture. It is all quite horsey round here so hopefully will not deteriorate further for future generations. I wonder whether it was ever very big or one of the smaller late bronze age efforts.
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Finding this barrow makes up (almost) for the depressing state of most of the other sites in the area. It lay unknown in woodland for a very long time, unploughed and unexcavated, before being found by surveyors involved in the expansion of the nearby A34 dual carrageway in 1979. Given its proximity to the other long barrows around South Wonston, I think it should be regarded as part of that group.
The long barrow suffers from the usual rabbit burrows and tree roots, and at some point people have dug little chalk pits (?) near the edge of the mound but thankfully not into it. The ditches are on two sides and do not seem to meet up round the west end of the mound. Access is relatively simple from nearby rights of way but remember it is in private woodland.
It is 60m long, 20m wide and 2-2.5m high. Berms of 2m wide and ditches of 0.1m deep and 5m wide. (All figures from the official scheduling on MAGIC).
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Boring old dude from Winch
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