Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

A chambered tomb and two bowl barrows on Minning Low

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1009102
Date first listed:: 17-Aug-1882

User submitted image — Uploaded by David Dunford This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1009102
Date first listed:: 17-Aug-1882
Date of most recent amendment:: 22-Jan-1993

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Derbyshire
District:: Derbyshire Dales (District Authority)
Parish:: Ballidon
National Park:: PEAK DISTRICT
National Grid Reference:: SK 20935 57290

Reasons for Designation

Chambered tombs are funerary monuments constructed and used during the Early and Middle Neolithic periods (3400-2400 BC). They comprise linear mounds of stone covering one or more stone-lined burial chambers. With other types of long barrow they form the burial places of Britain's early farming communities and, as such, are amongst the oldest field monuments surviving visibly within the present landscape. Where investigated, chambered tombs appear to have been used for communal burial, often with only parts of the human remains having been selected for interment. The number of burials placed within the tombs suggests they were used over a considerable period of time and that they were important ritual sites for local communities. Some 300 chambered tombs are recorded in England. As one of the few types of Neolithic structure to survive as upstanding monuments, and due to their rarity, their considerable age and longevity as a monument type, all chambered tombs are considered to be nationally important.

The chambered tomb at Minning Low is a reasonably well preserved example containing rare intact architectural features as well as significant areas of undisturbed archaeological remains. Like several other Neolithic barrows in the Peak District it is situated adjacent to a later barrow site: in this case, to two Bronze Age bowl barrows which are also well preserved. The entire monument illustrates the continued use of Neolithic burial foci during the Bronze Age and demonstrates changing burial customs during these periods. In addition, the chambered tomb is the largest in Derbyshire and is of an unusual type common to the Peak District in which the burial chambers are covered by a sub-circular or oval barrow instead of the more typical linear form.

Details

Minning Low hill lies within the south-eastern uplands of the limestone plateau of Derbyshire. The monument includes the chambered tomb and two bowl barrows within a single constraint area which also incorporates the archaeologically sensitive areas between and around the earthworks up to, but not including, the encircling drystone wall.

The chambered tomb is the easternmost of these earthworks and comprises an oval cairn measuring 45m by 38m and surviving to a height of 2.4m. A wedge-shaped chamber of limestone slabs (Chamber I) survives with its capstone in situ at the centre of the mound, while a second complete chamber (Chamber II) lies c.5m to the south and also retains its capstone in addition to part of its south-facing passage which is similarly covered by a capstone. The remains of Chamber III lie c.5m to the west, while those of Chamber IV lie near the edge of the barrow c.6m south of Chamber III. The collapsed slabs of Chamber V lie on the western edge and a single upright slab near the centre of the barrow has been interpreted as the remains of a small cist. During the partial excavations of the site by Thomas Bateman in 1843 and 1851, the mound was found to be constructed of coursed stone and the chambers to contain human bones, including one extended skeleton, fragments of Romano-British Derbyshire ware pottery and a number of Roman coins. The latter show that the barrow had been disturbed in the third or fourth century AD, but Beaker sherds found by Bateman in Chamber IV indicate a Late Neolithic or Bronze Age date for that particular chamber. This represents the latest phase of Prehistoric use since further excavation, carried out by Barry Marsden in 1973-4, has led to the barrow being interpreted as a multi-period site, beginning with the construction of Chamber I and its drystone walled approach passage in the Early Neolithic period. There is no precise chronology for the remaining phases but an extended period of use throughout the Neolithic and into the Early Bronze Age is indicated. Marsden also found evidence of Roman re-use of the site in three Roman bronzes and pottery sherds recovered from Chamber III. He also found a drystone wall running through the north-west side of the barrow. This was traced for c.10m and was orientated east-west.

The two bowl barrows lie c.25m north-west of the chambered tomb. The second of these is superimposed onto the first so that, together, they form an oval mound measuring 23.5m by 16.5m and standing c.2m high. The two were partially excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1849 when the earlier was found to be a limestone cairn containing a central primary cist which had been disturbed at an earlier date. A secondary cremation burial was also found, dating the barrow to the Bronze Age. The later bowl barrow was of earthen construction and contained an in situ primary cremation, two flint knives, a burnt bronze razor and a bone tool. This barrow also dates to the Bronze Age, indicating an extended period of use at this site. Like the chambered tomb, both barrows had been disturbed in the Roman period.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 13369
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Barnatt, J, The Peak District Barrow Survey (1989), (1989)
Barnatt, J, The Peak District Barrow Survey (1989), (1989)
Bateman, T, Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire, (1849), 39-40
Bateman, T, Ten Years Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave-Hills, (1861), 54-5
Bateman, T, Ten Years Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave-Hills, (1861), 54,82-3
Bateman, T, Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire, (1849), 39-40
Marsden, B M, The Burial Mounds of Derbyshire , (1977), 12
Marsden, B M, The Burial Mounds of Derbyshire , (1977), 4
Manby, T G, 'Derbyshire Archaeological Journal' in The Chambered Tombs of Derbyshire, , Vol. 78, (1958), 25-39

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.