Long barrow 750m north-west of High Fordon Farm

Reasons for Designation

Long barrows were constructed as earthen or drystone mounds with flanking ditches and acted as funerary monuments during the Early and Middle Neolithic periods (3400-2400 BC). They represent the burial places of Britain's early farming communities and, as such, are amongst the oldest field monuments surviving visibly in the present landscape. Where investigated, long barrows appear to have been used for communal burial, often with only parts of the human remains having been selected for interment. Certain sites provide evidence for several phases of funerary monument preceding the barrow and, consequently, it is probable that long barrows acted as important ritual sites for local communities over a considerable period of time. Some 500 long barrows are recorded in England. As one of the few types of Neolithic structure to survive as earthworks, and due to their comparative rarity, their considerable age and their longevity as a monument type, all long barrows are considered to be nationally important.

Although this barrow has been partially excavated and altered by agricultural activity, it will retain further archaeological information concerning its structure and use and its relation to the environment in which it was constructed.

Details

The monument includes a Neolithic long barrow, a member of a wider group of prehistoric monuments in this area of the Yorkshire Wolds. The earth and chalk rubble barrow mound, which is orientated east-west, is 50m long, 13m wide, and up to 1m high at its eastern end, tailing off to the west. Although no longer visible at ground level, ditches, from which material was excavated during the construction of the monument, existed to both north and south of the barrow mound. These have become in-filled over the years but survive as buried features 6m wide and 40m long. The barrow has twice undergone partial excavation. In 1865 the antiquarian Canon Greenwell found three burials, including an adult crouched inhumation and two collections of fragmentary and disarticulated bones from a number of individuals in the mound. All the burials were found toward the eastern end of the mound. Sherds from a number of Neolithic pots were also found. In 1958 the barrow was re-excavated by T G Manby. He found remains of mortuary structures which predated the mound and burnt remains which indicated that cremations which were found had been burned at the site. Numbers of worked flints, including fragments from an axe, were also found.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

23801

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Greenwell, W, British Barrows, (1877), 487
Manby, T G, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in The Excavation of the Willerby Wold Long Barrow, Vol. 29, (1963), 173-205

End of official list entry

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