Round cairn 885m ENE of Sparretts Farm

Reasons for Designation

Bodmin Moor, the largest of the Cornish granite uplands, has long been recognised to have exceptional preservation of archaeological remains. The Moor has been the subject of detailed archaeological survey and is one of the best recorded upland landscapes in England. The extensive relict landscapes of prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval date provide direct evidence for human exploitation of the Moor from the earliest prehistoric period onwards. The well-preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, field systems, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains provides significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land use through time. Round cairns are funerary monuments covering single or multiple burials and dating to the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC). They were constructed as mounds of earth and stone rubble up to 40m in external diameter but usually considerably smaller; a kerb of edge-set stones sometimes bounds the edges of the mound. Burials were placed in small pits, or on occasion within a box-like structure of stone slabs called a cist, let into the old ground surface or dug into the body of the cairn. Round cairns can occur as isolated monuments, in small groups or in larger cemeteries. Their considerable variation in form and longevity as a monument type provides important information on the diversity of beliefs, burial practices and social organisation in the Bronze Age. They are particularly representative of their period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of preservation.

This round cairn on Craddock Moor has survived substantially intact despite the earlier actions of stone robbers along its SW edge and it will retain many of its original features, including burial deposits. The cairn's importance is further enhanced by its situation within a wider grouping of differing but broadly contemporary classes of funerary and ceremonial monuments on Craddock Moor, demonstrating well both the diversity and the organisation of burial practice and ritual during the Bronze Age.

Details

The monument comprises a round cairn, part of a dispersed group of cairns situated on Craddock Moor on south-east Bodmin Moor. This cairn survives as a near-circular mound, 9m diameter and 1m high, composed of heaped small and medium-sized stones up to 0.5m across. The mound is built across a slight natural scarp in the valley's SW-facing slope; consequently the mound appears higher, reaching 1.5m, above the ground level on the SW side. That sector has also been subject to some stone robbing, truncating the SW side of the mound, leaving its edge irregular and revealing many larger stones, up to 0.75m long, in the lower levels of the mound and the surface formerly covered by its SW edge. Beyond the exposed stone of this disturbed SW sector, this cairn's mound is largely turf-covered and intact. This cairn has been surveyed but it has not been archaeologically excavated. It forms part of a dispersed group of seventeen cairns. The group is situated in the floor of a broad valley, near to a Prehistoric embanked avenue and at the NW edge of an extensive area of funerary and ceremonial monuments typical of the early and middle Bronze Age (c.2000 - 1000 BC) on the Craddock and Rillaton Moors.

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:

15069

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Other
CAU/RCHME, The Bodmin Moor Survey, Unpubl. draft text. Ch.4, 1.3, fig 17
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1291.01,

End of official list entry

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