Two round cairns 768m and 778m 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.

These round cairns on Craddock Moor survive well and have not been archaeologically excavated. The cairns' importance is further enhanced by their 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

Monument includes two small round cairns, part of a dispersed group of cairns situated on Craddock Moor on south-east Bodmin Moor. The two cairns in this monument are centred 10m apart on a NE-SW axis. The SW cairn survives as a circular mound, 3.5m diameter and 0.5m high, composed of small stones up to 0.2m across, densely consolidated in a peaty soil matrix. The mound is largely turf-covered with no evidence for any previous disturbance apart from some recent removal of turf from the NE side, exposing the outer layer of the cairns stone content. The NE cairn also survives as a circular mound, 6m diameter and rising to 1m high, composed of small to medium sized stones, up to 0.4m across, beneath the mostly turf-covered surface. The mound has relatively steep sides rising to a flatter, domed upper surface 4.5m diameter. The edge of this upper surface is marked by an intermittent line of larger stones projecting through the turf in most sectors of the cairn's periphery, the visible remains of a kerb surrounding the cairn's mound. This cairn has a slight hollow, 1m diameter and 0.2m deep, in its east side resulting from a limited stone-robbing episode long since ceased as the hollow is now thickly turf-covered. Both of these cairns have been surveyed but neither has been archaeologically excavated. They form part of a dispersed group of seventeen cairns close to a Prehistoric embanked avenue. The group is situated in the floor of a broad valley near 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:

15066

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 1291.08,
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1291.07,

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.