Longmans Hill long barrow

Overview

Heritage Category: Scheduled Monument

List Entry Number: 1010246

Date first listed: 09-Oct-1981

Date of most recent amendment: 08-Apr-1992

Location

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

National Grid Reference: SP 75079 67745

Summary

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

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 Longmans Hill barrow has been slightly altered and may have been partially excavated, it retains considerable archaeological potential in the surviving mound of the barrow and its buried ditches.

History

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details

The barrow known as Longman's Hill is located at the western end of Pitsford village, just to the north of the High Street. This long barrow consists of a rectangular mound, which measures 30m from east to west and 11m from north to south. The barrow stands 1.5m high at the east end and 2m high at the west end with a flat top about 3m wide. At the western end the mound has been truncated by a modern pathway, but the major part of the barrow mound is complete. There is no trace of the side ditches but it is considered that the northern ditch remains buried and that the southern ditch was damaged when the adjacent road was built in the 19th century. The northern ditch is believed to survive to its original width of 4m while the surviving portion of the southern ditch is 2m wide. It is recorded that a tumulus containing Saxon burials was explored in the vicinity in the last century, although the location of this investigation is not known with certainty. It is possible that the Neolithic long barrow was reused for burials in the Saxon period.

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: 13671

Legacy System: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England, , Archaeological Sites in Northamptonshire161-2

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 Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.