Two bowl barrows in Hobbin's Belt, 820m south-east of White House Farm: part of Seven Hills barrow cemetery

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1011446
Date first listed:: 30-Nov-1925

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

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

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

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:: 1011446
Date first listed:: 30-Nov-1925
Date of most recent amendment:: 04-Nov-1993

Location

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

County:: Suffolk
District:: East Suffolk (District Authority)
Parish:: Nacton
National Grid Reference:: TM 22606 41120

Reasons for Designation

Bowl barrows, the most numerous form of round barrow, are funerary monuments dating from the Late Neolithic period to the Late Bronze Age, with most examples belonging to the period 2400-1500 BC. They were constructed as earthen or rubble mounds, sometimes ditched, which covered single or multiple burials. They occur either in isolation or grouped as cemeteries and often acted as a focus for burials in later periods. Often superficially similar, although differing widely in size, they exhibit regional variations in form and a diversity of burial practices. There are over 10,000 surviving bowl barrows recorded nationally (many more have already been destroyed), occurring across most of lowland Britain. Often occupying prominent locations, they are a major historic element in the modern landscape and their considerable variation of form and longevity as a monument type provide important information on the diversity of beliefs and social organisations amongst early prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of protection.

The barrows 820m south-east of White House Farm are components of one of the best examples of a round barrow cemetery in Suffolk. Most such cemeteries developed over a considerable period of time, often many centuries, and in some cases acted as a focus for burials as late as the early medieval period. They exhibit considerable diversity of burial rite, plan and form, frequently including different types of round barrow and, wherever large scale investigation beyond barrows has been undertaken, revealing contemporary or later 'flat' burials between the barrow mounds. The barrows survive well and retain important archaeological information, both in themselves and in relation to the other barrows in the cemetery. Evidence concerning their construction, the manner and duration of their use, and also the local environment, at and prior to the time of their construction, will be preserved in the mounds and in the soils buried beneath them. Seven Hills cemetery is part of a larger group of round barrows and circular ditched enclosures which extend in a line to the south-east, over a distance of 3km, to Levington Heath. The former parish boundary between Nacton, to the south, and Bucklesham and Foxhall, to the north, follows the same line, showing a relationship which is of particular interest for the study of the prehistoric and medieval landscape history of the area.

Details

The monument includes two bowl barrows within Seven Hills barrow cemetery, located within a narrow belt of woodland bounded by the A1156, to the north, and the Ipswich-Felixstowe railway line to the south. The barrows are visible as two earthen mounds, set c.26m apart on a line north-west to south- east. The north-western mound, which adjoins the southern verge of the A1156, overlooking the road, stands to a height of 1m, and the south-eastern mound to a height of 1.2m. Each covers a sub-circular area measuring c.26m north-south by 24m east-west.

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:: 21284
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Wodderspoon, J, Memorials of Ipswich, (1850)
Other
Suffolk SMR ACQ 30, 31,

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.