Entrance grave 135m NNE of Water Rocks, Normandy Down, St Mary's

Reasons for Designation

The Isles of Scilly, the westernmost of the granite masses of south west England, contain a remarkable abundance and variety of archaeological remains from over 4000 years of human activity. The remote physical setting of the islands, over 40km beyond the mainland in the approaches to the English Channel, has lent a distinctive character to those remains, producing many unusual features important for our broader understanding of the social development of early communities. Throughout the human occupation there has been a gradual submergence of the islands' land area, providing a stimulus to change in the environment and its exploitation. This process has produced evidence for responses to such change against an independent time-scale, promoting integrated studies of archaeological, environmental and linguistic aspects of the islands' settlement. The islands' archaeological remains demonstrate clearly the gradually expanding size and range of contacts of their communities. By the post- medieval period (from AD 1540), the islands occupied a nationally strategic location, resulting in an important concentration of defensive works reflecting the development of fortification methods and technology from the mid 16th to the 20th centuries. An important and unusual range of post- medieval monuments also reflects the islands' position as a formidable hazard for the nation's shipping in the western approaches. The exceptional preservation of the archaeological remains on the islands has long been recognised, producing an unusually full and detailed body of documentation, including several recent surveys. Entrance graves are funerary and ritual monuments whose construction and use dates to the later Neolithic, Early and Middle Bronze Age (c.2500-1000 BC). They were constructed with a roughly circular mound of heaped rubble and earth, up to 25m in diameter, whose perimeter may be defined by a kerb of edge-set slabs or, occasionally, coursed stone. The mound contains a rectangular chamber built of edge-set slabs or coursed rubble walling, or a combination of both. The chamber was roofed by further slabs, called capstones, set across the chamber. The chamber was accessible via a gap in the mound's kerb or outer edge and often extends back beyond the centre of the mound. The cairn's mound and chamber may incorporate natural boulders and outcrops. Excavations in entrance graves have revealed cremated human bone and funerary urns, usually within the chambers but on occasion within the mound. Unburnt human bone has also been recovered but is only rarely preserved. Some chambers have also produced ritual deposits of domestic midden debris, including dark earth typical of the surface soil found within settlements, animal bone and artefact fragments. Entrance graves may occur as single monuments or in small or large groups, often being associated with other cairn types in cemeteries. They may also occur in close proximity to broadly contemporary field boundaries. The national distribution of entrance graves is heavily weighted towards the Isles of Scilly which contain 79 of the 93 surviving examples recorded nationally, the remaining 14 being located in western Cornwall.

This entrance grave on Normandy Down has survived substantially intact. Despite the effects of the antiquarian excavation, it retains clearly its main component features and the form of the large funerary chamber, while the fabric of the mound has barely been disturbed. The presence of this monument within a cemetery containing various cairn types, its proximity to a prehistoric field system on Water Rocks Down, and the disposition of this and the other cairn cemeteries on successive downs along the coast are all factors combining to illustrate well the diversity of funerary practices and the organisation of land use during the Bronze Age.

Details

The monument includes a prehistoric entrance grave situated on the western side of Normandy Down, on eastern St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly. The entrance grave survives with a circular mound of heaped rubble, 15m in diameter, rising up to 1.3m high to a platform slightly north east of the mound centre and 6.25m in diameter. The edge of the platform is defined over the south east quadrant and at the NNE sector by a kerb of edge-set slabs, up to 0.3m high, with the largest individual kerb slab, at the east, measuring 1m long, 0.5m wide and 0.1m high.

The platform is bisected by a slab-built funerary chamber measuring 6.3m along its east-west long axis, by up to 1.5m wide and 0.7m deep. The chamber sides are formed by large edge-set slabs rising to a common level along the chamber's upper edges. The chamber's end slabs have not survived, though the largest slab in the platform's kerb rises immediately behind the eastern end of the chamber. The chamber is spanned transversely by a massive slab, called a capstone, situated towards the chamber's eastern end and measuring 1.9m long, north-south, by 0.9m wide and 0.4m thick. The upper surface of the capstone bears two drilled holes, 0.4m apart and each 3cm diameter and 3cm deep, resulting from an unsuccessful 19th-20th century attempt to remove this slab. A second large capstone, 1.2m long, has subsided into the chamber near its western end. The interior of the chamber has been subject to an unrecorded antiquarian excavation, whose trench passed along the chamber, entering from the west and ending at the kerb slab to the east. The approach-line of the trench is visible as a hollow, 1.5m wide and 0.1m deep across the mound's western slope, dropping sharply where it meets the chamber. This excavation is considered to be responsible for the absence of the chamber's end slabs and those capstones that formerly filled the gaps between the surviving pair. This monument is located west of centre in a linear cairn cemetery containing three other cairns dispersed across the plateau of Normandy Down. The other cairns in this cemetery vary in form and contain large funerary chambers. A broadly contemporary field system extends south from Water Rocks Down, from 120m south west of this monument, while other prehistoric cairn cemeteries are located to the south on the successive coastal downs of Porth Hellick Down and Salakee Down.

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:

15369

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Russell, V, Isles of Scilly Survey, (1980)
Ashbee, P, Ancient Scilly, (1974)

Other
Title: 1:2500 Ordnance Survey Map, SV 9211 & 1:10000 Ordnance Survey Map, SV 91 SW Source Date: 1980 Author: Publisher: Surveyor:
Herring, P., The Archaeological Heritage of Bodmin Moor, p.47; unpubl draft text consltd. 1994
Morley, B. & Rees, S., AM7 scheduling documentation for CO 1018, 1975, consulted 1994
consulted 1994, Waters, A., AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7527, (1988)
consulted 1994, Parkes, C., AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7236.01, (1988)

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.