Bowl barrow and pond barrow within Well Bottom Wood, part of the Winterbourne Poor Lot round barrow cemetery

Reasons for Designation

Round barrow cemeteries date to the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC). They comprise closely-spaced groups of up to 30 round barrows - rubble or earthen mounds covering single or multiple burials. Most 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 several different types of round barrow, occasionally associated with earlier long barrows. Where large scale investigation has been undertaken around them, contemporary or later "flat" burials between the barrow mounds have often been revealed. Round barrow cemeteries occur across most of lowland Britain, with a marked concentration in Wessex. In some cases, they are clustered around other important contemporary monuments such as henges. Often occupying prominent locations, they are a major historic element in the modern landscape, whilst their diversity and their longevity as a monument type provide important information on the variety of beliefs and social organisation amongst early prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period and a substantial proportion of surviving or partly-surviving examples are considered worthy of protection.

The Poor Lot cemetery survives well as one of very few examples in Dorset known to exhibit such a wide range of different forms of round barrow, including some of the rare barrow types, such as disc and pond barrows. The cemetery is unusually situated within a valley bottom.

Details

The monument includes a bowl and pond barrow aligned east-west, and forming part of the Poor Lot round barrow cemetery, situated on the South Dorset Downs within the valley bottom of the South Winterbourne. These are two of the 44 barrows which are known to occur within the Poor Lot cemetery. The bowl barrow to the west has a mound composed of earth and chalk, with a maximum diameter of 16m and a maximum height of c.1.75m. This is surrounded by a ditch from which material was quarried during the construction of the monument. This has become infilled over the years, but is known to survive as a buried feature 3m wide. The pond barrow, which is situated 50m to the east of the bowl barrow, is enclosed by an outer bank with maximum dimensions of 6m in width and c.0.65m in height. This encloses a sunken sub-circular area which is c.0.8m deep, 25m from east to west and 30m from north to south. The verge of the road to the north east has removed part of the outer bank of the barrow. There is a gap in the bank on the south western side of the monument c.1m in width which may represent an entrance.

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:

22940

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 463
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 463
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 463
Grinsell, L V, Procs Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Soc. in Dorset Barrows, (1959), 147

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.