Long barrow 350m south east of Bury Farm

Overview

Heritage Category: Scheduled Monument

List Entry Number: 1012317

Date first listed: 16-Dec-1976

Date of most recent amendment: 03-Feb-1995

Location

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

National Grid Reference: TL 05505 40441

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 examples of long barrows and long cairns, their counterparts in the uplands, are recorded nationally. 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.

The Bury Farm long barrow survives well in an area where few long barrows survive as earthworks.

History

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

Details

The monument includes a long barrow orientated north west-south west and located along the crest of a Greensand ridge. Viewed in plan the mound is 70m long by 15m wide, with straight parallel sides and rounded ends. The sides are steep and the top fairly flat; the overall height is about 1.5m. Flanking the mound on its north east and south west sides are ditches from which material was quarried during the construction of the monument. Although these have become largely infilled over the years they survive as slight earthworks 1m wide and 0.3m deep.

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: 20455

Legacy System: RSM

Sources

Other
Hunting 68:9/7403-4, 74:8/2615-6, 76:12/1025-6, 81:13/9372-3,
RAF: 541/148: 4100-1,
Simco, A, Beds. 7487, (1982)

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.