Bowl barrow 450m south-east of Thruxted Mill, one of six in Eggringe Wood

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1012350
Date first listed:: 17-Jan-1975

User submitted image — Uploaded by Information Analysis This photo may not represent the current condition of the site. Almost 350,000 images and stories have been added to the Missing Pieces Project so far. Share your story.
View all

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

Local Heritage Hub

Unlock and explore hidden histories, aerial photography, and listed buildings and places for every county, district, city and major town across England.

Discover more

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1012350
Date first listed:: 17-Jan-1975
Date of most recent amendment:: 29-Jul-1991

Location

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

County:: Kent
District:: Canterbury (District Authority)
Parish:: Petham
National Grid Reference:: TR 09799 50691

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. Their ubiquity and their tendency to occupy prominent locations makes them 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.

Despite the small-scale partial excavation attested by the hole in the top of the mound, the barrow near Thruxted Mill in Eggringe Wood is considered to retain significant archaeological potential since much of the mound, the burials in or beneath it, the original ground surface and the surrounding ditch all survive intact. The barrow is one of a group of six similar examples in the immediate locality. Such a concentration is unusual in Kent and together the barrows demonstrate the importance of the area for burial in the Bronze Age.

Details

The monument includes a bowl barrow which comprises an earthen mound encircled by a now-infilled quarry ditch. This is the most upstanding of the examples in Eggringe Wood, surviving to a height of 1.8m. The mound is some 18m in diameter but the ditch beyond is no longer visible, having been infilled by erosion from the mound and by leaf-litter. The diameter of the mound and ditch together is 22m. A hole in the top of the mound shows that partial excavation has taken place, but the original ground surface below the barrow mound appears not to have been reached. The many flint nodules from the digging suggest that it was largely from such material that the mound was originally constructed.

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:: 12829
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Other
Darvill, T., MPP Single Monument Class Description - Bowl Barrows, (1988)
Kent - bowl barrow in Eggringe Wood, TR05 SE,

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.