Long barrow in the grounds of Long Barrow House

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 long barrows are recorded in England. 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 180 long barrows of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset form the densest and one of the most important concentrations of monuments of this type in the country. The Long Barrow House monument is significant as it survives comparatively well and, with no evidence of formal excavation, has considerable archaeological potential.

Details

The monument survives as an earthen mound in a private garden, situated just off the crest of a steep east-facing slope above the River Meon. The barrow mound is rectangular in plan, flat- topped and orientated NE-SW. It is 30m long, 15m wide and stands to an average height of 3.2m above the ground surface. Clean, closely packed chalk rubble is exposed in the sides of a central quarry pit dug into the mound. A large ditch, from which mound material was quarried, is recorded as having been found by a former owner in the garden to the east. Both this and the western ditch survive as buried features, having been infilled over the years.

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:

12091

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Smith, I F, Long Barrows in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, (1979)

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.