Bowl barrow 350m north east of The Wreay

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1012820
Date first listed:: 07-Feb-1997

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

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

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1012820
Date first listed:: 07-Feb-1997

Location

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

District:: Westmorland and Furness (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Catterlen
National Grid Reference:: NY 48511 30477

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. Often occupying prominent locations, they are 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 minor surface disturbance to the western part of the monument and the presence of a drystone wall across the centre of the mound, the bowl barrow 350m north east of The Wreay survives reasonably well. It will contain undisturbed archaeological deposits within the mound and upon the old land surface beneath. It lies close to two earlier long cairns and demonstrates changing burial practice during the prehistoric period. Information on its relationship to those adjacent monuments will be preserved.

Details

The monument includes a bowl barrow located on the southern edge of a local high point 350m north east of The Wreay. It includes a slightly oval earthen mound up to 0.3m high with maximum dimensions of 20m by 18m. A drystone wall aligned north-south crosses the mound and to the west of the wall there is a slight circular depression in the barrow's surface suggesting an unrecorded antiquarian investigation of part of the monument. The drystone wall is excluded from the scheduling but the ground beneath it is included.

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:: 23767
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Other
Darvill, T., MPP Single Monument Class Description - Bowl Barrows, (1988)

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.