Bowl barrow 450m north west of Lowes Farm: part of a barrow cemetery on and around Salthouse Heath

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1013578
Date first listed:: 26-Jun-1924

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.

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

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:: 1013578
Date first listed:: 26-Jun-1924
Date of most recent amendment:: 30-Oct-1995

Location

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

County:: Norfolk
District:: North Norfolk (District Authority)
Parish:: Salthouse
National Grid Reference:: TG 07410 41894

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.

The bowl barrow 450m north west of Lowes Farm shows no sign of having undergone any major disturbance and will retain archaeological remains and information concerning its construction and the manner and duration of its use. Evidence for the local environment during and prior to that period is likely to be preserved also, in soils buried beneath the mound. The barrow is a component of the largest round barrow cemetery in Norfolk, and has additional interest in that context. Limited investigations of other barrows in the group have shown that the cemetery developed over several centuries and includes different types of round barrow and considerable diversity in forms and rites of burial. The evidence contained in the barrows as a group is therefore of wider importance for the study of the character and development of the prehistoric population of the area.

Details

The monument includes a bowl barrow which is within a dispersed round barrow cemetery extending over an area of c.1.3 sq km. The barrow is situated on the north side of a minor road which crosses the southern end of Salthouse Heath, and is visible as an earthen mound standing to a height of c.1m and covering a circular area c.24m in diameter. The mound is thought to be encircled by a ditch c.3m wide similar to ditches which can still be seen around other barrows in the area. This has become completely infilled and is no longer visible on the ground surface, but will survive as a buried feature. The estimated overall diameter of the barrow is therefore 30m.

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:: 21366
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Lawson, A J, Martin, A E, Priddy, D, 'East Anglian Archaeol' in The Barrows of East Anglia, , Vol. 12, (1981), Pl.XI

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.