Bowl barrow on Huggate Pasture, 450m NNE of Pasture Dale Plantation

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 monument is one of a group of barrows dispersed from Huggate Pasture south down to Warter Wold, which in turn is related to other barrows close by on Huggate Wold. The location of the barrows close to an ancient greenway, and to the very extensive systems of dykes and hollow ways dating back to the Bronze Age, offers important insights into ancient land use and territorial divisions for social, ritual and agricultural purposes in this area of the Yorkshire Wolds. Despite part excavation by J R Mortimer in 1882, an earlier, unrecorded excavation, and the effects of ploughing over many years, the barrow still survives as a buried feature visible from aerial photographs, with below ground remains including the infilled ditch, further burial pits and archaeological information relating to its construction.

Details

The monument includes a Bronze Age bowl barrow on Huggate Pasture, 450m NNE of Pasture Dale Plantation, in an area known as West Field. The monument is one of three barrows lying close together, which together form part of a much larger group of bowl barrows dispersed across Huggate and Warter Wolds and Huggate Pasture. Although altered over the years by agricultural activity which has resulted in the virtual disappearance of the mound at ground level, the site of the barrow can be observed as a circular concentration, 18m in diameter, of chalk and flints in the ploughsoil. It will be surrounded by a ditch up to 3m wide which, although infilled by ploughing and no longer visible at ground level, will survive as a buried feature. The three barrows were originally part of a larger cemetery of 19 bowl barrows identified by J R Mortimer in the 1880s, running approximately north-south from the vicinity of Huggate Pasture down to Warter Wold. This group lies to the west of another group of 20 similar barrows identified by Mortimer, lying close to the ancient trackway running on the western side of the Wolds, part of which survives today and is known as the Wolds Way. This sub-group of three barrows also lies within a complex of linear bank and ditch systems, and should be viewed in the context of the wider ancient lanscape, where very extensive systems of banks, dykes and hollow ways link large tracts of the countryside in this region of the Yorkshire Wolds. The monument was subject to an unrecorded excavation by James Silburn in October 1851, and subsequently was reopened by Mortimer in August 1883, when the barrow mound, already reduced by the plough, measured around 0.75m in height. Mortimer found a grave containing the bones of a large male, already disturbed and replaced during the earlier excavation by Silburn. This earlier excavation had destroyed the outline of the original grave cut, so no dimensions could be recorded.

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:

26555

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Mortimer, J R, Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, (1905)

End of official list entry

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