Long Barrow 290m south of Cowdyke Plantation

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

Overview

A long barrow defined by crop marks and a low earthwork, located 290m south of Cowdyke Plantation. Read the official list entry to find out more.

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1013906
Date first listed:: 21-May-1996

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places. Almost 350,000 photos and stories have been added so far.

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:: 1013906
Date first listed:: 21-May-1996
Date of most recent amendment:: 02-Jul-2024
Location Description:: North-west of Walesby, Lincolnshire. Cantred at TF1515194602.

Location

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

County:: Lincolnshire
District:: West Lindsey (District Authority)
Parish:: Stainton Le Vale
National Grid Reference:: TF1515194602

Summary

A long barrow defined by crop marks and a low earthwork, located 290m south of Cowdyke Plantation.

Reasons for Designation

The Neolithic long barrow 290m south of Cowdyke Plantation is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Survival: as the buried remains of a prehistoric long barrow confirmed to survive from geophysical survey and visible on aerial photography as a clearly defined crop mark;

* Potential: for the buried archaeological deposits which retain considerable potential to provide evidence relating to social organisation and demographics, cultural associations, human development, disease, diet, and death rituals. Buried environmental evidence can also inform us about the landscape in which the barrows were constructed;

* Period: as one of very few monument types dating to the early prehistoric, it is highly representative of the period;

* Rarity: as an example of a monument type which is rare nationally and one of very few monument types to offer us insights into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country;

* Group value: for its close proximity to other contemporary and spatially-related scheduled monuments, including a scheduled Neolithic long barrow 720m east of Otby House (NHLE 1013922) and a Neolithic long mortuary enclosure and two Bronze Age bowl barrows immediately north of Otby Top Farm (NHLE 1018862), and with the prehistoric trackway now known as High Street (not scheduled). This close association indicates the ritual significance of the location during the prehistoric period.

History

Long barrows and chambered tombs are the main forms of Neolithic funerary monument, constructed from before 3800 BC with new monuments continuing to be built throughout the 4th millennium BC. Where they are precisely dated it appears their primary use for burial rarely lasted longer than about 100 years. Generally comprising long, linear earthen mounds or stone cairns, often flanked by ditches, they can appear as distinctive features in the landscape. They measure up to about 100m in length, 35m in width and 4m in height, and are sometimes trapezoidal or oval in plan. Earthen long barrows are found mostly in southern and eastern England and are usually unchambered, although some examples have been found to contain timber mortuary structures. Regional variation in construction is generally a reflection of locally available resources. Megalithic or stone chambered tombs are most common in Scotland and Wales but are also found in those parts of England with ready access to the large stones and boulders from which they are constructed, especially the Cotswolds, the South-West and Kent. There are around 540 long barrows recorded nationally.

Long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds have been identified as a distinct regional grouping of monuments in which the flanking ditches are continued around the ends of the barrow mound, either continuously or broken by a single causeway towards one end. A small number survive as earthworks but the majority are known from crop marks and soil marks where no or very low mounds are evident on the surface. Not all Lincolnshire long barrows had mounds and our current understanding of Neolithic mortuary practices in this part of the country is that the large barrow mound was in fact the final phase of construction which was not reached by all monuments. Previously many of the sites where only the ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as a barrow where the mound has been degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In some cases the ditched enclosure (mortuary enclosure) represents a monument which never developed a mound.

The long barrow 290m south of Cowdyke Plantation was first scheduled 21 May 1996. A geophysical survey was carried out in February 2017 to test the form and location of the long barrow.

Details

Principal elements: A long barrow defined by crop marks and low earthworks. It is located in the centre of the field between Cowdyke Plantation to the north and Spring Ride Plantations to the south. It is 2km west of Stainton le Vale on the east side of the B1225. The barrow is situated at the head of a valley facing east over two springs that form tributaries running into Waithe Beck and its associated valley. The barrow sits at 152m AOD below the crest of the hill.

Description: The long barrow is visible as a crop mark on aerial photographs, and as a very shallow earthwork on a digital elevation model. The barrow enclosure ditch is trapezoidal in form, elongated west to east and measuring 47m by 22m with the eastern end being the widest. The ditch is in the region of 3m to 4.2m wide, though some spreading of the ditch fills is apparent in the south-west portion of the monument. The internal mound is visible as an extremely shallow amorphous earthwork on a digital elevation model. The ditched enclosure is believed to have been a focus for mortuary activities, including the exposure of human remains and the remains of structures and deposits associated with these activities will survive as buried features.

Although the long barrow south of Cowdyke Plantation cannot be seen on the ground, its survival in good condition beneath the present ground surface is clearly apparent from air photography and the geophysical survey undertaken as part of this assessment.

The long barrow is one of a group of similar monuments associated with the valley of the Waithe Beck and with the prehistoric trackway now known as High Street. These associations pose wider questions concerning not only the ritual significance of the chosen locations of these barrows but also the patterns of Neolithic settlement on the Lincolnshire Wolds.

Valuable archaeological deposits will be preserved in the low mound, on the buried ground surface and in the fills of the ditch. These will provide rare information concerning the dating and construction of the monument and the sequence of mortuary practices at the site. The same deposits may also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the contemporary landscape in which the monument was set.

Extent of scheduling: The scheduled area includes a 5m buffer zone around the barrow, which is considered necessary for the support and preservation of the monument. There are no exclusions from the scheduling.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 27886
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles, (2006)
Last, J (ed), Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows, (2007)
Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death, (2000)
'Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence' in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, , Vol. 64, (1998), 83-114
Other
Geophysical Survey Report LLB1-26 Long barrow south of Cowdyke Plantation 2019 Archaeological Project Services/Heritage Lincolnshire

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.