Spellow Hills Long Barrow 440m SSE of Langton Grange Farm

Summary

The earthwork and buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow lying NNW to SSE.

Reasons for Designation

The long barrow known as Spellow Hills is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Survival: as a clearly defined earthwork representing the burial practices, beliefs and social organisation amongst early prehistoric communities;

* Potential: for the buried 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 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 with three other long barrows in the vicinity: the long barrow 330m south-east of Langton Grange Farm (NHLE 1492924), the barrow 650m south of Langton Grange Cottage (NHLE 1013910), and the barrow 465m north-west of Dexthorpe (NHLE 1015770).

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 known as Spellow Hills, which survives as an earthwork, was first documented by William Stukeley in the C18 and is shown as “three barrows” on the first edition Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1824. It was originally thought to be three adjoining round barrows, an impression given by the extremely uneven surface, caused by antiquarian excavations. The only surviving record of these excavations is a reference in White’s Lincolnshire directory of 1856 which refers to a quantity of human bones having been recently discovered there. Oral tradition has preserved various accounts of the origins and use of the Spellow Hills barrow. It was added to the schedule of monuments in August 1934.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: the earthwork and buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow aligned north-north-west to south-south-east.

DESCRIPTION: the barrow is located to the west of the A16 Alford-Spilsby road, 440m SSE of Langton Grange Farm. It lies on a shallow south-facing slope at approximately 90m OD at the head of a valley of one of the tributaries of the River Lymn.

The earthwork remains of the barrow include a mound aligned north-north-west to south-south-east measuring 54m along its axis and 18m in width at the southern end, tapering to 13m across at the northern end. At the southern end the mound stands approximately 2.6m above ground level and 1.2m high at the northern end.

The earthwork appears as three "mounds" separated by two broad, rounded hollows which cross the width of the earthwork. The southernmost hollow is the deeper of the two but neither of the dividing hollows reach ground level.

Each of the ‘three’ mounds is marked by ‘craters’ or hollows at the top or to the side of the ‘mounds’. The ‘mound’ at the southern end of the earthwork is marked by a small, shallow roughly circular ‘crater’ located centrally at the top of the mound. In the central part of the earthwork, the apparent ‘mound’ is marked by a broad, circular hollow in the centre and open to the east side of the mound. At the southern end of the earthwork there is a hollow on the western side of the ‘mound’.

The form of the long barrow was confirmed by geophysical survey undertaken as part of the Lincolnshire long barrows project. Valuable archaeological deposits will be preserved in the 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 will also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set.

This long barrow is one of a number of similar monuments which are associated with a tributary of the River Lymn. These locational associations pose wider questions concerning the ritual nature of the area and have significant implications for the study of communication, settlement patterns and demography during the Neolithic period. The barrow is associated with three other barrows in the vicinity: the long barrow 330m south-east of Langton Grange Farm (NHLE 1492924), the barrow 650m south of Langton Grange Cottage (NHLE 1013910) scheduled in 1996, and the barrow 465m north-west of Dexthorpe, (NHLE 1015770) scheduled in 1997.

EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: the mapped depiction of the barrow includes a 5m buffer zone around the barrow which is considered necessary for the support and preservation of the monument.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

27856

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death, (2000)
Last, J, Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows, (2007)
Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, the earliest monuments in the British Isles, (2006)
Jones, D, ‘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
White, , White's Directory of Lincolnshire, (1856)
Meaney, A, Meeting places in Proceedings of Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Vol. 82, (1993), 67-93

Websites
Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer, accessed 3 March 2025 from https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI43619

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