Butt Mound bowl barrow, Butt Lees

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.

Butt Mound bowl barrow survives well as a substantial earthwork feature with associated buried deposits, and represents a good example of the monument type in an area where the above ground survival of prehistoric features is rare. As part of a former barrow cemetery, of which only one other mound is now evident, its significance as a boundary marker in the early medieval period attests to its continued importance as a feature of the landscape. Its reuse as an archery butt in the medieval and post-medieval periods would have involved little disturbance, and the monument will thus include intact archaeological deposits with the potential for the recovery of valuable artefactual and ecological evidence for over 4000 years of human activity.

Details

The monument includes a bowl barrow situated in Butt Lees approximately 250m west of St Denys' Church. The mound, which survives to a height of nearly 1m, was formerly circular but has been curtailed slightly on the north side and now measures approximately 12m by 9.5m. The encircling ditch, from which material used in the construction of the mound would have been quarried, is no longer visible above ground but is thought to survive as a buried feature.

Butt Mound is one of a group of four mounds which was recorded in Butt Lees in the early 20th century. The only other mound still evident, Folk Moot, is the suject of a separate scheduling. The group appears to represent the remains of a Bronze Age barrow cemetery which, in the early medieval period, served to mark the boundary between the villages of Silkby and Willoughby. The surviving mounds are thought to have been reused as archery butts in the medieval and post-medieval periods.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

22751

Legacy System:

RSM

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.