Long barrow to the north of Withcall

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Overview

Neolithic long barrow surviving as a cropmark. Read the official list entry to find out more.

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1456916
Date first listed:: 24-Mar-2021

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1456916
Date first listed:: 24-Mar-2021
Location Description:: The barrow is located 380m to the north of Home Farm, Withcall.

Location

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

County:: Lincolnshire
District:: East Lindsey (District Authority)
Parish:: Withcall
National Grid Reference:: TF2826884281

Summary

Neolithic long barrow surviving as a cropmark.

Reasons for Designation

The long barrow to the north of Withcall is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

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

* 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 period, 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 insight into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country;

* Group value: for its close proximity to other contemporary scheduled monuments, notably two other long barrows approximately 326m north.

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 to the north of Withcall was first identified from aerial photographs during the Lincolnshire Long Barrows Assessment Project (2016). It has not been excavated.

Details

Principal elements

A neolithic long barrow located 380m to the north of Home Farm, Withcall, on the east-facing slope of a valley over an un-named tributary that runs into the River Lud. The site is located to the north-east of the head of the valley and the spring that feeds the tributary. It lies approximately 97m AOD, near to the crest of the hill.

Description

The long barrow is visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs, centred at TF 2826 8428. The barrow is elongated north-west by south-east and visible as an oval ditched enclosure with maximum dimensions measuring 38m by 21m. There is a slight hint of a compacted central mound showing as a negative cropmark but the barrow is not visible to the naked eye and there is no discernible mound. It is under arable cultivation.

Valuable archaeological deposits will be preserved 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. To the south-east of the long barrow are two scheduled moated sites (LE 1016473 and LE 1016474) and the unscheduled remains of the abandoned medieval village of Withcall plotted as part of the National Mapping Programme (NMP). Two further long barrows (currently unscheduled) have been identified approximately 326m north of the long barrow to the north of Withcall.

Extent of Scheduling

The site of the monument includes a 5m boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

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)
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), pp83-114

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.