Long barrow 500m NNW of Ulceby Lodge

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1492839
Date first listed:: 06-Jun-2025

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

Local Heritage Hub

Unlock and explore hidden histories, aerial photography, and listed buildings and places for every county, district, city and major town across England.

Discover more

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1492839
Date first listed:: 06-Jun-2025
Location Description:: Located approximately 500m NNW of Ulceby Lodge on the north side of the A1104 between Ulceby Cross and Alford, centred at TF 4193 7471.

Location

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

County:: Lincolnshire
District:: East Lindsey (District Authority)
Parish:: Ulceby with Fordington
National Grid Reference:: TF4192874711

Summary

Cropmark of a Neolithic long barrow located approximately 500m NNW of Ulceby Lodge.

Reasons for Designation

The long barrow approximately 500m NNW of Ulceby Lodge is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Survival: as a Neolithic long barrow visible as clearly defined cropmarks and soil marks on aerial photography and satellite imagery;

* 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 the barrows were constructed;

* Period: as one of very few monument types dating to the Neolithic, 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 insight into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country.

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 500m NNW of Ulceby Lodge is visible on aerial photographs of the area taken in 1998, and as a faint cropmark on Google Earth satellite imagery in December 2003. A geophysics survey was undertaken in 2019 as part of the Lincolnshire Long Barrows project and has confirmed the location of the elongated enclosure ditch, broadly matching that identified on aerial photography. Several discrete magnetic responses within the enclosure may relate to the barrow, and the magnetic survey suggests the barrow ditch was open to the west.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: Cropmark of a Neolithic long barrow located approximately 500m NNW of Ulceby Lodge on the north side of the A1104 between Ulceby Cross and Alford, centred at TF 4193 7471. The barrow sits near the crest of the hill on the south-east side of the head of a dry valley that leads to Haugh to the NNE, on fairly level ground at a height of approximately 80m AOD.

DESCRIPTION: The cropmark remains of an elongated U-shaped ditched enclosure, visible on aerial photography of 1998 and Google earth imagery of 2003, confirmed by geophysical survey undertaken in 2019. The barrow is elongated and aligned roughly east to west, measuring approximately 48m by 22m. Within the ditches there is a distinct pale elongated area which is possibly the remains of a levelled chalk mound measuring approximately 38m by 14m; the cropmark is not clear, but this is possibly the remains of a levelled long barrow. Magnetic survey suggests the barrow ditch was open to the west.

A later linear ditch or boundary is mapped as running through the barrow to what appears to be the cropmarks of a later prehistoric to Roman rectilinear enclosure, located around 115m to the south-west of the barrow. A round barrow of possible Bronze Age date lies around 670m to the north-west of the barrow. Bluestone Heath Road, a prehistoric trackway, lies 2km to the north-west. These features do not form part of the scheduling.

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 may also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the contemporary landscape in which the monument was set.

EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: The scheduled area is marked on the attached map and includes a 5m buffer zone which is considered necessary for the support and preservation of the monument. There are no known exclusions.

Sources

Books and journals
Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles, (2006)
Jones, D (Author), Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 1998, pp83-114, (1998)
Last, J (ed), Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows, (2007)
Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death, (2000)
Websites
Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer, Monument record MLI127423 - Rectilinear Enclosure, Ulceby Lodge, accessed 11 February 2025 from https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI127423
Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer, Monument record MLI127424 - Possible Neolithic Long Barrow, Ulceby Lodge, accessed 11 February 2025 from https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI127424

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.