Details

The monument includes a long barrow 400m north west of Sevenbarrows House. The
monument survives as an earthwork with the eastern end standing to a height of
1.5m. It is orientated east-west with the eastern end partly in woodland. On
the north side of the mound the ditch is most clearly defined, surviving to a
width of c.8m and a depth of up to 0.4m. The mound survives to a length of
70m and a width of 18m.
Partial excavation in 1964 produced a crouched female adult burial with
perforated marine shells as well as other bones, animal and human, flint tools
and pottery. The site has also been dated to 3415 BC, currently the earliest
date for a long barrow in Britain.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Long barrows were constructed as earthen or drystone mounds with flanking
ditches and acted as funerary monuments during the Early and Middle Neolithic
periods (3400-2400 BC). They represent the burial places of Britain's early
farming communities and, as such, are amongst the oldest field monuments
surviving visibly in the present landscape. Where investigated, long barrows
appear to have been used for communal burial, often with only parts of the
human remains having been selected for interment. Certain sites provide
evidence for several phases of funerary monument preceding the barrow and,
consequently, it is probable that long barrows acted as important ritual sites
for local communities over a considerable period of time. Some 500 examples of
long barrows and long cairns, their counterparts in the uplands, are recorded
nationally. As one of the few types of Neolithic structure to survive as
earthworks, and due to their comparative rarity, their considerable age and
their longevity as a monument type, all long barrows are considered to be
nationally important.

Only three long barrows are recorded in Berkshire. As such they represent
outliers to the important cluster of similar monuments in Wiltshire and
Oxfordshire. This example has particular significance as it has produced the
earliest date for such a monument in Britain.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Gaffney, V, Tingle, M, The Maddle Farm Project, (1989)
Grinsell, L V, Archaeology of Wessex, (1958)
Grinsell, L V, 'Berkshire Archaeological Journal' in Berkshire Archaeological Journal (Volume 40), , Vol. 40, (1936)
Wymer, J J, 'Berkshire Archaeological Journal' in Berkshire Archaeological Journal, , Vol. 62, (1965)
Wymer, J J, 'Antiquity' in Antiquity, , Vol. 44, (1970)

Source: Historic England