Ancient Monuments

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Bowl barrow 250m south east of Tower Hill

A Scheduled Monument in Newton Tony, Wiltshire

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Coordinates

Latitude: 51.1432 / 51°8'35"N

Longitude: -1.6638 / 1°39'49"W

OS Eastings: 423617.801993

OS Northings: 138271.300826

OS Grid: SU236382

Mapcode National: GBR 61Z.65V

Mapcode Global: VHC32.3JSG

Entry Name: Bowl barrow 250m south east of Tower Hill

Scheduled Date: 12 March 1996

Source: Historic England

Source ID: 1013985

English Heritage Legacy ID: 26761

County: Wiltshire

Civil Parish: Newton Tony

Built-Up Area: Newton Tony

Traditional County: Wiltshire

Lieutenancy Area (Ceremonial County): Wiltshire

Church of England Parish: Allington with Boscombe St John the Baptist

Church of England Diocese: Salisbury

Details

The monument includes a ditched bowl barrow, lying on a gentle south facing
slope immediately on the southern edge of Tower Hill Plantation.
The barrow has a mound c.16m in diameter and 0.4m high. The ditch surrounding
the mound, from which material to construct it was quarried, is not visible on
the surface but survives as a buried feature c.2m wide.

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

Since 1916 the Porton Down Range has been used for military purposes. As on
the Salisbury Plain Training Area, this has meant that it has not been subject
to the intensive arable farming seen elsewhere on the Wessex chalk. Porton, as
a result, is one of very few surviving areas of uncultivated chalk downland in
England and contains a range of well-preserved archaeological sites, many of
Neolithic or Bronze Age date. These include long barrows and round barrows,
flint mines, and evidence for settlement, land division and agriculture.
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 organisation amongst early
prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period
and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of
protection.

The bowl barrow 250m south east of Tower Hill is a comparatively well
preserved example of its class and will contain archaeological remains
providing information about Bronze Age beliefs, economy and environment.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Grinsell, L V, The Victoria History of the County of Wiltshire, (1957), 147

Source: Historic England

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