Monument record MDO2983 - Barrow on Hardown Hill, Whitchurch Canonicorum

One of a group of nine barrows on Hardown Hill. The mound is visible as earthworks on aerial photographs and was digitally plotted during the Marshwood Vale NMP. It is one of four satellite barrows surrounding SDO2985.

(`A' - SY 40519446; `B' - SY 40529447;
`C' - SY 40529445; `D' - SY - 40509445; `E' - SY 40509447) Tumuli (NR) (1)

A group of five barrows on Hardown Hill are as follows: Barrow C: To the southeast of Barrow A, is 32 feet in diameter.

One of the barrows, in the barrow cemetery, was excavated 1916 by Dr Wyatt Wingrave, who found it to contain a pagan Saxon burial with grave-goods consisting of nine spearheads with split sockets, part of a socket, a tanged knife, a shield-boss, a bronze brooch and a perforated flint pebble. All these objects are on loan to Dorset County Museum.

Dr Wingrave assumed that the burial had been an inhumation in which the acidity of the soil had destroyed all vestiges of bone. Had it been a cremation, fragments of calcined bone would have survived. (2-3)

Symmetrically spaced around Barrow A are four alleged barrows, Barrow B, Barrow C, Barrow D and Barrow E. These barrow centres have been denuded and each dug into from the direction of Barrow A. They average 9 metres in diameter by 0.5 metres high and each has a weak intermittent ditch. Five metres out from the bank of Barrow A is a glacis type bank 0.2 metre high which cuts the inner segments of the four mounds.

The whole feature, comprising Barrow A, Barrow B, Barrow C, Barrow D and Barrow E, is extraordinary and cannot with any certainty be described as a disc barrow and four bowl barrows. It may be a folly. (4)

Description of features A to E as Ordnance Survey Field Investigator (Authority 4) above.

Features B,C,D and E appear to be original ringworks with the flat floor of each dug into, and the whole seems to form a single feature comparable with nothing outside a formal garden (see plan).

The exact provenance of the Saxon finds is uncertain. They could have come from Barrow A (presuming that this was pre-Saxon), or from Barrow F (HOB uid 1456690) or Barrow H (HOB 1456688), both of which have been dug at the centre and side. The size of the latter and their arrangement with Barrow J (HOB uid 1456691) in a line on the shoulder of the hill are compatible with Bronze Age origins, allowing the possibility of Saxon secondary burial. Mounds G (HOB uid 1456692) and Barrow J (HOB uid 1456691) have not been dug into, and Barrow B, Barrow C, Barrow D and Barrow E are too small to agree with the details of the 1916 excavation. (5)

The Saxon finds, dated mid 5th to mid 6th century, have been described (6) as coming from a primary inhumation burial in a
barrow, but the items found suggest a minimum of four or five male graves and one female burial. (7)

Whitchurch Canonicorum 4 [Barrow C] a bowl barrow. The mound is 11 paces in diameter and 2 feet high. There is a central hollow in the mound.

One of the barrows within the barrow cemetery was excavated by Dr Wyatt Wingrave and found to contain a Anglo-Saxon inhumation and grave goods. The range of grave goods indicate the possibly of a small Saxon cemetery inserted into a Bronze Age barrow. (8)

SY 407945. Group of eight roundbarrows on Hardown Hill. Scheduled. (9)

Extensive correspondence on the Hardown Hill barrows, descriptions and plans. (10)

A bowl barrow, forming part of a barrow cemetery of five bowl barrows, on Hardon Hill 600 metres west of Butt Farm. The barrow is situated to the west of the other barrows and survives as an earthwork. The barrow mound is 8 metres in diameter and 0.4 metres high and has a large flat-bottomed hollow in the middle. The mound is surrounded by two concentric banks. The inner bank, situated 3.5 metres from the mound, is one metre wide and 0.1 high and has an outer ditch one metre wide and 0.1 metre deep. An outer bank is situated two metres from the inner bank. This is 2 metres wide and about 0.3 metres high and has an outer ditch visible as a faint intermittent earthwork. The outer bank links four horseshoe-shaped earthworks symmetrically placed around the circle with the open sides facing towards the central mound. These are up to 10 metres wide and 0.5 metres high and have depressions up to 0.5 metres deep in their bases. The central mound is thought to be a bowl barrow which has been later incorporated into a more elaborate earthwork feature.

One of the five Bronze Age barrows was excavated in 1916 by Dr Wynyatt Wingrave who found a secondary Saxon inhumation (as stated by previous authorities above). The exact provence of these finds is uncertain as most of the barrows have evidence of excavation, however, the larger bowl barrow (Barrow A) seems the most likely location because of the size of the depression cut into the mound. (11)

One of a group of nine barrows on Hardown Hill. The mound is visible as earthworks on aerial photographs (1) and was digitally plotted during the Marshwood Vale NMP. It is the south-east of four satellite barrows surrounding SDO2985. It appears to form a circular ring-mound, 10m across with a central hollow, 4.5m across. One of the barrows was excavated in 1916 by Dr Wynyatt Wingrave who found secondary Anglo Saxon inhumations (2).

National Record of the Historic Environment, 450197 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Grinsell, L V, 1982, Dorset Barrows Supplement, Whitchurch Canonicorum 6b (Monograph). SWX1703.

<1> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1932, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1931, 247-250 (Serial). SDO35.

<1> Royal Air Force, 22-JAN-1948, RAF/CPE/UK/2431 RP 3175-6 (Aerial Photograph). SDO14698.

<2> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 247-9 (Monograph). SDO97.

<2> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 265 (Monograph). SDO97.

‘(19) BARROWS, on Hardown Hill ¾ m. S.E. of the church, are nine in number:—(a) a disc barrow consisting of a mound 28 ft. in diam. and about 1 ft. high with a slight encircling bank and ditch, the former 57 ft. in diam. Symmetrically disposed around it are four barrows averaging 1½ ft. high, … (c) to the S.E. and 32 ft. in diam., … In 1916 one of these barrows was excavated and found to contain a pagan Saxon burial. The objects found included an umbo, axe-heads, spear-heads and a hammer-headed brooch, all now on loan to the Dorset County Museum. (Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc., LIII, 247–250.)’

Record last edited

Feb 15 2024 10:09AM