Monument record MDO3842 - Bowl barrow in Gore Wood, Fontmell Magna

A Bronze Age ditched bowl barrow. The small barrow mound has possibly been modified by ornamental landscaping and is set within a circular bank with an external ditch. The platform defined by this bank is raised above the level of the ground around the monument. The record for this monument has been enhanced with support from Wessex Water.

A disc barrow 17.1m in diameter. The mound is 3.7m in diameter and 0.2m high and the platform is 9.1m in diameter. The outer bank is 2.0m wide and 0.2m high and the surrounding ditch outside the bank is 2.0m wide and 0.2m deep. <2>

Mound, perhaps a barrow. <3>

ST 88891820: This feature comprises a small mound, 6.0m in diameter and 0.5m high, eccentrically placed within a circular bank 0.4m high on its inner side and 0.7m on its outer with an overall diameter of 11.5m, the whole surrounded by a ditch 2.0m wide and 0.2m deep mutilated in the south east quarter. Small ornamental trees have at some time been planted around the inner dished rim.

There are many old surface diggings in the immediate area and one trench impinges on the south side of the mound. The feature occupies a good barrow situation at the head of a wide combe and in the absence of the surrounding coppice, it would command a magnificent view across the Blackmore Vale.
The mound profile does not conform to that typical for a disc barrow, and from visual evidence it may represent a bowl barrow now mutilated by landscaping, or a barrow form which is of local variation and not a readily recognisable type. (The work bears a marked resemblance to a circular mound (ST 83 SW 62) set within the confines of White Sheet Castle (Hill fort) Wilts, 19 kilometres to the north north west).
Resurveyed at 1:2500 on AM. <4>

Former HER card originally distinguished between the barrow (37A) and the Anglo-Saxon charter reference (37B) (RMAT 12/10/2015)

<1> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1962 (Map). SWX1540.

ST 88891821 Tumulus (NR).

<2> Grinsell, L V, 1982, Dorset Barrows Supplement, 39-40 (Monograph). SWX1703.

<3> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1972, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume IV (North), 27 (Monograph). SDO99.

(37) Mound (88901821), perhaps a barrow, in Gore Wood near the parish boundary with Ashmore, lies at 750 ft above O.D. on a gentle W slope near the summit of the escarpment.. The mound is about 12ft. in diam and 1ft. high. It is separated by a 9ft. berm from an encircling bank 7ft. wide and less than 1ft. high, beyond the bank there is a ditch 8ft. across and less than 1ft. deep.

<4> Stone, J W, Field Investigators Comments JWS, F1 JWS 24-OCT-78 (Unpublished document). SDO11902.

<5> Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows, 168 (Monograph). SDO132.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 205955 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Oct 11 2024 4:09PM