Monument record MDO40042 - Bronze Age barrow, Knowlton, Woodlands

A sub-circular cropmark on the northwest edge of the Knowlton Barrow Group is visible on 1990s aerial photographs. The feature may represent a Bronze Age barrow. The feature was digitally plotted by the Dorset Stour NMP project.

SU 0227 1052. Three very small mounds, probably round barrows, are visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs and have been mapped by EH's Knowlton Circles Project. The barrows are probably Bronze Age in date, but could be Prehistoric or Roman. They are associated with the extensive barrow cemetery known as the Knowlton Circles Barrow Group. The barrows appear as plough levelled sub-circular mounds. The smallest, at SU 0227 1052, is 5.5m in diameter; the next largest, at SU 0230 1053, is 6.6m in diameter; and the largest, at SU 0222 1049, is 8.3m in diameter.

The barrows are associated with the extensive barrow cemetery known as the Knowlton Circles Barrow Group, and are probably Bronze Age in date. However, very small round barrows have been recorded elsewhere in England in Iron Age, Roman and Saxon contexts. Support for a post-Bronze Age date at Knowlton may perhaps be derived from the presence in the vicinity of possible Iron Age square barrows (SU 01 SW 210 and SU 01 SW 211); in one of the square barrow cemeteries at Garton Slack, on the Yorkshire Wolds, very small round barrows represented a very late phase of the burial rite. <1>

A sub-circular cropmark on the northwest edge of the Knowlton Barrow Group is faintly visible on 1990s aerial photographs <3-4>. The feature is broadly 6.5m in diameter. It is likely to represent a Bronze Age barrow. The feature was digitally plotted by the Dorset Stour NMP.

<1> Stoertz, Cathy, 2005, Knowlton Circles Project, Dorset: report on the aerial photographic transcription and analysis (Monograph). SDO19585.

<1.1> National Monuments Record, 13-JUL-1995, NMR SU 0210/78 NMR 15314/15 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18723.

<3> National Monuments Record, 13-JUL-1995, NMR15326/006 (SU0210/066) (Aerial Photograph). SDO15701.

<4> National Monuments Record, 13-JUL-1995, NMR15314/009 (SU0210/072) (Aerial Photograph). SDO15702.

<5> National Record of the Historic Environment, 1409823 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Dec 5 2023 12:24PM