Monument record MDO5565 - Bowl barrow, one of the Wyke Down Group, Gussage All Saints

A bowl barrow on the parish boundary with Gussage St Michael. In 1975 the barrow was described as having been damaged by ploughing, but formerly measuring 75 feet in diameter and 2.5 feet high.

Wyke Down Group comprises seventeen barrows, including at least one disc barrow and one bell barrow, in a compact cluster on the gentle S. slope of the down, about 250 ft. above O.D. (Plate 48). All have been damaged by ploughing, most of them severely, and some are visibleonly on air photographs (58/RAF/3250: 0086; C.U.A.P., NK 4, YN 28; N.M.R., 9609/1; SU/0015/1/327).

(41) Bowl (00731529), on the boundary with Gussage St. Michael, has been damaged by ploughing on two sides; former diam. 75 ft., ht. 2 1/2 ft. <1> <3>

The other 16 barrows in this group, formerly described here, have now been recorded individually. See associated monument records for details. This record now deals specifically with RCHME's Gussage All Saints 41 (Grinsell's Gussage All Saints 10), and more generally with the barrow group as a whole. The barrow itself lies on the boundary with Gussage St Michael. The southernmost barrow in the Wyke Down group (although Grinsell does does not include it in the group), it is also the closest to the Dorset Cursus (Linear 41), which lies a little over 200 metres to the south. <5>

<1> Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows, 110-1 (Monograph). SDO132.

<2> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1963 (Map). SWX1540.

(Centred SU 00751545) Tumulus (NR) Tumuli (NR) (twice)

<3> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1975, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume V (East), 21 (Monograph). SDO129.

'Wyke Down Group comprises seventeen barrows including at least one disc barrow and one bell barrow, in a compact cluster on the gentle S. slope of the down, about 250 ft. above O.D. (Plate 48). All have been damaged by ploughing, most of them severely, and some are visible only on air photographs (58/RAF/3250; 0086; C.U.A.P., NK 4, YN 28; N.M.R. 9609/1: SU/0015/1/327). (41) Bowl (00731529), on the boundary with Gussage St.Michael, has been damaged by ploughing on two sides; former diam. 76 ft., ht. 2½ ft.'

<4> French, C A I, Lewis, H A, Allen, M J, Scaife. R G, GSB Prospection and Gardiner, J, 1998, Summary Report on the 1998 Assessment of Excavations of Barrow 34 and 41, Chalkpit Field, Down Farm, Gussage St Michael, Dorset (Monograph). SDO14246.

‘The low barrow (41) turned out to be much destroyed/denuded, and to a large extent this had already occurred in the past. Today there is a small, low (c 1m high, but this may be accentuated as the mound is situated on the top centre of a low knoll), turf mound (in Trench 1) surviving in the centre of the area enclosed by the ring-ditch … The ring-ditch (in Trench 2) is about 3.5m wide, 1.6m deep, with an internal diameter of about 19m and an external diameter of about 26m. Within the fill of the ring-ditch itself, the inner third was composed of densely-packed chalk rubble. This would appear to be a deliberate backfill deposit into the ring-ditch. One could speculate that the chalk acted as either a cap to the turf core, or more probably as a circular bank on the inner edge of the ring-ditch, which had been deliberately put back into the ditch after a short period (as this chalk rubble is very clean and soil-free). The remaining ring-ditch, unaffected by this deliberate backfilling, was narrower (c 2.5m) but of the same depth as the first ditch, and remained open to infill naturally. Considered together, Barrow 41 has probably been two slightly modified versions of a disc barrow.’
‘This change from bowl to disc barrow is unusual, but does explain the small central mound remaining. Nonetheless, intensive arable farming until about a decade ago has left only a small, thin oval area of the central mound surviving, with up to about two-thirds of its original area destroyed and spread across the berm and ring-ditch area.’

<5> National Record of the Historic Environment, 213526 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Oct 24 2022 4:06PM