Monument record MDO6006 - Round barrow, possibly 'Badbury Barrow', Shapwick

A Bronze Age bowl barrow. In 1975 this monument was reported as being around 70 feet in diameter with a mound about two feet high, and heavily ploughed. The barrow is visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs and was digitally plotted during the Dorset Middle Stour Catchment AI&M Project. The record for this monument has been enhanced with support from Wessex Water.

The monument includes two bowl barrows and a disc barrow 960 metres north west of Crab Farm. The bowl barrows range in diameter between 22 metres and 30 metres and between 0.4 metres and 1 metre in height. Surrounding the mound is are quarry ditches from which material was excavated during their construction. The ditches have become infilled over the years and now survive as buried features 3 metres wide. A linear feature visible on aerial photographs passes close to both barrows on the south west side. The disc barrow is no longer visible on the ground but can be seen on aerial photographs, and part excavation by the National Trust in 1988 showed that it survives as a ring ditch, 4.2 metres wide and 1.7 metres deep, forming a circle about 60 metres in diameter.

'B' Bowl barrow 24 paces diameter by 2 ft high. These two barrows could be the 'Badbury Barrow' destroyed in 1845, and another barrow in the same field excavated by J H Austen. <1>

Heavily ploughed round barrows, visible on air photographs. <2>

The site of a Bronze Age round barrow is visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs taken in 1966 <6> and was digitally plotted during the Dorset Middle Stour Catchment AI&M Project. It comprises an external ring ditch 35m across with an internal mound 21m across. A large pit is visible in the centre of the mound which may not be original but due to robbing in antiquity.

The monument includes two bowl barrows and a disc barrow 960 metres north west of Crab Farm. The bowl barrows range in diameter between 22 metres and 30 metres and between 0.4 metres and 1 metre in height. Surrounding the mound is are quarry ditches from which material was excavated during their construction. The ditches have become infilled over the years and now survive as buried features 3 metres wide. A linear feature visible on aerial photographs passes close to both barrows on the south west side. The disc barrow is no longer visible on the ground but can be seen on aerial photographs, and part excavation by the National Trust in 1988 showed that it survives as a ring ditch, 4.2 metres wide and 1.7 metres deep, forming a circle about 60 metres in diameter. <9>

<1> Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows, 129 (Monograph). SDO132.

<2> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1975, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume V (East), 63 (Monograph). SDO129.

'At least twenty-six barrows are known, but many have been flattened by ploughing and now appear only as soil-marks or crop-marks on air photographs. One of them, possibly (40) or (41), was the 'Badbury Barrow' which yielded remarkable finds when destroyed in 1845. Under the barrow mound, which was some 60 ft. in diameter and 9 ft. high, a central cairn of sandstone blocks was enclosed in a ring of flints bordered by a circular sandstone wall 30 ft. in diameter. Within the cairn were at least three inhumations, apparently primary, two of them with food-vessels and one with an ornamented handled pot. Also probably in the cairn were at least fifteen cremations, a few perhaps primary, but most of them secondary, some with collared urns. At the centre, a huge slab of sandstone weighing half a ton was decorated with cup marks and carvings of daggers and axes similar to those at Stonehenge (C.T.D., Pt. 3, No. 85; Arch. J., III (1846), 348-52; Ant. J., XIX (1939), 291-9; P.P.S., XXVII (1961), 294; Durden Cat., 19, No. 41). … (41) Bowl (94790354), 40 yds. S.E. of (40); former diam. 70 ft., ht. 2 ft.'

<2.1> St Joseph, J K, NMR ST 9403/1 St Joseph AQY 75 (Aerial Photograph). SDO20398.

<3> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 scale map, 1978 (Map). SDO17396.

('A' ST 94770357 'B' ST 94790354) Tumuli (NR)

<4> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1990, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1989, 105-106 (Serial). SDO89.

<5> Papworth, M, 1994, Shapwick Parish, Kingston Lacy Estate, Wessex Region (Unpublished document). SDO14228.

A Bronze Age bowl barrow visible as a low rise 28m dia. and 0.7m high. A ditch is visible around it on aerial photograph NMR ST9403/1. This photograph shows a soil mark with a dark central area surrounded by a ring of chalky soil. A linear ditch 112,772 links this ring ditch tangentially with that of 112,056 on the south-west sides of these barrows. They lie on a south-east slope. RCHM (1975,63) considers either this or 112,056 to be the Badbury Barrow described by Austen (1846, 348) but see 112,059.

<6> J R Boyden, 01-APR-1966, JRB 10/41 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18320.

<7> Historic England, Historic England Archive, 1097880 (Index). SDO14738.

Badbury Rings group of bowl barrows/pencil profiles. Three profiles across bowl barrows, labelled 'draw beneath plan'

<8> Historic England, Historic England Archive, 1097884 (Index). SDO14738.

Shapwick Romano-British settlement; also Roman road and round barrows/pencil survey

<9> National Record of the Historic Environment, 209614 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Oct 7 2024 1:56PM