Monument record MDO6753 - Bowl barrow, Canford Heath Barrow Group, Poole

Ditched bowl barrow, one of a line of four barrows in the Canford Heath Barrow Group. The barrow is visible on 1940s aerial photographs and current Lidar imagery and was digitally plotted using these sources by the Dorset Stour NMP project.

A bowl barrow cemetery situated on Canford Heath. The cemetery contains six closely spaced bowl barrows, four of them in an east-west line with the other two to the south of this line. The barrows have mounds ranging in diameter between 7.5 metres and 24 metres, and up to 1.7 metres high. All the mounds are surrounded by quarry ditches from which material to construct the mounds was derived. These survive as slight depressions around some of the mounds or as buried features, no longer visible on the surface, approximately 2 metres wide. Many of the barrows have depressions in the tops of the mounds suggesting that they have been partially excavated in the past, although there is no record of this or of any finds made.

Bowl barrows, all overgrown by bracken. … (d) (SZ 02339545) Diameter 36ft. Height 4.5ft. Unopened. (Wallace 1919-1923; Grinsell 1959)

Four heather and bracken covered bowl barrows with no visible ditches. … D: Diameter 13.0m., height 1.6m. The trenches and pits may be poor attempts at excavation, but are probably of a military nature, and their mention in 1923 (Wallace) suggests that they were made during the first World War. (Quinnell 1955)

Four much damaged barrows in a slightly iregular west-south-west to east-north-east line. … SZ 02339546. Ditched bowl barrow, 33 feet in diameter, 4 1/2 feet high with a ditch about 6 feet wide. (RCHME 1970)

Four bowl barrows generally as described by auths 4 and 5 except they are all in better condition than 5 suggests. The very faint suggestion of a ditch about b and d is unsurveyable at 1:2500. (Wardale 1987)

The barrow is visible on 1940s aerial photographs (RAF 1946) and current (2015) Lidar imagery. From these sources the feature appears to comprise a sub-circular mound around 11m across. A possible partial ditch, 1m wide, is visible on its North, West and South sides (Environment Agency 2015).

The location of the barrow on current Lidar imagery is SW 02339 95446; 16.6m SE of given NGR.

The feature was digitally plotted by the Dorset Stour NMP project.

National Record of the Historic Environment, 458019 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Wardale, C F, Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division Field Investigator's Comments CFW, F2 CFW 20-NOV-1987 (Unpublished document). SWX2704.

Quinnell, N V, Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division Field Investigator's Comments NVQ, F1 NVQ 15-NOV-1955 (Unpublished document). SDO11903.

Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1938 (Map). SWX1540.

(Area centred SZ 023954) Tumuli (NR)

Royal Air Force, 12-DEC-46, RAF/CPE/UK/1893 RS 4201-2 (Aerial Photograph). SDO16056.

Wallace, W G, 1919-23, Bournemouth Natural Science Society 6" map and private notes (Article in serial). SDO17433.

Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows (Monograph). SDO132.

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 3, 448 (Monograph). SDO150.

'CANFORD HEATH GROUP (SZ 09 NW). Four bowls in slightly irregular W.S.W.-E.N.E. line near W. edge of plateau, above 200 ft. contour and steep W. slope. All much damaged.
(372) Ditched bowl (02339546). 15 yds. E.N.E. of (371). Diam. 33 ft., ht.4. 5 ft., with ditch about 6 ft. wide.'

Environment Agency, XX-XXX-2015, Environment Agency DTM Lidar 50cm (Aerial Photograph). SDO15306.

Record last edited

Oct 29 2025 3:09PM