Monument record MDO715 - Round barrow on Black Hill, Cerne Abbas

Bowl barrow, recorded in 1952 as being about 55 feet in diameter, 7 feet high, and disturbed at its top. The barrow is visible as an earthwork on Environment Agency lidar imagery, comprising an 18m in diameter mound with an excavation crater in the top and the suggestion of a partially surviving outer ditch on its south side. The feature was digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Cerne and Piddle Valleys AIM project.

Grinsell recorded this barrow as 20 paces in diameter and 5½ feet high, with a hollow in the centre. <2> <3>

A bowl barrow, 16.0m in diameter, 1.7m in height, with no visible ditch. An old excavation crater at the centre is 6.0m across and 1.0m deep. The barrow is covered with gorse bushes, otherwise in fair condition. Published 1:2500 survey correct. <4>

The barrow is visible as an earthwork on Environment Agency lidar imagery, comprising an 18m in diameter mound with an excavation crater in the top and the suggestion of a partially surviving outer ditch on its south side. The feature was digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Cerne and Piddle Valleys AIM project. <7>

<1> Ordnance Survey, c 1962, Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map, epoch five (Map). SDO13903.

(ST 67380018) Tumulus (NR)

<2> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 83 (Monograph). SDO97.

‘(32) SETTLEMENTS and BARROW, on Black Hill ½ m. S.E. of the village, form two groups. The eastern settlement includes a roughly triangular enclosure … About 250 yards S.S.W. of the same enclosure is a bowl barrow about 55 ft. in diam. and 7 ft. high; it has been disturbed at the top.’

<3> Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows, 97 (Monograph). SDO132.

<4> Phillips, A S, Various, Field Investigators Comments ASP, F1 ASP 22-JUL-77 (Unpublished document). SWX3817.

<5> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1983, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1982, 69 (Serial). SDO82.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 198989 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<7> Environment Agency, 16-NOV-2021, LIDAR Environment Agency DTM (Aerial Photograph). SDO18034.

Record last edited

Nov 1 2024 10:14AM