Long barrow east of Cold Harbour Farm

Summary

Long barrow located around 250m east of Cold Harbour Farm.

Reasons for Designation

The long barrow east of Cold Harbour Farm is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Survival: as a Neolithic long barrow visible as clearly defined cropmarks and soil marks on aerial photography;

* Potential: for the buried archaeological deposits which retain considerable potential to provide evidence relating to social organisation and demographics, cultural associations, human development, disease, diet, and death rituals. Buried environmental evidence can also inform us about the landscape in which the barrows were constructed;

* Period: as one of very few monument types dating to the Neolithic, it is highly representative of the period;

* Rarity: as an example of a monument type which is rare nationally and one of very few monument types to offer us insights into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country;

* Group value: for its close proximity to other contemporary or spatially-related scheduled monuments, in particular a scheduled Neolithic long barrow and two Bronze Age bowl barrows north-east of Cold Harbour Farm (NHLE 1016670).

History

Long barrows and chambered tombs are the main forms of Neolithic funerary monument, constructed from before 3800 BC with new monuments continuing to be built throughout the 4th millennium BC. Where they are precisely dated it appears their primary use for burial rarely lasted longer than about 100 years. Generally comprising long, linear earthen mounds or stone cairns, often flanked by ditches, they can appear as distinctive features in the landscape. They measure up to about 100m in length, 35m in width and 4m in height, and are sometimes trapezoidal or oval in plan. Earthen long barrows are found mostly in southern and eastern England and are usually unchambered, although some examples have been found to contain timber mortuary structures. Regional variation in construction is generally a reflection of locally available resources. Megalithic or stone chambered tombs are most common in Scotland and Wales but are also found in those parts of England with ready access to the large stones and boulders from which they are constructed, especially the Cotswolds, the South-West and Kent. There are around 540 long barrows recorded nationally.

Long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds have been identified as a distinct regional grouping of monuments in which the flanking ditches are continued around the ends of the barrow mound, either continuously or broken by a single causeway towards one end. A small number survive as earthworks, but the majority are known from crop marks and soil marks where no or very low mounds are evident on the surface. Not all Lincolnshire long barrows had mounds and our current understanding of Neolithic mortuary practices in this part of the country is that the large barrow mound was in fact the final phase of construction which was not reached by all monuments. Previously many of the sites where only the ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as a barrow where the mound has been degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In some cases, the ditched enclosure (mortuary enclosure) represents a monument which never developed a mound.

The long barrow east of Cold Farm was identified by aerial photography in 2000 and 2012. Further aerial photography and field survey were undertaken in 2018 as part of an assessment of the survival of long barrows in Lincolnshire, supporting the positive identification of the site as a long barrow.

Details

Principal Elements: The long barrow is situated around 250m east of Cold Harbour Farm and around 1.2km north-east of the hamlet of Stenigot. The barrow lies on gently sloping ground near the top of a valley head at approximately 150m AOD; the ground to the west of the monument slopes gently then steeply down the valley to Stenigot to the west.

Description: The Neolithic long barrow is visible as cropmarks and soil marks on aerial photographs centred at TF 2695 8157. The barrow is defined by a roughly oval ditched enclosure, aligned north-west to south-east, measuring around 48m by 20.5m; a shallow earthwork mound is visible as a negative cropmark on aerial photography, suggesting the long barrow mound has been spread by ploughing.

Archaeological remains will be preserved in the spread mound, on the buried ground surface and in the fills of the ditch. These will provide rare information concerning the dating and construction of the monument and the sequence of mortuary practices at the site. The same deposits may also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the contemporary landscape in which the monument was set.

Other archaeological features have been recorded as cropmarks around the long barrow, including a chalk pit to the south-west, Iron Age/Romano British ditches and enclosures to the east and south and ridge and furrow to the west.  The long barrow lies within a medieval/post-medieval field boundary, suggesting the barrow was visible and continued to be respected into the Medieval period and was used to mark this boundary. None of these additional features are included in the scheduling.

To the north and north-west of the monument lie the remains of a scheduled Neolithic long barrow and two Bronze Age bowl barrows north-east of Cold Harbour Farm (NHLE 1016670), and there was likely intervisibility between these barrows.

Extent of scheduling: The scheduled area is marked on the attached map and includes a 5m buffer zone which is considered necessary for the support and preservation of the monument. There are no exclusions from the scheduling.

Sources

Books and journals
Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles (2006),
Last, J, Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows (2007),
Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, ,Vol. 64, (1998), 83-114
Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death (2000),

Websites
Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer, 'Monument record MLI127005 - Neolithic Long Barrow, Cold Harbour Farm, Stenigot', accessed 03 April 2024 from https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI127005

End of official list entry

Print the official list entry