Giants' Hill II, a Neolithic long barrow 400m WNW of Skendleby Lodge Farm

Summary

Neolithic long barrow located around 400m WNW of Skendleby Lodge Farm.

Reasons for Designation

Giants’ Hill II, a Neolithic long barrow located around 400m WNW of Skendleby Lodge 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 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 the other scheduled long barrows in the Giants’ Hills group, including Giants’ Hill I (NHLE 1014832, approximately 150m to the north within the same field) and Giants’ Hill III (NHLE 1014935, approximately 150m north-west of Giants’ Hills I in the adjacent field).

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 located around 400m WNW of Skendleby Lodge Farm, known as ‘Giants’ Hill II’, is one of a group of long barrows north-west of Skendleby Lodge Farm known as ‘Giants’ Hills’. Continued damage by ploughing had led to the site being excavated by Evans and Simpson in 1975 and 1976. The remains of the mound were located by an initial geophysical survey, before excavation commenced. The earliest features dated to about 3500BC to 3000BC and consisted of a façade of posts and fencing, with a mortuary area 15m away. Around 3000BC some disarticulated human bone was placed between these features and the façade burnt down. The mound was subsequently built over this whole area. The mound consisted of earth and chalk rubble, with an internal arrangement of fences. The mound material was derived from a quarry ditch which was continuous around the whole barrow. The land appears to have been intensively used in the later Neolithic period and tilled in the Beaker period. The land was rough grassland throughout most of the Bronze Age and Iron Age, and ploughing of the area appears to have begun in the Roman period.

The cropmark remains of this Neolithic long barrow has been reassessed from aerial photographs for the Lincolnshire Long Barrows Assessment project. The barrow has been mapped from aerial photographs taken in 2003 and 2010. The barrow, though ploughed and subjected to excavation in the 1970s, can still be seen at TF 4291 7086 as a cropmark of both the barrow mound and the remains of the encircling ditch.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: Neolithic long barrow located around 400m WNW of Skendleby Lodge Farm. The long barrow is situated on the side of a valley slope approximately halfway between the Bluestone Heath Road to the north-east and a small tributary in the valley bottom by Fordington Holt that eventually feeds the River Lymn. The valley slope is fairly gentle and the barrow faces south-west at a height of approximately 55m AOD.

DESCRIPTION: The monument is visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs, centred at TF 4294 7088. The barrow is elongated and aligned north-west to south-east, measuring 73m by 21m; the surrounding ditched enclosure measures 91m by 28m. There appears to be a small annexe at the north-west end. Three trial trenches excavated on the north-east side in the 1970s have been mapped as cropmarks. Height data suggests there is still some earthwork structure of the barrow mound surviving as a very slight ground swelling.

Valuable archaeological deposits will be preserved, 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.

Within the same field, the scheduled remains of Giants’ Hill I lies around 150m to the north at 70m AOD (NHLE 1014832). A further scheduled long barrow, Giants’ Hill III (NHLE 1014935), lies a similar distance in the adjacent field, approximately 150m north-west of Giants’ Hills I at 75m AOD.

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 known exclusions.

Sources

Books and journals
Giants' Hills 2 Long Barrow, Skendleby, Lincolnshire in Archaeologia, ,Vol. CIX, (1991), 1-45
Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles (2006),
Last, J, Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows (2007),
Jones, D, Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 1998, pp83-114 (1998), 83-114
Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death (2000),

Websites
Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer, Monument record MLI42060 – Giants’ Hill 2, accessed 11 February 2025 from https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI42060

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