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Description

Reasons for Designation Long barrows were constructed as earthen or drystone mounds, generally with flanking ditches. They acted as funerary monuments during the Early and Middle Neolithic periods (3400-2400 BC), representing the burial places of Britain's early farming communities, and as such are amongst the oldest field monuments surviving in the present landscape. Where investigated, long barrows appear to have been used for communal burial, often with only parts of the human remains having been selected for interment. Certain sites provide evidence for several phases of funerary activities preceding the construction of the barrow mound, including ditched enclosures containing structures related to various rituals of burial. It is probable, therefore, that long barrows acted as important spiritual sites for their local communities over considerable periods of time. The long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds and their adjacent regions 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. More than 60 examples of this type of monument are known; a small number of these survive as earthworks, but the great majority of sites are known as cropmarks and soilmarks recorded on aerial photographs where no mound is evident at the surface. Not all Lincolnshire long barrows include mounds. Current limited understanding of the processes of Neolithic mortuary ritual in Lincolnshire is that the large barrow mound represents the final phase of construction which was not reached by all mortuary monuments. Many of the sites where only the ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as representing monuments which had fully evolved mounds, but in which the mound itself has been degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In a minority of cases, however, the ditched enclosure will represent a monument which never developed a burial mound. As a distinctive regional grouping of one of the few types of Neolithic monuments known, these sites are of great value. They were all in use over a great period of time and are thus highly representive of changing cultures of the peoples who built and maintained them. All forms of long barrow on the Lincolnshire Wolds and its adjacent regions are therefore considered to be of national importance and all examples with significant surviving remains are considered worthy of protection. Although the Neolithic long barrow south west of Manor Warren Farm has been degraded by ploughing, it will retain valuable archaeological and environmental evidence on and in the buried ground surface and within the fills of the encircling ditch. These deposits will provide rare information concerning the barrow's dating and construction and the sequence of mortuary ritual at the site, and will illustrate the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set. The long barrow is one of a number of similar monuments associated with the valley of the River Bain and with the Bluestone Heath Road which is thought to have originated as a prehistoric trackway. These associations indicate the ritual significance of this location and pose wider questions concerning riverine and land communications, and settlement patterns during the prehistoric period. Details The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located c.115m above sea level on the eastern valley slope of a tributary of the River Bain. It is situated in an area of arable land known as Heath Road Field. c.575m south west of Manor Warren Farm, Welton le Wold. Although the monument cannot be seen on the ground, its uninterrupted ditch is clearly visible from the air as a cropmark on aerial photographs. The monument is aligned east-west and measures approximately 55m long by 30m wide. The ditch has slightly convex sides and rounded ends and its form is thought to represent a simpler type of this class of monument in which the ditched enclosure set aside for mortuary activities would not have been elaborated by the construction of a large earthen mound. The remains of structures associated with these activities will survive as buried features. The monument is one of a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows associated with the Bluestone Heath Road which is thought to have originated as a prehistoric trackway. Sources Books and journals Bonnor, L D, Griffiths, D W, Skitter to Hatton 4050mm diameter pipeline, 1993, (1993) Other discussion, Jones, D, (1995) Oblique monochrome photograph, Everson, P, 2942/42, (1980)

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