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Description

Summary The buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow. Reasons for Designation The long barrow south-east of Ludford Grange is scheduled for the following principal reasons: * Survival: as a clearly defined crop and soil mark (visible on aerial photography) representing the burial practices, beliefs and social organisation amongst early prehistoric communities; * 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 early prehistoric period, 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 insight into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country. 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 south-east of Ludford Grange was rediscovered on aerial photographs taken in 1976, and was identified in 1998 in Dilwyn Jones’ analysis of air photographic evidence. Details The long barrow south-east of Ludford Grange is visible on aerial photographs as a trapezoidal-shaped crop mark with convex terminals, measuring 64.5m x 28m. It is heavily truncated at the south-east end by a sizeable chalk pit. The edge of the pit shows paler red-brown soils from approximately 0.5m – 1m depth which have been brought to the surface. It is situated on a spur, overlooking the head of the River Bain valley. The long axis runs parallel to the contours. The ditch circuit shows a possible causeway at the south end, but upcast from a modern chalk pit partly obscures the line. At the time of survey (January 2018) the barrow was not discernible on the ground, which was completely bare having been disc cultivated. 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 will also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set. There is no evidence that this long barrow was associated with other long barrows, round barrows or mortuary enclosures. An adjacent settlement from the Romano-British period has been identified and mapped under the National Mapping Programme (NMP) which appears to respect the long barrow. Sources Books and journals Field, D (Author), Earthen Long Barrows: The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles, (2006) Jones, D (Author), Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence, (1998), 83-114 Last, J (Editor), Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows, (2007) Woodward, A (Author), British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death, (2000)

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