Monument record MDO2950 - Bowl barrow, one of the Culliford Tree Group, Whitcombe

A Bronze Age bowl barrow, part of the Culliford Tree barrow group (named after this barrow), a linear barrow group ranged along part of the Dorset Ridgeway. It was recorded by the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division in 1979 as a mound 36 metres in diameter and 4.8 metres high. The mound is surrounded by a tree-ring and bank, first planted in 1740. The mound was excavated in 1858, when four separate skeletons were found at a shallow depth near the top of the mound. These were all extended inhumations and one, a female, was accompanied by amber beads possibly representing a necklace. Two of the beads had "gold plates on their bases". Several feet lower down in the mound was an Early Bronze Age collared urn containing ashes, calcined human bones, and a small pottery accessory vessel. The excavation appears to have continued no further. Piggott (1938) included the barrow in his list of Early Bronze Age "Wessex graves", noting the presence of amber and gold in particular. However, others have suggested that the extended inhumations, and thus the amber and gold, are of much later date, probably Anglo-Saxon. Thus it is of interest that the barrow, presumably in the early medieval period, came to mark the Hundred meeting place and, indeed, gave its name to the Hundred. Visible on aerial photographs as a cropmark ring ditch with internal mound. Digitally plotted as part of the South Dorset Ridgeway Mapping Project.

A Bronze Age bowl barrow, part of the Culliford Tree barrow group (named after this barrow), a linear barrow group ranged along part of the Dorset Ridgeway. Listed by RCHME as Whitcombe 9 and by Grinsell as Whitcombe 1, it was recorded by the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division in 1979 as a mound 36 metres in diameter and 4.8 metres high. The mound is surrounded by a tree-ring and bank, first planted in 1740. The mound was excavated in the autumn of 1858 by Captain Damer MP of Came House, and the trench itself is still visible on top of the mound. The only account of the excavation was published a few years later by Warne, who noted "regrets that amongst the persons present there was no one sufficiently interested to note down the facts attendant on the examination, which was but partially effected". Warne's account was based on information supplied by one Rev W Barnes. It is not clear if Barnes was actually present at the excavation, but the account was checked by Damer himself. A Collared Urn and accessory vessel provenanced to the Culliford Tree barrow, and presumably the "large urn" and small "vessel of clay" referred to by Warne, are both in Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, where they form part of the Cunnington Collection, though it is not clear how they passed from Damer to the Cunningtons. Stuart Piggott (1938) included the barrow in his list of Early Bronze Age "Wessex graves", noting the presence of amber and gold in particular. However, as Warne noted, the extended inhumations, one of which was accompanied by the amber and gold, appear to have been late insertions into the mound. Extended inhumations are by no means unknown from the Early Bronze Age, but this burial rite, along with the form of the amber beads (spherical) and the shallow depth at which the skeletons were encountered suggests that Warne was right. An Anglo-Saxon date is a distinct possibility, which is of interest given the fact that the barrow mound, presumably at some point in the Early Medieval period, came to mark the meeting place of the local Hundred to which it also gave its name. <1-10> Secondary cremation with ashes in collared urn. Secondary (Saxon?) four extended inhumations one female with necklace of amber beads, two had gold casings. <5> Visible on aerial photographs <11> as a cropmark ring ditch with internal mound. Digitally plotted as part of the South Dorset Ridgeway Mapping Project.

Record last edited

Jun 16 2023 4:10PM