Monument record MDO2952 - Bowl barrow, one of the Culliford Tree Group, Whitcombe

A Bronze Age bowl barrow, part of a wider linear barrow cemetery. In 1970 this monument was reported as being around 87 feet in diameter and about 12 feet high with a flat top, much reduced by ploughing. Soil marks indicated an original diameter of around 100 feet, and traces of chalk suggested an encircling bank outside the ditch.

A Bronze Age bowl barrow, part of the Culliford Tree barrow group, a linear group of barrows ranged along part of the Dorset Ridgeway. Listed by RCHME as Whitcombe 11 and by Grinsell as Whitcombe 2, it was recorded by the Ordnance Survey in 1979 as a flat-topped mound 28 metres by 26.5 metres across and 4 metres high, with no surviving visible evidence of a surrounding ditch. Previously RCHME had reported both a ditch and possible traces of an outer bank. Two barrows near Culliford Tree were apparently dug "a little into the tops" by Capt. Damer of Came in circa 1860, with some skeletons being discovered. Grinsell suggests that this may have been one of the two barrows, though this is entirely speculative. The account, though brief, suggests that the skeletons were found at no great depth, and can probably be regarded as intrusive secondary burials, possibly much later in date than the mound itself. Damer was also responsible for partial excavation of the nearby Culliford tree barrow from which inhumations of probable Anglo-Saxon date were again recovered just below the summit. <1-4>

Record last edited

Jun 28 2023 2:03PM