Monument record MDO7900 - Ulwell Barrow, Ballard Down, Studland Swanage parish boundary

Round barrow now crowned with an obelisk. The barrow is visible as an earthwork on aerial photographs of the 2000s.

A turf covered bowl barrow, 23.0m. diameter and 1.9m high in the west. There are evident traces of a ditch in the eastern quadrant which are only slight elsewhere. Square hollow on top. <2> Both inhumations were made, the intrusive one being Anglo-Saxon. <3> SZ 02238132. Ulwell Barrow, ditched bowl barrow, 74ft diameter and 6ft high with ditch 12ft wide, on the west end of Ballard Down. There is an excavation hollow in top and the barrow is cut by a hedge-bank on the north. On the south where crossed by the parish boundary is a collapsed obelisk dated 1892 (shown) on OS 6"). Excavated by Austen in 1857 who found a primary contracted inhumation, the skull surrounded by flat stones, in a chalk-cut grave 8ft x 5ft, associated with a handled cup of fine red ware; antler fragments occurred in the grave filling. Near the centre of the mound were disarticulated inhumation with urn fragments and, slightly higher, a cremation under a flat stone with more urn fragments. In the top of the mound were Iron Age and/or Romano British debris and many flint chippings. <3-4> This barrow, which is on grassland at 490 ft OD is in good condition and is described by Auth 3. The obelisk which stands on the south slope of the barrow was reerected in 1972 and stands to its full height. (Not an antiquity) 4/89 Surveyed at 1:2500. <5> The barrow is visible as an earthwork on aerial photographs of the 2000s. The barrow measures 19 m in diameter.<7-9> This feature was digitally plotted during the Wild Purbeck Mapping Project.

Record last edited

Apr 20 2023 6:58PM