Norfolk Heritage Explorer

Location

Full description

1968. Ploughed out barrow visible as soil marks.
Animal bone found but no pottery or human bones.
Seen by E. B. Green (NCM), C. G. Rye (NCM) and W. F. Milligan (Copy NCM card).

OS card refers to this as a 'saucer barrow' and states that 'students from Cambridge' dug it in the 1930s but found nothing.

22 June 1975. OS aerial photography.
Parchmark cropmarks.
Ring ditch.
D. Voisey (NLA) 7 March 1995.

Appears on Unit aerial photographs as a ring of vegetation.
E. Rose (NAU) 1976.
Plotted on overlay by J. Bown (NAU) 20 November 1980.

Low circular mound 31m diameter, 40cm high with shallow ditch 10cm deep, 4m wide on low ground next to stream (mill?). Grass covered in pasture.
A. J. Lawson (NAU) 5 March 1976.

November 1983. No change. Local man said it was once higher and had been detected with nothing being found.
J. Wymer (NAU)

18 July 1986. NAU aerial photography flight 181. Positive cropmarks of ring ditch now under plough and showing very clearly. Original interpretation of site in error. Now appears to be circular causewayed enclosure of very small dimensions, with certainly five causeways, one each to north, southeast and west with possible fourth to southwest. However, traces of central mound may be seen as very faint circular dark patch. Light mark of berm exists between mound and surrounding ditch.
D. A. Edwards (NAU) 21 October 1986.

A second ring ditch is said to be visible on air photographs to south at TL 7557 9755 but this is dubious.
See (S1).
R. J. Rickett (NLA) 10 April 1990.

Around 1964. Ploughed for the first time (in living memory).
Small trench excavated straight across the centre of the mound (east-west) but nothing was found within it. While the trench was open it was shown to the curator (? Mottram) at King's Lynn Museum. The trench revealed the ditch around the barrow. Two parallel lines of sandy soil ran north-east from the ?barrow towards the corner of the field. The south-west corner of the field is gravelly, while the rest of the field is peat. The barrow sits on the gravel. When the field was ploughed several orange-coloured probable post-holes were noted along the edge of the gravel.
Information from [1].
A. Cattermole (HES), 14 March 2011.

October 2018. Breckland National Mapping Programme
The probable Bronze Age round barrow described above is visible as a low earthwork on aerial photographs and lidar imagery (S2-S5). On most sources, the barrow consists of a central mound, with a surrounding ring ditch and an outer bank. There are signs of a central depression in the mound (not mapped) which could be the cause of its earlier interpretation as a round barrow. The apparent causeways, described above, which are visible on aerial photographs taken in 1986 (S3) are not consistently visible and so again have not been mapped. They may be a response to particular weather conditions that year, or to the level of ploughing, and may reflect the ring ditch having different depths, rather than being true causeways. On photographs taken in 1989 (S4) two small circular depressions or possible pits are visible towards the centre of the mound. These again are not consistently visible and have not been mapped. They could be of modern or natural origin, or be features within the mound revealed after prolonged ploughing.
No traces of the berm, post holes or parallel lines of sandy soil mentioned above were identified by the survey. The possible second ring ditch mentioned above was not identified and may be a geological cropmark.
The mapped extent of this round barrow has been refined based on this detailed analysis of the aerial evidence [2].
J. Powell (Norfolk Historic Environment Service), 10 October 2018.

Monument Types

• (Former Type) CIRCULAR ENCLOSURE (Undated)
• MOUND (Undated)
• RING BANK (Unknown date)
• RING DITCH (Undated)
• RING DITCH (Undated)
• (Former Type) HENGIFORM MONUMENT (Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age - 3000 BC to 1501 BC)
• CAUSEWAYED RING DITCH (Bronze Age - 2350 BC to 701 BC)
• MOUND (Bronze Age - 2350 BC? to 701 BC?)
• RING BANK (Bronze Age - 2350 BC? to 701 BC?)
• RING DITCH (Bronze Age - 2350 BC? to 701 BC?)
• ROUND BARROW (Bronze Age - 2350 BC to 701 BC)

Associated Finds

• ANIMAL REMAINS (Undated)

Protected Status - none

Sources and further reading

Related records - none

Find out more...

• Parish Summary: Northwold (Parish Summary)