Impressive bronze age barrows - Priddy Nine Barrows

Round barrows are the poor cousins of megalithic stones, they are rather boring to look out, many have been ploughed out, and now just remains as cropmarks in the land. They can be singleton, a barrow cemetery, which can consist of either a linear line of them or just an a group of them.

There are two linear barrow groups that are very impressive though, they lie very near to the four Priddy circles, and are probably part of a sacred landscape, that is somewhat lost now.

Looking through my photographs I came across the two separate groups, Priddy Nine Barrows and the Ashen Hill Barrows both very close to each other. The Nine Barrows group follows a ridge downhill, but at the bottom there are two large barrows at an angle, from these two barrows you can look at the eight Ashen Hill barrows about a five minute walk away.....

Nine Barrows - The two separate barrows in front, with the Ashen Barrows in the background

Close up of Ashen Barrows, which Skinner excavated



Ashen Hill bronze age barrows;

All these eight barrows were investigated by the Reverend John Skinner in 1815, and all barrows produced one or more cremations. Some of these contained Early Bronze age urns and were covered with stone slabs (similar to Lansdown barrows cemetery). Three barrows had bronze daggers, one in a wooden sheaf. One barrow contained a rich burial which included beads and other objects of amber (maybe faience) and a miniature incense cup. There are a further two, much larger barrows, located north of the main cemetery.Taken from;British Barrows (A Matter of Life and Death) by Ann Woodward. Similar