Monument record MDO4070 - Folly Barrow, Iwerne Minster

Bronze Age bowl barrow surviving as an earthwork mound and ditch. In 1972 the monument was recorded as thickly overgrown, approximately 50 feet in diameter with a mound standing some 5.5 feet high, and with a ditch 9 feet across and 1 foot deep. The record for this monument has been enhanced with support from Wessex Water. The record for this monument has been enhanced with support from Wessex Water.

A bowl barrow. Diameter 50 feet, height 5 feet. Ditch 9 feet across and 1 foot deep. <3>

The barrow is grass and tree covered. It has a diameter of 16.0m and a height of 1.8m. It is surrounded by a ditch 2.0m wide with an average depth of 0.3m. It is a well shaped bowl barrow without trace of an outer bank. Grinsell, who visited this barrow when it was obscured by vegetation, mistakenly supposed it might be the disc barrow opened by Shipp (ST 81 SE 9). <4>

So called Folly Barrow on Isaac Taylor Ms.Map <1>, perhaps a disc barrow of the Dorset type, excavated, urn of an agreeable form, surrounded by 6 cremations in cists. <5>

No change since 7 3 56. Name confirmed. Resurveyed at 1:2500. <6>

ST 88551562. A Bronze Age bowl barrow, known as Folly Barrow, located on Bareden Down. The barrow mound measures 16 metres in diameter and stands 2 metres high. It is surrounded by the remains of a ditch, now visible as a depression 2 metres wide and up to 0.3 metres deep. The barrow lies within an area of prehistoric field system which has been levelled by ploughing. Barrow scheduled. <7>.

<1> Taylor, Isaac, 1765-70, Map of Sutton Waldron (Map). SDO18372.

Folly Barrow

<2> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1962 (Map). SWX1540.

ST 88551562 Folly Barrow (NR)

<3> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1972, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume IV (North), 41 (Monograph). SDO99.

All the barrows lie on high ground in the E. of the parish, four of them composing a group of Iwerne Hill. A small barrow was destroyed in 1846 during the ploughing of the high downland between Iwerne Hill and West Lodge; on its floor was an inverted urn covered by a quantity of black ash and surrounded by siz cremations in cists cut in the Chalk; its exact location is not known. (Hutchins III, 555; C.T.D., Pt.2, no.4; Dorset Procs., L (1928), 121; Warne, MS. Album in D.C.M., 209.)
(16) Folly Barrow (88561563), bowl, about 600 ft. above O.D. on Bareden Down, on a southward-facing slope, lies just below the crest of the escarpment. It is in a small wood and is thickly overgrown. Diameter 50 ft., heigh 5½ ft.; ditch 9 ft. across and 1 ft. deep

<4> Rigg, J, Field Investigators Comments JR, F1 JR 07-MAR-56 (Unpublished document). SWX1255.

<4.1> Grinsell, L V, Dorset Barrows (Unpublished MSs) (Unpublished document). SWX2678.

<5> Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows, 115, 168 (Monograph). SDO132.

<6> Barrett, G, Various, Field Investigators Comments GB, F2 GB 17-FEB-78 (Unpublished document). SDO17369.

<7> Historic England, Scheduled Monument Notification, 11-Dec-01 (Scheduling record). SDO17468.

<8> National Record of the Historic Environment, 205930 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Aug 24 2022 4:57PM