Monument record MDO5882 - Bradford Barrow, Witchampton

The site of a Bronze Age round barrow is visible as earthworks on aerial photographs to the east of Old Lawn Farm. The surviving barrow mound is 30m across and was digitally plotted during the Dorset Stour NMP. A trial excavation of Bradford barrow in 1968 to assess quarry damage discovered a sherd of Romano British pottery, a piece of iron and an oyster shell in the surrounding ditch indicating a Romano British date.

Bradford Barrow, a bowl barrow consisting of a large conical mound 118ft in diameter and 20ft high, with traces of a surrounding ditch. According to Grinsell the profile of the mound suggests the possibility of a Roman date. <1> <5>

The barrow was excavated in 1969. <3>

NE of Bradford Barrow a quarry has breached about 30ft of the barrow ditch. A trial excavation carried out in 1969 to assess the damage revealed the ditch to be flat bottomed and about 6ft wide and 4 1/2ft deep. There were very few finds but a piece of corroded iron work from the undisturbed clay fill proved that the mound was not Bronze Age. An oyster shell and a Romano-British sherd were also found and a Romano-British date for the mound is strongly inferred. <4>

The site of a Bronze Age round barrow is visible as earthworks on aerial photographs to the east of Old Lawn Farm <6>. The surviving barrow mound is 30m across and was digitally plotted during the Dorset Stour NMP.

<1> Grinsell, L V, 1959, Dorset Barrows, 122 (Monograph). SDO132.

<2> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1963 (Map). SWX1540.

(ST 98100466) Bradford Barrow (NR)

<3> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1970, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1969, 176 (Serial). SDO69.

<4> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1974, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1973, 30-33 (Serial). SDO73.

<5> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1975, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume V (East), 53 (Monograph). SDO129.

'Bradford Barrow Group comprises five barrows in a scatter extending N.W.- S.E., towards the end of a low spur. All but the Bradford Barrow have been heavily ploughed and now appear only as ring-ditches on an air photograph (N.M.R., ST 9806/1). A ridged collared urn, from a possible barrow near Old Lawn Farm, may come from (85), (Arch. J., CXIX (1962), 11, 65 and fig. 3). … (84) Bradford Barrow (98100466), bowl, is a large conical mound beside a disused chalk-pit; diam. 118 ft., ht. 20 ft. with traces of a surrounding ditch.’

<6> GetMapping, 2014, Digital vertical aerial photographs (Aerial Photograph). SDO14101.

<7> National Record of the Historic Environment, 209466 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Sep 9 2024 11:17AM