Long barrows

At some time, we’ve all stopped to admire a country view and seen an unusual earthen mound… a long, grass-covered rectangle or a large, rounded hump that’s obviously not a natural feature of the landscape.

A map shows it marked as tumulus but there’s rarely a sign or an information board to explain what that means. What you would be looking at is a “house of the dead”.

These man-made formations are called long barrows (round barrows if they are hill-shaped) and they are where Neolithic tribes placed their relatives after they died.

The communal tombs were built around 6,000 years ago, some with timber burial chambers and others with stone walls. They were visited for regular rituals and ceremonies. This was an age when people believed honouring the departed meant the spirit of their ancestors would look after the living.

Long barrows are the work of the first farmers who worked the land and herded wild animals. There are hundreds of these Neolithic structures all over the country.

Barrow is an old dialect word for an earth mound, but they have other names… howe in the North, low in Cheshire and Staffordshire, while in Gloucestershire they’re called tumps.

We have a round barrow on the farm, thought to date from the time of a tribal chieftain known as Bem, which is where the name Bemborough originates.

ANCIENT The West Kennet long barrow in Wiltshire