Stoney Littleton Long Barrow
Department of the Environment Guide Book 1982
During the Neolithic period, roughly between 4000 and 2500Bc,
the presumably illustrious dead were often interred in imposing
long barrows, which in areas of suitable stone incorporated
megalithic elements. The region between the Bristol Avon and
Eastern Mendip is not now very outstanding for its evidence of
former neolithic occupation, much of which has probably been
obliterated by cultivation. The area formerly provided oolitic
material used in the dry stone walling of long barrows on the north
Wessex chalk downs, and oolitic clays probably from this area
provided the raw material for nearly a third of the neolithic
pottery found at Windmill Hill neolithic enclosure near Avebury, as
well as a proportion of neolithic pottery from other sites on the
chalk downs of Wessex.
Setting
The Stoney Littleton long barrow is deservedly the best-known
chambered long barrow in the Bath—Frome area. It is situated on the
south-western extension of the Jurassic Belt, some 5 miles (8km)
south of Bath, in the parish of Wellow (County of Avon, until
recently Somerset), in a field called Round Hill Tyning (SF135572),
on a hill spur overlooking the Wellow Brook, a short distance south
west of Wellow village. As is often the case with long barrows, the
site commands attractive prospects. The large slabs forming the
entrance, gallery and chambers are of a finegrained blue-grey
limestone from the Blue Lias, probably from the area of Newton St
Loe, some 5 miles (8km) to the north west. The dry stone walling is
of Forest Marble the nearest source of which is a few hundred yards
to the south east.
Description
The barrow is among the finest known accessible examples of the
‘true entrance’ type, comprising entrance leading via a vestibule
to a gallery with pairs of side chambers (known technically as a
transepted gallery grave). It is the only known surviving example
with three pairs of side chambers, and there is also an end chamber
aligned with the gallery. It is placed with the entrance in the
middle of the larger end, which is to the south east (the
orientation is shown incorrectly with entrance to the south west on
some published plans). The present external measurements are about
lOOft (30m) long and SOft (15m) wide at the south-eastern end. The
height is about 9ft (2.7m).
The entrance portal, 3fr 9in (1.lm) high, is in the centre of
the horned facade forming the south-eastern end, and comprises two
jambs and a lintel separated from them by a thin layer of dry stone
walling. The left (western) door jamb is of particular interest for
its fine ammonite cast, ift (0.3m) in diameter: among the most
striking illustrations of neolithic man’s interest in fossils and
other geological phenomena. On the floor of the doorway threshold
is the top of a vertical slab, possibly intended to hold in
position the closing slab which was removed in the presence of Sir
Richard Colt Hoare in 1816.
The vestibule continues the line of the horns, but both its
entrance and its exit to the gallery are constricted by the
transverse wall slabs extending across the side slabs. On the left
(west) wall of the vestibule is a tablet bearing an inscription
which is a splendid example of Victorian smug
self-satisfaction:
THIS TUMULUS, -DECLARED BY COMPETENT
JUDGES TO BE THE MOST PERFECT SPECIMEN OF CELTIC ANTIQUITY STILL
EXISTING IN GREAT BRITAIN HAVING BEEN MUCH INJURED BY THE LAPSE OF
TIME, - OR THE CARELESSNESS OF FORMER PROPRIETORS, WAS RESTORED IN
1858 BY MR T. R. JOLIFFE, THE LORD OF THE HUNDRED; THE DESIGN OF
THE ORIGINAL STRUCTURE BEING PRESERVED, AS FAR AS POSSIBLE, WITH
SCRUPULOUS - EXACTNESS.
Beyond this vestibule is the gallery, some 42ft (12.8m) long
including its extension beyond the innermost pair of side chambers
to form an end chamber. This gallery varies between 4ft (1 .2m) and
6ft (1.8m) high, requiring most adult visitors to stoop in certain
parts. It has dry stone walls more or less bonded with a frontage
of upright slabs, and its roof is corbelled (of overlapping courses
of masonry converging towards the roof to receive a final covering
of slabs of minimal size). The structure of the side chambers is
broadly similar except that they have flat roofs. The doorway
threshold to the central pair of side chambers contains the
protruding top of a slab, intended possibly to form a division of
the sepulchral area, or possibly to keep in position a septal slab.
The hindmost transverse slabs of the central and innermost pairs of
side chambers extend across the slabs of the gallery to form
constrictions.
Excavation Record
The first recorded opening was in about 1760 when the
farmeroccupier forced an entry into the gallery through the roof
to obtain stone for road mending, and for some time afterwards the
site remained accessible to local people who entered it and removed
human bones and anything else which took their fancy. It was
archaeologically explored on 24/25 May 1816 by Reverend John
Skinner of Camerton and his brother Russell, Sir Richard Colt
Hoare, and his steward and surveyor Philip Crocker, assisted by a
labourer named Zebedee Weston. After gaining entry through the hole
made c1760, they cleared quantities of ‘rubbish’ from the interior,
but it is uncertain whether this comprised deliberate filling after
the tomb had ceased to fulfil its original purpose, or a normal
accumulation through the lapse of time. The recorded finds
comprise:
From the end chamber. leg and thigh bones and smaller
fragments.
From the west innermost side-chamber: confused heaps of
bones.
From the east innermost side-chamber. four jawbones, the teeth
perfect; upper parts of two long crania (middle-aged male and
elderly female), both unusually flat in the forehead; leg, thigh
and arm bones and vertebrae.
From the west central side-chamber: fragments of earthen vessel
with burnt bones (some of the latter were recovered by Dr Arthur
Bulleid c1917); bones of two or three skeletons.
An account of this excavation was read by Colt Hoare to the
Society of Antiquaries of London on 22 May 1817 and afterwards
printed in volume XIX of the Archaeologia.
From Skinner’s Journals we learn that less than a week after the
excavation of 24/25 May 1816, ‘some riotous colliers’ from the
local collieries broke the closing slab, entered the barrow, and
helped themselves to some of the bones and anything else which
appealed to them.
Restorations
The Report of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Somerset
Archaeological and Natural History Society, presented on 4 August
1857, states that ~by a pecuniary grant, under the judicious
direction of the Revd H. M. Scarth, the Society has been
instrumental during the past year in the timely preservation of the
interesting chambered Sepulchral Tumulus at Wellow’; and their
accounts for that year show that the sum granted was 16 shillings.
It is uncertain whether this covered the whole of the work done (in
which case Joliffe’s inscription overstates his part and gives the
date in error as 1858), or whether the restoration claimed by
Joliffe to have been done in 1858 was something additional. In any
event the work done included renovating some of the dry stone
walling of the perimeter, the original height of which was probably
of the order of 2 to 3ft (0.6 to 0.9m). The conjectural restoration
at the tail end has its junctions with the original walling
indicated by upright slabs. This dry stone walling was probably
originally faced with revetting which was most likely removed
during the works of 1857—58. The monument has been in the
guardianship of the appropriate government department (now the
Department of the Environment) since 1884.
Origins and Relationships
It is beyond the scope of this guide to discuss these matters in
any detail. There are certainly parallels between the
Cotswold—Severn group of transepted gallery-graves and those around
Pornic in Southern Brittany, and radiocarbon dates from chambered
tombs of probably related types in both areas extend from the
fourth into the third millennium BC. As cross-Channel
communication between Brittany and Southern England is well
attested in the succeeding Early Bronze Age it could well have been
already established in the Neolithic period.
Location of finds
The two crania from the east innermost side chamber are on
display in the City Museum, Bristol, together with a model of the
barrow.
Acknowledgement
For an improved approach to the study of the constricting and
closing devices in this tomb, the writer is grateful to Tim
Darvill’s dissertation entitled Concealment and Constriction in the
Cotswold—Severn Long Barrow Group (Southampton University,
December 1978).
L V Grinsell OBE, MA, FSA
PRINCIPAL LITERATURE
1816—17
Skinner, Reverend John, Letter to Reverend James Douglas. among the
Skinner Mss in Bath Municipal Library.
1821 Hoare, Sir R C,
‘An account of a Stone Barrow, in the parish of Wellow, at Stoney
Littleton in the County of Somerset,’ Archaeologia, xix, 43—8.
1859 Scarth. H M,
‘Remarks on ancient chambered tumuli,’ Proc Somerset Archaeol &
Nat Hist Soc, viii, 35—62, esp 46—9.
1865 Davis I B and
Thurnam, John, Crania Britannica, II. xxiv.
1881 Maclean, Sir
John, ‘Chambered tumuli,’ Trans Bristol & Glos Archaeol Soc, v,
86-1 18 (esp 108—11).
1888 Beddoc, John,
‘The human remains from the Stoney Littleton long barrow,’ Proc
Clifton Antiquarian Club, i, 104—8
1942 Bulleid, Arthur,
‘Notes on chambered long barrows in North Somerset, Proc Somerset
Archaeol & Nat Hist Sac, lxxxvii, 56-71 (esp 56-9).
1950 Daniel, G E,
Prehistoric Chamber Tombs of England and Wales, 231 and references
in index.
1954 Piggott, Stuart,
Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles, 133—6.
1958 Grinsell, LV,
Archaeology of Wessex, 29—31.
1969 Corcoran, J X W
P, ‘The Cotswold—Severn group,’ in Megalithic Inquiries in the West
of England by T G E Powell et al, 50—52. 88.
1971 Coombs, Howard
and Peter, editors, Journal of a Somerset Rector
1803—34,
(the most accessible references to Stoney Littleton long barrow
from the Journals of Reverend John Skinner).
1977 Donovan, D T,
‘Stoney Littleton long barrow,’ (Petrology). Antiquity, Ii,
236-7.
1978 Oakley, K P,
‘Animal fossils as charms,’ in Animals in Folklore, editors I R
Porter and W M S Russell, 223 (for cast of ammonite).
1982 Darvill, T, The
Megalithic Tombs of the Cotswold—Severn Region, published by Vorda,
Swindon.
