| Summary : A bowl barrow, part of the Oakley Down barrow group (SU 01 NW 19). Listed by RCHME as Wimborne St Giles 95 and by Grinsell as Wimborne St Giles 23, it was described by RCHME as a mound 40 feet in diameter and 1.5 feet high. It was excavated by Cunnington and Hoare in the early 19th century (Hoare's barrow 23). According to Hoare, "No. 23 being a low and broad barrow, we found some difficulty in ascertaining its centre, and we failed in our first attempts upon it; but a second trial, and a larger excavation, led us to an interment of burned bones deposited within an inverted urn of very coarse unbaked pottery". The barrow was re-excavated in 1968, following recognition of the damaged caused by ploughing. The mound was shown to be surrounded by a very irregular ditch. It varied between 4 and 8 feet in width and between 4 feet and 2.5 feet in depth. There were suggestions of more than one phase of digging, and the northern side was noticeably straight and narrow, as though a causeway of a formerly penannular ditch had been removed.The primary burial pit was located just off centre beneath the mound, and contained potsherds (Collared Urn), charcoal, bone tweezers and cremated bone along with one of Cunnington's lead plaques (dated 1804). A post hole was found in the northern sector of the barrow, containing charcoal, burned clay and some fragments of cremated bone in its fill. Immediately opposite it but outside the barrow ditch was a pit containing large quantities of cremated bone and ash. The pit appeared to be cut by the northern barrow ditch, suggesting the latter was later. A subrectangular feature had been cut across the ditch on the southern side at an unknown date. A group of four stakeholes were found within the ditch to the southeast, arranged in a rectangle, associated with charcoal, burnt bone and pottery lying on the primary ditch fill. Several hundred flints were found during the excavation, and Roman and Saxon potsherds were present in the ploughsoil. |