| Summary : A disc barrow, part of the Oakley Down barrow group (SU 01 NW 19). Listed by RCHME as Wimborne St Giles 101 and by Grinsell as Wimborne St Giles 17, it was described by RCHME as a mound 36 feet across and 3 feet high, surrounded by a berm 30 feet wide and a very shallow ditch and outer bank each 10 feet wide. The barrow has suffered considerably from plough damage. The mound was excavated in the early 19th century by Cunnington and Hoare (their barrow 17). Hoare's account is as follows: "Immediately under the turf, we discovered an interment of burned bones, and proceeding further, saw a prodigious quantity of ashes and charred wood, and were afterwards gratified with the sight of a very large sepulchral urn inverted within a cist cut in the native chalk. On taking it out, we observed several pieces of decayed linen, of a reddish brown colour, lying like cobwebs on the calcined bones. The urn is rather of an oval form, and is the [second] largest we have ever found...". The vessel, a collared urn, is in Devizes Museum. |