| Summary : A bowl barrow, part of the Oakley Down barrow group (SU 01 NW 19). Listed by RCHME as Wimborne St Giles 110 and by Grinsell as Wimborne St Giles 9, it was described by RCHME as a mound 73 feet in diameter and 6 feet high. The barrow was excavated in the early 19th century by Cunnington and Hoare (their barrow 9). It is worth noting that Hoare describes the monument as a bell barrow. They found a primary crouched inhumation accompanied by a bronze dagger (with part of a wooden scabbard remaining), a bronze awl, a V-perforated shale button, a shale pulley ring, another shale object, four flint barbed and tanged arrowheads, plus "some pieces of flint, chipped and prepared for similar weapons". A pottery vessel, described as "probably" a Drinking CUp (ie Beaker) was at the feet of the skeleton. Many of these items (though not the pottery vessel) are in Devizes Museum. The primary inhumation appears to have been buried beneath a cairn of flints, among which were found large pieces of antler and part of a polished stone axehead. Within the mound but above the flint cairn were found two secondary inhumations, apparently placed one above the other. The uppermost was associated with another "Drinking Cup" (again, presumably a Beaker) plus sherds of "another cup of still ruder texture and workmanship". By its feet was a large deposit of cremated human bones. The excavation was also notable for a "tremendous storm of thunder and lightning", during which all present were forced to hide within the barrow until the flint cairn began to collapse on them. The incident was recalled in a truly dreadful poem by the Rev. W Bowles, one of those present, which Hoare chose to publish alongside his account of the excavation. |