More information : SE 3381 8045: Quernhowe (OE) (Tumulus) (OE). (1)
The Quernhow barrow lies on the Great North Road nine miles from Boroughbridge, on the same side as, and 250 yards south of the junction of the road to Ainderby Quernhow.
The barrow prior to excavation was a low-lying mound about 3 feet high and approximately 114 feet in diameter.
Excavation, due to impending destruction by a new carriage way,
was carried out in May 1949 by DM Waterman. A small segment on the east margin was not excavated due to the presence of a fence and growing crops.
The barrow was found to have been constructed in two phases:-
In the first phase there had been five burial deposits, three being
accompanied by food-vessels, also two unaccompanied food-vessels were present. This burial complex had been covered with a mound of sand and enclosed by a penannular wall, roughly constructed of cobbles with an opening to the east. This had been covered by burnt material (possibly of ritual significance) over which the barrow mound of loamy sand had been deposited. After this a covering of stones had been spread over the mound and provided with a retaining bank, marked at the base by a stone kerb.
The second phase had taken place not long afterwards. In this the retaining bank and kerb were covered with a deposit of sand, and
an adult burial (possibly a dedicatory deposit) introduced on the
NW margin. Over a large area of the centre of the barrow the stone covering was removed and placed in heaps around the perimeter of the barrow (a ritual area?). On the south-west, the cremated remains of an adult and child, accompanied by a food-vessel, were interred beneath a small heap of stones. A 'ritual hearth' on the north flank of the barrow must also have been associated with this phase. The whole had been covered by a mound of sand well over 100 feet in diameter.The later intrusion on the north-east side, of an adult cremation unaccompanied by grave goods, completed the use of the barrow for burial.
In addition, a fragment of the neck of another food vessel came from the mound of the primary barrow, a plano-convex knife was found with one of the secondary cremations, an end scraper from the old surface under the primary mound, a narrow blade from material of primary mound, and a thumb scraper from the stone covering of the first phase.
Secondary mound material contained eight sherds of late first to
2nd century Romano-British coarse pottery, of which only the rim
of an Antonine dish was recognisable. The Roman road from Aldborough to Catterick (RR 8b) passes close to the site of the barrow.
The disposal of finds was not recorded. The barrow was erected about the middle of the second millenium BC (Middle Bronze Age A). (2)
No trace, destroyed by road improvements. (3)
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