More information : `C' - SU 11864278; Amesbury 45, a bell barrow with an overall diameter of 194ft. (1) Excavations by Colt Hoare (Barrow 30) located a primary cremation close to a cist full of ashes and a few bits of burnt bone. (2)
Amesbury 45, a ditched bell barrow 56m in overall diameter and approximately 4m high. (3)
Originally recorded as Amesbury 45 by Goddard. With a note by Maud Cunnington: condition good, 1913, never ploughed. (4)
The barrow is visible as an earthwork on aerial photographs, and has been mapped by both RCHME's Salisbury Plain Training Area NMP and EH's Stonehenge WHS Mapping Project. (6-8)
The Bronze Age bell barrow referred to above (1-8) was surveyed at 1:1000 scale by English Heritage in April 2009 as part of the Stonehenge WHS Landscape Project. It measures circa 56m in overall diameter and comprises a central mound which stands 3.5m high and sits on a roughly concentric but sub-circular plinth completely surrounded by a ring ditch. The base of the mound measures circa 26m in diameter and the top is 8m. Berms separate the bottom of the mound and the edge of the plinth (between 1m and 5m wide) and the bottom of the plinth and the ditch (between 2m and 5m wide). The plinth is 36m and the berm is 41m in diameter. The ditch measures 0.5m deep and between 5m and 7m wide. The plinth suggests the barrow is of at least two phases of construction. The hollow in the top of the mound probably relates to Hoare's excavation. There are some modern erosion scars on the eastern and southern sides of the mound and the plinth appears to have spread to the south-west, which could be a result of disturbance either from excavation or scrub vegetation. (9-10)
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