What is a round barrow?

What a round barrow is

Archaeologists divide round barrows by the arrangement of mound, ditch and bank: a bowl barrow has a mound with the ditch directly around it, a bell barrow has a level berm between mound and ditch, a disc barrow has a small, low mound on a level area inside a much wider ditch with an outer bank, a saucer barrow has a low, wide mound within its ditch, and a pond barrow is a circular hollow surrounded by a bank. Bowl barrows are by far the most common, with over 10,000 recorded in England, while Historic England records fewer than 250 bell barrows, about 250 disc barrows, about 60 saucer barrows and about 60 pond barrows, most of them in Wessex. Historic England's scheduling texts date most bowl barrows to about 2400 to 1500 BC, most bell barrows to 1500 to 1100 BC, most disc barrows to 1400 to 1200 BC, most saucer barrows to 1800 to 1200 BC and most pond barrows to 1500 to 1000 BC, although another Historic England text places a group of pond barrows in 2000 to 1500 BC. Barrows stand alone or in groups called barrow cemeteries, and many were reused for later burials.

How round barrows look on LiDAR

On a bare-earth model a round barrow appears as a small circular rise, often with a faint surrounding ring where the ditch survives. A local relief model is the best single view, because it removes the slope of the hillside and shows barrows that ploughing has reduced to a few tens of centimetres high; sky-view factor shows the encircling ditch as a dark ring. Bell and disc barrows can be told apart by the level berm or platform between mound and ditch, and pond barrows show as a hollow inside a bank, the reverse of the usual pattern. Many barrows were dug into by antiquarians, and the hollow this left shows as a dip in the centre of the mound.

See LiDAR visualisations explained for what each method shows.

What can look like one

Windmill mounds, tree-clump planting mounds, spoil heaps, landscape-garden mounts and natural knolls can all look like round barrows; windmill mounds often have a cross-shaped impression on top from the mill's cross-trees. A ring ditch with no mound may be a ploughed-out barrow, but it can also be the site of a round house or a Second World War searchlight position.

Protection

Many round barrows are scheduled monuments, protected in England by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 and in Wales by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023.

Examples on the LiDAR

Where they are

Counties with the most round barrows that have a page here.

More examples