The buried, the restored and the vanished...
Maggie Chaplin looks at the historical long barrows of Notgrove, Waylands and Ascott. You would be forgiven for missing these ancient burial sites, for many of them are now nothing more than what appear to be fields; covered with grass and a hill like mound possibly the only pointer to their earlier use.
...The long barrows of Notgrove, Waylands and Ascott
Y
ou’d miss Notgrove Long barrow if you weren’t looking for it. Long barrows are ancient burial
sites and the one at Notgrove in Gloucestershire is around 5,000 years old. Today the A436 Bourton- on-the-Water to Andoversford road runs right next to it but when you walk the few hundred yards from the lay-by and turn off the track to the site, it’s like entering another world. The barrow was a wedge-shaped mound about 48m long, and it covered a central stone passage that led from the entrance at the wide end to a chamber in the narrower part. Opening off the main passage opposite each other were two pairs of side chambers. Kerbstones surrounded the mound and it had a curved forecourt that was probably used for burial rites. This is a typical design for long
Above: Entrance to the tomb at Waylandʼs Smithy
barrows in the area but the one at Notgrove had a distinctive feature. At the far end of the barrow, and probably built first, was a circular, domed, stone-lined grave sometimes referred to as the rotunda. On top of this chamber were the remains of a young female, and inside an adult male had been buried in a crouching position. One can only speculate about the significance. There were at least six sets of human remains in the main tomb
24 August 2011
and two more under the forecourt. Also found were animal bones and teeth, a flint arrowhead, and pottery fragments. It was evident that the site had been ransacked, probably on several occasions so the burial chambers were earthed over in 1976 to protect them from further damage, and bones and artefacts were transferred to Cheltenham museum for safe-keeping. Although today there is nothing to see of the tomb itself, there is still an atmosphere of sanctity and you can imagine, as you stand on this high ridge of the Cotswold Hills, why it was regarded as a special place by our ancestors all those millennia ago. To appreciate a restored long barrow in the Four Shires, the place to go is Waylands Smithy. Wayland was a Scandinavian god turned blacksmith. In his native tongue, his name, Volund, meant brave in battle, but according to folklore, with the coming of Christianity his divine status was forfeit and he had to earn a living. He set up shop at the site of an ancient tomb near the Ridgeway on the Berkshire Downs (now in Oxfordshire since county boundaries were changed) and since the 10th century the site has been known as Wayland’s Smithy. Wayland’s day job was to be responsible for the shoeing of the nearby spectacular Uffington White Horse.
The White Horse dates back to
around 1000 BC, so it’s a little unclear who took care of its hooves before Wayland came on the scene. After several centuries it would appear that he became bored by this task, because legend has it that he also developed a sideline. It was said that if you tethered your mount by the tomb and left a groat with it, by the next day the silver coin would have gone but the horse would have been shod. Wayland, of course, was never seen and groats were not in use in England until 1272. Even without the added interest of a deposed Scandinavian god in residence, Wayland’s Smithy has a fascinating history. Walk over the Berkshire Downs along the Ridgeway, an ancient track that has been in use for thousands of years, follow it westwards from the direction of the Uffington White Horse and you will come upon a little side turning to Waylands Smithy. The atmosphere immediately
changes. You leave open countryside with panoramic views in all directions, for a secluded otherworldly place surrounded by mature beeches. Recent radiocarbon dating has confirmed that this has been a sacred site for over 5,000 years and it still retains an aura of mystery. Waylands Smithy is particularly unusual in that two successive tombs were built there, one over the other.
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