MSO7442 - Bronze Age embanked platform cairn or disturbed bowl barrow on Monkham Hill (Monument)

A Bronze Age embanked platform cairn is visible as a low, very stony, circular bank. The northeastern part of the centre of the interior is occupied by a spread mound of stones. It now lies in an cleared area of commercial forestry.

(SS 9935 3901) Tumulus (NR) [1] Luxborough No 3, a bowl barrow 14 paces diameter and 1 foot high with a hollow in the centre. [2] This is the rim of a bowl barrow 0.3 metres high. Published survey (1/2500) revised. [3] A round barrow occupying a striking topographic position on the crest of the Exmoor escarpment. It comprises a circular spread of stone 0.4 metres high and 13.2 metres in diameter. It is in very poor condition: it is situated in an area of commercial forestry and trees have been planted on it. At the time of field investigation at least three mature conifers on the barrow had been blown over ripping up the surface of the monument. [4] This barrow may have been one of those recorded in the early literature as being further to the southwest. [5] SS 9935 3901. Bowl barrow on Monkham Hill. Scheduled on 6th October 2003. [6] The Scheduled Monument Condition Assessment of 2009 gave the site a survival score of 3. [10] The site was surveyed in May 2015 as part of the 2015 Exmoor Scheduled Monument Condition Assessment. It was given a survival score of 12. [11] A large scale survey of this cairn was undertaken for Historic England and the Forestry Commission in 2017 following clearance of scrub across the site. The cairn lies in a clearing on the edge of a mature conifer plantation, on land which was formerly open moorland and part of Rodhuish Common. It comprises a low, very stony, circular bank, 3 metres wide and up to 0.7 metres high. The west side has been destroyed by a disused, deep vehicle track but the plan shows that the bank was originally circular and 16 metres in diameter. Two hollows to the north and east may be the remains of stone robbing; it has been disturbed and probably spread by vehicle tracks. The survey has suggested that this monument is an embanked platform cairn rather than a robbed barrow as previously suggested. This cairn, the barrow to the west (MSO7443) and a newly discovered cairn in a plot of mature conifers (MEM23805) to the northwest form a group of three distinct types of funerary monuments in a prominent location on the northeastern edge of the Exmoor escarpment, looking out north across the Bristol Channel and east towards the Quantock Hills. The structural differences may well relate to the different way that the sites were used: cremation, perhaps on the site of the platform cairn, followed by the interment of the ashes in the barrow, and the disposal of the cremation pyre within the embanked platform cairn. [12] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [13]