MEM22811 - Bronze Age cairn southeast of Dunkery Beacon (Monument)

Known as Cutcombe 6, this is a Bronze Age cairn with an overall diameter of 20 metres, with much of its perimeter defined by a turf covered rim bank of small stones enclosing a central platform upon which is a more recent 'shelter'.

(SS 8916 4155) Mutilated cairn at `A' . [1] 'A' at SS 8918 4156, is a very disturbed cairn. Listed by Grinsell as Cutcombe 6. (GPs AO/65/136/3 & 4). Surveyed at 1:2500. [2] Cutcombe 6. Visited by Harold St George Gray on 10 May 1928 and by Grinsell on 25 May 1958. 17 paces diameter and 2.5 feet high, although precise measurements were difficult to obtain as it is a cairn which has been added to periodically. [3] SS 89154156. Cutcombe 6, Vowles A, south east of Dunkery Beacon, diameter 18 metres. Vowles claimed the cairn had a stone retaining circle and traces of an outer circle, both are shown on his plan. The circle around the site has probably since been removed by vandals. [4,5] SS 8918 4157. Cutcombe 6, Scheduled Monument SO 49b. A cairn 30 metres southeast of MEM22803. It has an overall diameter of 20 metres with much of the perimeter defined by a turf covered rim bank of small stones. This bank, 0.2 to 0.4 metres high, encloses a central platform at best 0.3 metres above ground level and mostly much less. The south east half is turf covered and the basal stones are concealed, elsewhere they are of small size, about 0.1 to 0.2 metres across. In the northeast, and 1 metre inside the rim bank and concentric with it, there is an 8 metre arc of fairly contiguous stones. Generally 0.5 metres long, and between 0.2 and 0.3 metres thick, their tops are flush with the platform but distinctive in that they are much larger than the other material. A further line of five similar stones is 2 metres inside the previous arc, i.e. 5 metres from the platform centre, but these are irregularly spaced over a length of 5 metres. Both confirm Vowles claim [4] to have seen two circles. At the centre of the platform a "shelter", 5 metres long and 4 metres wide, has walling of piled stones, up to 0.5 metres high, evidently robbed from the cairn and probably from the retaining circles. [6,7] Cutcombe 6 is a very eroded Bronze Age cairn with a low circular mound and spread of stones averaging 21 metres in diameter. The central part of the monument is a spread of fist-sized surface stone with the remnants of two concentric kerbs protruding, chiefly on the northern side. The stones that make up the curb are a combination of edge-set and upright stones 0.4 metres high and up to 0.8 metres long. At least four quarries surround the cairn. It is likely that these are contemporary with the construction of the cairn. [8] The five cairns on the summit of Dunkery Beacon were surveyed in August 2004 in response to a request by The National Trust to cover some of the monuments to protect them from further visitor damage. [9] The cairn was transcribed as closely as possible from aerial photographs as part of the Exmoor National Mapping Programme survey, but in spite of its size it is not clearly visible, due in part to the vegetation cover of this area and the erosion caused by visitors to the site. [10-17] The Scheduled Monument Condition Assessment of 2009 gave the site a score of 3. [18] The site was surveyed in April 2015 as part of the 2015 Exmoor Scheduled Monument Condition Assessment. It was given a survival score of 3. [19] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [20,21]