MSO9184 - Great Rowbarrow (Monument)

(SS 87544153) Great Rowbarrow (NR) [1] The cairn known as 'Great Rowbarrow' is situated close to the moorland trackway to Lang Combe Head and on the east side of it. It is a large cairn, much mutilated by deep hollows and high ridges, especially along the north half of the mound. The greater part of the cairn has a bank-shaped footing of heaped stones, but there is little sign of this on the south side. The structure is circa 70 feet in diameter, however this is rather irregular,and from 6-7 feet high. [2] Scheduled. [3] This is a very disturbed cairn, listed by Grinsell as Cutcombe 3. [4,5] SS 87534154. Cutcombe 3. Great Rowbarrow, mutilated cairn including ruins of modern stone-heap now integrated with the original cairn. It is named Great Barrow on the Tithe Map of 1840. Cutcombe 4a. "One or two of Rowbarrows had been examined incompletely" on 2 November 1807 [6,7](MSO9183, MSO9184, MSO9185 are known as 'Rowbarrows'). [4] Additional Bibliography. [8] SS 8754 4153. Great Rowbarrow, a large heavily mutilated cairn situated on a prominent hilltop at 507 metres above sea level. Composed of boulders and stones it measures approximately 22 metres overall with a maximum height of about 1.6 metres. A crude (? modern) cairn, 0.4 metres high and constructed of fairly large stones, has been erected on the top, and two small circular wind shelters occupy parts of the mound. There is no evidence of a kerb and the apparent rim, a 4.0 metres wide band of small stone enclosing part of the mound has almost certainly been caused by random excavation or disturbance. Small shallow and amorphous quarry pits, probably the source of some cairn material, lie to the west and south. Visible on aerial photographs. [9-11] The cairn is as described by [7] and lies at SS 87545 41536. It was surveyed using GPS as part of the RCHME East Exmoor project. [12] The heavily mutilated mound known as Great Rowbarrow, probably a cairn of Bronze Age date, can be seen as an earthwork on aerial photographs centred on circa SS 8754 4153, approximately 1.6 kilometres to the west of Dunkery Beacon. The earthwork measures up to 25 metres in diameter and field investigation reveal it stands up to 1.6 metres high. Numerous small and shallow quarry pits, probably the source of the cairn material, lie to the south and west of the monument. [9,13,14] Enclosing low bank is heather covered. Practise of removing stones is the greatest erosion threat to the cairn. [15] Small patch of turf and heather on the summit. Most of the cairn is a bank covered with heather and whortleberry. 7 feet high on the north side, 6 feet on the south. [16] Scheduled as AM 48c. Other mounds nearby. [17] The Scheduled Monument Condition Assessment of 2009 gave the site a score of 8. [22] The site was surveyed in April 2015 as part of the 2015 Exmoor Scheduled Monument Condition Assessment. It was given a survival score of 6. [23] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [24] Great Rowbarrow is depicted and labelled on the 2021 MasterMap data. [25]