MMO449 - Possible Bronze Age barrow on Kipscombe Hill (Monument)

A small mound is visible on aerial photographs as an earthwork roughly 18 metres in diameter. Field investigation has revealed that the mounds survive to a height of 0.3 to 0.4 metres. It may form part of a linear barrow cemetery.

Three low mounds of uncertain date were discovered on Kipscombe Hill during field reconnaissance. SS 7649 4934. 33 metres south-south-east of the Triangulation Station on the summit of Kipscombe Hill is a low circular mound 15 to 7 metres in diameter and 0.4 metres high. In form it is a low rise or swelling on the crest of the south facing slopes of the hill. Kipscombe Hill was enclosed after World War Two. [1,2] This mound is visible as an earthwork roughly 18 metres in diameter on aerial photographs of 1952 and 1972, centred on circa SS 7649 4934. Two other similar mounds have been recorded as MMO1677 and MMO1678. This mound is similar in appearance and size to the bowl barrow recorded to the southeast of Kipscombe Hill at SS 771 491 (MDE1227) and it is suggested here that it may also be the remains of a small round barrow. In addition, the systematic examination of all available aerial photographs of Exmoor as part of the Exmoor National Park National Mapping Programme (NMP) project has identified at least 6 further possible mounds of similar dimesions on Kipscombe Hill. These earthworks comprise a roughly linear group along the eastern group of Kipscombe Hill, and if proved to be small barrows, may form a cemetery similar in alignment, if not scale, to other barrow cemeteries on Exmoor, such as the Chapman Barrows (MDE1061). [3-5] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [6]