Wood Farm

Also known as:
Ham Hill and Northfield Round Barrow
Nearest town:
Cheltenham (4km W)
OS reference:
SO99052166
OS sheet:
163
Latitude:
51° 53' 32.84 N
Longitude:
2° 0' 52.32 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Wood Farm (Round Barrow(s)) by thesweetcheat

A few chunky pieces of limestone protrude from the turf on the edges of the barrow, hinting at the construction materials used.

Image credit: A. Brookes (17.1.2021)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Nov 14, 2021
Image of Wood Farm (Round Barrow(s)) by thesweetcheat

The scooped-out centre is much clearer of vegetation than on my previous visit a dozen years earlier.

Image credit: A. Brookes (17.1.2021)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Nov 14, 2021
Image of Wood Farm (Round Barrow(s)) by thesweetcheat

Northfield round barrow from the Cotswold Way, with the Malverns on the skyline.

Image credit: A. Brookes (6.4.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Apr 17, 2013
Image of Wood Farm (Round Barrow(s)) by thesweetcheat

Showing the hollow centre resulting from the 1930 excavation

Image credit: A. Brookes (31.1.2009)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Jan 31, 2009

Articles

Wood Farm

C
CARL Aug 27, 2013

Visited 24.8.13

My last site of the day.

After parking next to a field gate I approached from the north along the Cotswold Way. This was not ideal as there is a stone wall and barbed wire fence to scale from the path into the required field. It is much easier to climb over the metal field gate and walk diagonally across the field to the Barrow. You can actually just about see the Barrow from the gate as a patch of rough, scruffy ground next to far hedgerow.

The Barrow is pretty mangled with the centre hollowed out. It looks like a nettled covered doughnut. Lots of small stones were sticking out of the grass showing how the Barrow was constructed.

Not much to recommend a visit I am afraid to say.

Wood Farm

thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Jan 31, 2009

Visited 31.1.2009 on a cold day, approaching up the hill from the west. The barrow is in a rather sorry state – I don’t know how it looked prior to the 1930 excavation (when a number of intact burials were found) but the excavation itself clearly was more “destructive” than simply invasive. The remaining barrow looks like the crater of a grassy volcano!

Even in its reduced state, the barrow is a good size, at least 12 paces in diameter and almost a metre high around the rim. As with many Cotswold barrows (both long and round) it is not situated on the top of the hill, but some way down the slope. In this case, it sits a hundred metres or so down the western side of the slope, about 10 metres lower than the ridge where the Cotswold Way footpath runs. However, this gives it a very commanding view to the west (not today sadly!) over the vale of the Severn and to the Malverns.

The barrow is visible from the Cotswold Way, and without the field boundaries would have been fairly prominent. Sadly there is no real ambience or sense of place, as the barrow is very run down and sits in a ploughed field (the lack of visibility probably didn’t help today either).

If anyone is intending to visit, there are three ways of approach: (1) up the steep slope from the west (Battledown), taking a footpath heading due east off the lane that runs past Hewletts Reservoir and goes past Northfield Farm (2) from the north along the Cotswold Way, from the direction of Cleeve Hill and (3) from the south along the Cotswold Way from Dowdeswell or the Ham Farm lane. (2) and (3) are pretty flat and easy walking, (1) is pretty steep. The barrow itself lies near the SW corner of a ploughed field on private land, but the footpath (1) runs along the north side of this field and I skirted the field edge to get to it – no harm done!

Not perhaps somewhere to come specifically, unless you’re curious, but could be viewed as part of a walk around Cleeve Hill.

Miscellaneous

Wood Farm
Round Barrow(s)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Jan 4, 2009

Barrow excavated in 1912, found to enclose three stone-lined graves, containing the skeletons of an adult male, and adult female and a child, plus a selection of grave goods including bone pins, flint tools and a white polished pebble.

Gloucestershire HER:

The first record of the barrow dates to 1625 when a juror’s report on the manor of Cheltenham noted ‘the stones of Northfield Hill’ as one of the boundary markers of the manor. The barrow mound was partially excavated in 1912 by HC Hill, at which time it was about 3.5m high and 12m in diameter. The large depression in the centre of the barrow is thought to result from this excavation. The barrow was found to have been systematically constructed from alternate layers of stone and earth, with three primary burials lying in separate stone cists about 1.8m from the top of the mound. The burials included the remains of two adults and a child which were associated with a number of grave goods including a flint knife, a flint saw, a whetstone, a crystal and a polished white pebble. A secondary burial was found to have been dug into the side of the mound. Considerable evidence for burning was found on the original ground surface, and the site was covered over with rubble ‘for the purpose of preservation’.

Now only 10m diameter though probable original extent indicated by slight swelling in ground. There is an enormous hole in the centre of this barrow, so that very little of the circumference survives & this is partially ploughed.

Sites within 20km of Wood Farm

Like all websites everywhere, we use cookies.