Danes
Hills
Iron Age Barrow Cemetery
East of Riccall, North Yorkshire OS
Map Ref SE648378
OS Maps - Landranger 105 (York & Selby), Explorer 290 (York)
![]() Danes Hills, square barrow mound at SE64873766. |
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Danes Hills is a small
Iron
Age 'square barrow' cemetery situated to the northwest of Skipwith
Common nature reserve (marked as 'Skipworth' on the OS map) close
to, and somewhat damaged by, the remains of an airfield built during
the 1940's. The barrows are quite difficult to find on the ground
- I found two that were located to the northeast of the end of the
old runway but both were heavily overgrown and not worth trying to
photograph, while I struggled to identify any within the woodland
to the northwest of the runway. English Heritage give the coordinates
of the two I found as SE64783775 and SE64873766 but groups those in
the woodland under a single coordinate SE64383771 which does not seem
to correspond with a particular barrow and a close study of the map
seems to indicate that a pair of barrows may stand a little to the
northeast of this point. A study of the area in 1994 suggests that
there were at least twenty barrows within this group. Update: I returned to the site in early spring to have another look for some of the barrows. The ones to the northwest of the old runway still proved elusive although a small mound under the trees at SE64473775 looked like a possibility. To the northeast of the runway the barrow at SE64783775 is visible as a slight hump but was still impossible to photograph while the barrow at SE64873766 survives as a slight mound covered in dead bracken shown at the top of this page. A few paces to the south I found the pair of larger mounds shown below, and although covered in dead undergrowth the existence of some kind of mound was confirmed underneath. I can't say for certain that these are the remains of barrow mounds but given the often close proximity of graves in other square barrow cemeteries this would seem likely. |
![]() Possible barrow mound. |
![]() Possible barrow mound, just to the south of the previous one. |
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