Wold Newton
Neolithic Round Barrow
Wold Newton, East Riding of Yorkshire  OS Map Ref TA04837261  Elevation: 47M OSD
OS Maps - Landranger 101 (Scarborough), Explorer 301 (Scarborough, Bridlington & Flamborough Head)


Wold Newton Neolithic Round Barrow
The Neolithic barrow at Wold Newton seen looking northeast.
Close to a bend in the road at the village of Wold Newton, and south of the intermittent or 'winterbourne' Gypsey Race stream stands a large but often overlooked Neolithic round barrow.

The mound that can be seen today measures about 40 metres in diameter and just under 3 metres in height and is partly a reconstruction carried out after it was excavated in 1894 by the Yorkshire antiquarian J.R. Mortimer. It was discovered that the monument started out as a large wooden mortuary structure that had several bodies along with broken pottery and flints laid out on top. These bodies would possibly have been left to rot and decompose for some time before being covered with an earthen mound that was capped with a layer of chalk and rubble.

In the past few years aerial photographs have shown that the mound is surrounded by a causewayed ditch whose northern edge follows the course of the Gypsey Race. This leads to the interesting speculation (on my part anyway) that water could have flowed around the monument to form a kind of moat at times of high flow, but whether or not this ever occurred we must see the barrow as part of a wider picture that also encompassed the massive mounds at Duggleby Howe and Willie Howe that also stand close to the Gypsey Race.

See also: Introduction and maps of the Rudston Landscape

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