Gib Hill Barrow - Monyash, England
N 53° 10.012 W 001° 45.888
30U E 582572 N 5891545
Gib Hill, located near Monyash in the Peak District in Derbyshire, is a Bronze Age burial mound that may have once been connected with nearby Arbor Low by an earth bank. The cist’s capstone remains visible on the surface of the upper mound.
Waymark Code: WMEY2E
Location: East Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/20/2012
Views: 2
"Gib Hill barrow consists of one mound on top of another, there is a 27 x 24 metre round barrow and an earlier 44 x 27 metre long barrow. Although the name implies that the site was used for a gibbet there is no evidence of this. Excavations in the early 19th century found human bones and Roman coins. In 1824 William Bateman (the father of Thomas Bateman) excavated the site and it is probable that he owned the field as he is shown as the occupier of the land on the 1819 Enclosure Award for the parish. The trench showed that the earlier long barrow was made of clay mixed in layers with charcoal and cremated human bones. A flint and what was probably a polished stone axe were found. In 1848 Thomas Bateman excavated the site by digging a tunnel into the mound from the south. He found flints and scattered oxen bones in the lower clay. When he had almost completed the excavation a stone cist, which had probably been place on top of the long barrow when the round barrow was built, crashed through the roof of his tunnel. Bateman removed the cist and re-erected it in the grounds of Lomberdale House. Now it has been replaced in its rightful location and its capstone can be seen on the summit of the barrow."
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"The barrow that we see today was built in at least two phases. Its upper level comprises a particularly large, high and steep-sided round barrow (also described as a bowl barrow), probably built in the Early Bronze Age. This is superimposed on the south-western end of a long1 barrow of possibly Early Neolithic date.
The English Heritage scheduling document states that the long axis of the older barrow appears to be oriented on Arbor Low henge, although this is not in fact the case, nor does it tally with the monuments’ chronological sequence.
The lower barrow measures about 46 x 28m in plan. Its height is given as about 1m by Barnatt (1991) and as 2m by English Heritage (1994b) – presumably reflecting a difference in base measurement point. Nineteenth century excavation showed that at least part of the structure was built of earth rather than stones.
Work on the lower barrow in 1824 and 1848 (2.4.2) revealed several clay mounds (or more probably the disturbed remains of a single clay mound) on the old ground surface. The excavators described the clay as containing wood and charcoal, and beneath it the 1848 excavators found disarticulated ox bones and flints. This lower feature (or features) may be slightly earlier than the remainder of the long barrow, but as yet, the chronological relationship between them has not been determined.
The superimposed round barrow stands a further 2.5 to 3m above the level of the long barrow, and has a diameter of 24 x 27m. At its base, the 1848 excavation revealed a limestone cist, more or less square in shape, containing a food vessel and human cremation. The cist had probably been set on the summit of the long barrow when the round barrow was built above it.
A narrow berm surrounds the mound, and beyond this are shallow pits that may be silted quarry ditches, dug to provide material to build the barrows. Although the scheduling description (English Heritage) describes them as prehistoric, they are disturbed by
later quarries to east and west, and the whole group of pits could alternatively be interpreted as a series of later quarries (Barnatt 1991). Barnatt’s 1988 plan of the barrow and adjacent quarries drawn at a scale of 1:200 distinguishes between possible long barrow quarries, possible round barrow quarries and quarries / quarry upcast which definitely postdate the monuments.
When the barrow was taken into Guardianship in the 1880s, five small gritstone pillars, marked VR (for Victoria Regina) were set at the edge of what was then seen as the boundary of the monument. (They are in fact set into the slope of the lower barrow.) These boundary markers are incorporated within the scheduling."
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