Flowerdown Barrows
Three Bronze Age burial mounds survive near Winchester, in a county where most have been ploughed out or built over
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Earthworks onlybanks, ditches and platforms — read the ground, not walls
Around three-quarters of Hampshire’s Bronze Age burial mounds have been ploughed out or built over since they were raised about 4,000 years ago, which makes the three that survive on the edge of Littleton village, near Winchester, unusually rare. Two are bowl barrows, simple domed mounds, and the third is Hampshire’s largest and best-preserved disc barrow, a flat circular platform ringed by a ditch and bank with two low mounds set on top. Bronze Age barrows like these usually held either a crouched burial in a shallow grave or cremated ashes in a pot, sometimes with pottery or tools left for the afterlife, though archaeologists have never properly excavated Flowerdown’s mounds, so what they contain remains unknown. The barrows stand free to visit behind a gate in a small field at the village’s edge, with Winchester Station a couple of kilometres away. Wolvesey Castle in the middle of Winchester is a short drive south-east.
