The Archaeology Of Arn Hill, Warminster

Some notes compiled by Danny Howell in 1990:

Arn Hill has no elaborate fortifications or ramparts and cannot be described as a contour hill fort but does include some interesting earthworks and burial mounds. Perhaps the most noticeable and unusual features of the Arn Hill landscape are the humps and hollows between what is now the Club House of the West Wilts Golf Club and the old chalk quarry. This area is marked on old maps as a camp and has been described as “a small hill fort.” It is, perhaps, more accurate to call this feature ‘an enclosure.’ Occupying a rectangular site, this part of the hill has been damaged by the extraction of minerals in the 18th and 19th centuries, although the western corner together with a ditch on the east side have survived quarrying.

The aforementioned ditch runs in a northerly direction. Marked on early maps as “Old Ditch” it is now much more shallow than it would have been in Iron Age times. It was probably more than 10 feet deep in its original condition. It could have been constructed as a defensive line or, as the Warminster schoolteacher and amateur historian Victor Strode Manley (1894-1965) suggested in the 1920s, it could have been a hollow way enabling “the inhabitants to move to and fro without being visible on the skyline.”

Near the centre of Arn Hill is a bowl barrow surrounded by a ditch and an outer bank. The barrow is 49 feet in diameter and three and a half feet high; and the ditch is 8 feet wide and six inches deep. The outer bank measures 11 feet wide and is 6 inches high. A small causeway runs across the ditch and bank on its east side.

The barrow was excavated by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, about 1800. In his Ancient History Of South West Wiltshire (1812) he noted “. . . a circular barrow, which from its singularity deserves notice. It is surrounded by a ditch, having a vallum without, through which are two entrances pointing east and west. On making a large section in it, we discovered at a depth of about eighteen inches, an article of iron resembling the head of a spear or halberd, and near it the halves of two horseshoes. In our progress to the floor of the barrow, we found a great many flat-headed nails, and pottery similar to those found in the British towns, together with charred wood; and on the floor of the barrow was a small circular cist containing a very few black ashes. We also met with considerable quantities of stiff clay, which is remarkable, as none is produced by nature on this down.”

Unfortunately the barrow was damaged by digging on its eastern side somewhen during the early part of this century.

Two round barrows within yards of each other once existed on the south western edge of Arn Hill, north of the wooded area. They were destroyed in December 1911 when the smaller one to the south was heaped on top of the other to make a golfing tee for the West Wilts Golf Club.

Artefacts found in what was the smaller, southerly, barrow are now kept at Devizes Museum and include two well-made cinerary urns dating from the Bronze Age. One was found inverted over an interment of burnt bones and features a collar around the rim with rows of punched holes arranged in groups of three at both top and bottom of the collar. Between the rows of holes is an impressed design of triangles. The other urn, a smaller one, was discovered in January 1912. It was found upright and contained a second interment of burnt bones. Its collar features two lines of herringbone pattern. Both urns were baked red.

The barrow also yielded a whetstone of a slate type rock. This was found among the bones in the smaller urn. An additional find from the barrows was three stone floor ’tiles’. One of these measures one foot by nine inches and has a hole at each corner. Another is eight inches square, has no holes, but features an unusual surface. The third ’tile’ measures ten inches by six inches and has no holes. These ’tiles’ are of doubtful origin.

At Colloway Clump, to the north of Arn Hill, is a long barrow orientated south west/north east. It measures 132 feet long, 75 feet wide, and averages 10 feet high. The maximum height at the south west end is just over 10 feet but it is lower and narrower at the north east end. The ditches which surrounded the long barrow have been ploughed out and the area is now tree covered. The barrow was excavated by Colt Hoare’s colleague William Cunnington in 1802.

Colt Hoare wrote “On the edge of . . . . Arn Hill, over looking the Westbury road, is a long barrow, newly planted, and which was partially opened by Mr. Cunnington in the year 1802. At the south end was a sarsen stone five feet high, terminating almost in a point, and placed in an upright position. Near it lay the bones of three skeletons, which appeared to have been deposited on the south and south-east of the stone, with the heads towards the east. They were all placed on a rude pavement of marl, and over them was thrown a pile of loose stones. There are probably other, and more ancient interments in the tumulus; but the contents of the long barrows have proved in general so very uniform and uninteresting that we have not been tempted to make any further investigations on it.”

Just south east of the Colloway Clump long barrow is a small bowl barrow measuring 14 paces in diameter and about one foot high.