Pimperne Long Barrow and Tarrant Gunville

The chalk downs of Dorset are littered with the burial mounds of our ancestors. The long barrow on the hill above Pimperne is one of several in the area and marks the site of a Neolithic settlement dating from around 3000 bc. A contemporary earthwork is shown on the OS map, but it has been ploughed into the ground. Down the slope towards the road is a later round barrow, or tumulus. A similar settlement site and earthwork is marked above the Ninety Nine Plantation on a neighbouring slope to the northeast; there are more tumuli here, also disappearing under the plough, and a less impressively preserved long barrow. The settlers in this part of England are believed to have come over from the Continent. They were farmers, introducing cattle and sheep to Britain from southeastern Europe and the Middle East.

Pimperne Long Barrow is one of the best in Dorset. It appears as a 330ft long (100m) scrub-covered mound at the edge of a field. Long barrows like this were communal graves, usually for men with the status of chiefs and their families. The barrows consisted of ounded earth and stone. There were commonly six to eight bodies inside, sometimes buried with vessels of food and possibly interred over a long period of time. Often, as with the example of the Grey Mare and her Colts, the long barrows were divided into chambers by large, flat slabs of stone. With the fields full of tiny flints, it is easy to see that such luxuries were not available here, and so timber was probably used instead. However, the flinty ground was important to the Neolithic settlers for other reasons. A legacy of finely worked spear heads, arrow heads and polished stone axes shows the value of the stone in their lives, both for immediate use and for trading. (There’s a good collection in the museum in Dorchester.)

Burial mounds of different sorts are found all over Dorset. The round barrows are probably the most common. They date from around 2000 bc and were usually single graves. Other later forms include the bell barrow, where the mound was surrounded by a ditch, and the bowl barrow, where the body was buried in a crouching position. So-called disc barrows, clearly visible in aerial photographs of nearby Oakley Down, consist of one or two small mounds on a larger circle of flat ground, surrounded by a ditch and bank. Finds of beads and needles amid the cremated remains suggest these may have been the burial places of high-born women. The construction of barrows continued under the Roman occupation until around ad 750.

Turn left on the main street, passing the telephone box on your right. Turn right by the old forge, signposted ‘Everley Hill’, and go up the road for 320yds (300m), passing the Manor House gates on the left. At a junction keep ahead following the lane signposted for Home Farm only. After 0.25 miles (400m) keep right at the split.

Pass an old farmhouse on the right, with a tiny labourer’s cottage in the yard (Home Farm has a shop and tea room close by). At the fingerpost bear right on the track, passing a fine old hedge on the right. Continue gently uphill, passing the end of Pimperne Wood on the left and ignoring two private tracks to the left.

At a junction of tracks just over the brow (with a view ahead) turn left on a bridleway along the edge of the wood. At the end of the wood stay on the grass track. Where a farm track drops down to the right, go straight ahead up the edge of the fields, passing a large concrete block that resembles an oversized Lego brick. As you go over the crest of the hill, the bristling radio mast of Blandford army camp is prominent in the view ahead of you. Beyond rolling Pimperne Down to the right you can see where Hambledon Hill falls away sharply to the north. Continue to where the track meets a metalled farm road.

Turn left onto the grassy track, passing a water tower. Go through the gate to Pimperne Long Barrow. Turn left alongside the hedge and right at the sign heading downhill. Then follow the grassy strip between the fields to a track beside the trees.

Continue straight on with the trees to the left and, where the track veers to the right, bear left down the edge of the field, passing into the woods at the bottom and continuing up the opposite slope. At the top of the hill, by an overgrown metal gate, go straight ahead down the tree-shaded bridleway. At the track keep left, heading down past some houses to arrive at the junction passed earlier (left leads to Home Farm). Turn right and retrace your steps towards the village of Tarrant Gunville.

Before the bottom of the hill, where a path joins from the left, bear right through three gates into the churchyard. Leave the church and go down the path and some steps, turning left at the bottom to a junction. Turn right to continue retracing your steps back into the village.