Belas Knap long barrow

Belas Knap is a long barrow near Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. It was built in the early Neolithic period and is of similar style to dozens of other barrows found across the Cotswolds and the Severn valley.

The barrow is situated on a wide, rolling hillside, with a wide view in three directions and a steep, wooded scarp dropping sharply on the eastern side. This was probably wooded in the Neolithic period and so would have obscured the only prominent view of the barrow. From all other directions, the barrow quickly blends into the ground. Like Wayland's Smithy long barrow, Belas Knap was not intended to be a visible statement, but conversely the barrow itself has a sweeping view of the landscape. They seem to be about blending with the earth, returning the ancestors and their skills to the earth, as well as legitimising their continuing presence on this tract of land. They reflect heritage and belonging.

            Belas Knap from the east.

                View south from the barrow.

The barrow is aligned to the north. This is unusual: most long barrows face roughly east. Four burial chambers were set into its length and the main forecourt with its stone façade was actually a false entrance. It’s believed the chambers were built separately as individual burial mounds, then later incorporated into a huge barrow. Many barrows including Wayland’s Smithy were originally smaller structures which were extended into huge mounds a century or two later. Even earlier than the chambers was a circular arrangement of stones lying near the centre of the current mound.

The barrow was crudely excavated in the 19^th century and restored to its current condition in the 1920s. It was originally 60m long and 25m wide but its edges have now been trimmed due to erosion, agriculture and excavation. Thirty eight bodies were found, dating from 3700BC-3600BC.

Behind the slabs of the false entrance were the bones of one man and five children, along with flints and horse and pig bones. The western side chamber, lined with sarsens and drystone walling, contained fourteen bodies including a woman with fatal head injuries. The southern chamber, now almost entirely destroyed, contained one body. The south-eastern chamber, which is much lower and has to be entered on one’s belly, contained four bodies. The north-eastern chamber which is lined with sarsens contained twelve bodies.

The chambers were repeatedly visited and opened and sealed, probably used for rites such as marriage, blessing the land and blessing births as well as for burial. Then, like many long barrows, the chambers were eventually sealed for good. This often seems to coincide with the arrival of bronze in Britain around 2500BC.

                  The north-east chamber.

Barrows were often respected for millennia after their closure, although their stones crumbled and collapsed and trees and shrubs obscured them. Belas Knap means ‘beautiful hilltop’. As this seems to refer to the barrow itself rather than the hillside, it is perhaps a name of uneasy respect given by later, more superstitious people to a haunted and feared place. Many ancient sites were avoided as haunts of fairies or dwarfs, later still the work of the devil. This may derive from people unwittingly uncovering the bones of long-dead people, or perhaps it is a long-remembered folk memory of the fearful rites once conducted here.