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Round cairn 55m west of Stoney Porth, White Island

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1010157
Date first listed:: 06-Oct-1976

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1010157
Date first listed:: 06-Oct-1976
Date of most recent amendment:: 20-Feb-1995

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Isles of Scilly (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: St. Martin's
National Grid Reference:: SV 92414 17549

Reasons for Designation

The Isles of Scilly, the westernmost of the granite masses of south west England, contain a remarkable abundance and variety of archaeological remains from over 4000 years of human activity. The remote physical setting of the islands, over 40km beyond the mainland in the approaches to the English Channel, has lent a distinctive character to those remains, producing many unusual features important for our broader understanding of the social development of early communities. Throughout the human occupation there has been a gradual submergence of the islands' land area, providing a stimulus to change in the environment and its exploitation. This process has produced evidence for responses to such change against an independent time-scale, promoting integrated studies of archaeological, environmental and linguistic aspects of the islands' settlement. The islands' archaeological remains demonstrate clearly the gradually expanding size and range of contacts of their communities. By the post- medieval period (from AD 1540), the islands occupied a nationally strategic location, resulting in an important concentration of defensive works reflecting the development of fortification methods and technology from the mid 16th to the 20th centuries. An important and unusual range of post- medieval monuments also reflects the islands' position as a formidable hazard for the nation's shipping in the western approaches. The exceptional preservation of the archaeological remains on the islands has long been recognised, producing an unusually full and detailed body of documentation, including several recent surveys. Round cairns are funerary monuments of Bronze Age date (c.2000-700 BC). They were constructed as mounds of earth and stone rubble, up to 40m in external diameter, though usually considerably smaller, covering single or multiple burials. A kerb of edge-set stones sometimes bounds the edge of the mound. Burials were placed in small pits, or on occasion within a box-like structure of stone slabs called a cist, set into the old ground surface or dug into the body of the cairn. Round cairns can occur as isolated monuments, in small groups or in larger cemeteries. Round cairns form a high proportion of the 387 surviving cairns recorded on the Isles of Scilly. Their considerable variation in form and longevity as a monument type provides important information on the diversity of beliefs, burial practices and social organisation in the Bronze Age and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of preservation.

This round cairn on White Island has survived well and has not been excavated. The relationship between this monument, the other varied types of funerary cairn and the prehistoric field system on White Island, and the known submergence of the land since they were built, illustrate in a dramatic way the major environmental changes that have affected the setting of some surviving prehistoric monuments since their construction and show the diversity of funerary practices and the organisation of land use among prehistoric communities.

Details

The monument includes a prehistoric round cairn situated on a gentle southerly slope, north west of the narrow neck of land across the centre of White Island, off St Martin's in the Isles of Scilly. This cairn is on the south east edge of a group containing at least nine prehistoric cairns of various types dispersed over the northern half of White Island. The round cairn survives with a turf-covered ovoid mound of heaped rubble measuring 7.5m east-west by 6m north-south, rising 0.5m high over its domed surface. Although this cairn is located on what is now a fairly small uninhabited island, linked to the much larger St Martin's island at low tide, the physical environment in which it was originally built was a broad rocky promontory on the northern edge of the single large island that formerly united much of the area of the present Isles of Scilly archipelago, from St Mary's northwards. The gradual sinking of the land since this cairn was constructed has led to the fragmentation of that island into the present scatter of large and small islands and rocks. Other broadly contemporary funerary cairns in this dispersed group on northern White Island are located from 65m to the north and 85m to the north east and to the west, while prehistoric field systems are located from 70m to the south east on the central and southern parts of the island, extending onto the upper shore of Porth Morran as a result of the submergence.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 15392
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Russell, V, Isles of Scilly Survey, (1980)
Thomas, C, Exploration of a Drowned Landscape, (1985)
Thomas, C, Exploration of a Drowned Landscape, (1985)
Thomas, A C, 'Cornish Archaeology' in Recent Fieldwork in the Isles of Scilly, , Vol. 14, (1975), 87-94
Other
consulted 1994, Thorpe, C., AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7097.06, (1988)
consulted 1994, Thorpe, C., AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7099, (1988)
consulted 1994, Thorpe, C., AM 107s for Scilly SMR entries PRN 7096-7, (1988)
Rees, S.E., AM 7 scheduling documentation for CO 998, 1975, Cairn 'b'. Consulted 1994
Title: 1:10000 Ordnance Survey Map; SV 91 NW Source Date: 1980 Author: Publisher: Surveyor:

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.