John Burke's Beautiful England
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Wednesday 29 May 1998

After calling at Bibury Fran and I headed up through Northleach, calling in at Keith Harding's excellent mechanical music museum, and then Bourton-on-the-Water which we shall see in the next page. We booked in for two nights in Bourton and then drove out to look at a couple of long barrows, along the lines of West Kennet Long Barrow seen in page 3.

Our first stop according to the map was Notgrove Long Barrow seen left.
Notgrove was (according to the placque nearby) vandalised and to prevent further damage the authorities decided to backfill the tomb. It now looks exactly like a natural small hill...

So here, to make up for the disappointment, is a couple of pix of my car... The traffic cones help show the car in its natural environment!
As the sign above suggests, we are now climbing to Belas Knap Long Barrow. This is not as conveniently close to the side of the road but will hopefully turn out to be a little less "ordinary hill-like"!
And, as can be seen, this happily turns out to be the case. Far left is a false entrance, built presumably to fool would-be grave robbers. Five entrances lead to small chambers. One is shown with a flash photograph of the interior.
The entrance at the back of the barrow (left) has been blocked off.

Far left is another real entrance and a view of the surrounding countryside from the top of the barrow.
   
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