MMO1197 - Bronze Age cairn on Porlock Common (Monument)

A large cairn lies on the southern edge of Porlock Common at SS 86377 46335. It comprises a grass covered circular mound, 12.5 metres in diameter and 1 metre high. A slight ditch is visible around the northern edge of the mound. A central depression is 5 metres in diameter and 0.6 metres deep. A small mound to the south of the cairn is formed of the material taken from this depression, which is probably the site of an unrecorded antiquarian excavation. The cairn was recorded and surveyed using differential GPS as part of the RCHME Exmoor project. [1] A prehistoric cairn, visible as an earthwork mound and centred at SS 8638 4634, was mapped from aerial photographs taken in 1946. Located on Porlock Common atop Porlock Hill, the roughly circular earthwork is about 13 metres in diameter, with a subcircular pit in the middle about 5.3 metres in diameter. The feature was seen to be still extant on aerial photographs taken in 1979 and surveyed as part of the RCHME Exmoor project [1] in 1998. [2-5] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [6]