Bronze Age Walks - Summerlug barrow and hill - Holt Heath - Wimborne - Dorset

A walk to locate a Bronze age barrow on Holt Heath National Nature Reserve. 

Holt Heath is a Nature Park North of Wimborne Minster in Dorset.

Summerlug barrow (50.8430860, -1.9038620)

Summerlug hill (50.8426202, -1.9040965)

Parked at map ref (50.8436743, -1.9082170)

Bronze Age Walks are a collection of short, filmed walks with maps defining Bronze Age sites.

Please take a look at the video 

https://youtu.be/1nNY6dE-FGY

Walk starts from Holt road at the parking label on map.

Map of Summerlug Hill

Walk from the entrance till you meet the main path and turn left. Keep walking until you come to a fork in the path. I went left around the north of the hill. You can go left or right here it doesn’t really matter, as it’s a circular walk. 

Summerlug hill is on the edge of the heath. You can find gorse, bracken and foxgloves in plenty at the right time of year. Occasionally you can hear Curlew calls.

Just round the top of the hill you can find Summerlug barrow on the right hand side. It’s not signposted. The problem with finding the barrow depends on the time of year and how overgrown it is. 

Summerlug barrow looking west. The barrow is on the right.
(click to enlarge)

The path entrance will be visible and its on the right. Once you see the mound it will be more obvious because its not far from the entrance.

Summerlug hill (click to enlarge)

After going back onto the original path turn right down the hill. As it descends the heath opens out and you can take the wider paths to the right along the south side. 

The views give a good panorama of Holt heath. Following the path back up the west of Summerlug hill you meet up with the start of the walk and you are pretty close to the entrance again.

HISTORY

Possibly the three barrow marks a boundary of land ownership but as this is near the edge of the current heath boundary it is difficult to decide. To the North West is another barrow so it seems likely that these two would be related to each other. As with most heathland the landscape has remained largely unchanged for 3000 + years.

ABOUT BRONZE AGE WALKS

Bronze Age Walks with an iPhone are a collection of short, filmed walks with maps defining Bronze Age sites. The emphasis is on Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age because I find them a good lodestone for a walk. 

The walks are usually not a great distance so you don’t have to be super fit to do them. In fact Bronze Age Amble would work. They largely stick to recognisable paths but it is probably a good idea to protect your legs a bit as gorse can be fairly prickly and common in places.

Bronze Age Walks

Cannon Hill 3 Bronze Age Barrows

Summerlug barrow and hill - Holt Heath - Wimborne - Dorset

Bronze Age Walks-Bee-Garden-Holt-Heath

Bronze Age Walks The Oldest living inhabitant in Dorset

Dorset heathland
Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4 

Historic England Maps and information.

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1015999