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The Over Monuments Group

The group of five round barrows that lie near the riverside west of the village of Over still stand upwards of a metre high. (They were apparently even higher in living memory and locals can remember that as children they used to sleigh down them in winter.) An important part of the fabric of Ouse Valley landscape, Hanson has decided to save the Over barrows as a monument group. Not only does this entail excluding them from the area of the quarry proper, but also taking them out from arable cultivation and turning the plot to grass cover, thereby avoiding further plough damage. In addition, the circle of a nearby 'great' Bronze Age enclosure, only discovered in 2001, has also now been restored as a subtly evocative earthwork (its circuit being reinstated in the topsoil only to avoid any damage to the site itself). Together with the barrows, this monument group is one of the few instances in Cambridgeshire where a major group of prehistoric monuments can be appreciated, and visitors to the site are welcome.

The Over Monuments Group - The colour photograph is taken looking south, the pale circles in the field are the round barrows, the 'square' in the mid ground is the 2003 University of Cambridge training excavation on the 'great' enclosure; the black-and-white photograph is looking west towards the river with the cropmarks showing the position of the monuments: extreme left, three of the southern barrows with the eastern half of the circuit of the enclosure visible; in the centre of the field are the circles of the three-barrow alignment.