Dorstone Hill

Two neolithic ‘houses of the dead’ stand on Dorstone Hill above the village of Peterchurch in Herefordshire. The remains were found in 2013 inside two prehistoric burial mounds, each about seventy metres long and thirty metres wide. Radiocarbon dates show the timber buildings were raised between 4000 and 3600 bc, then deliberately burnt and covered with earth. Archaeologists call them ‘houses of the dead’ because no human bones survive, yet the charred roof beams and post-holes reveal how the structures were built. Inside each mound a narrow passage leads to small side chambers, one of which measures roughly seven metres by two and a half metres. Massive foundation pits at both ends once held upright tree-trunks that supported the roof. Visitors walk across open farmland to the low grassy mounds. The smaller mound still shows the dark outline of its burnt timber frame beneath the turf. Beyond the hill the Black Mountains rise on the Welsh border, giving distant views across the valley.