Ponton Heath Barrow Cemetery

Ponton Heath Barrow Cemetery lies on high ground south of Grantham in Lincolnshire. The land is mostly flat farm fields with a few low mounds barely fifty millimetres above the soil. Eleven Bronze Age burial mounds once stood here, but five were lost to quarrying in 1959. The six remaining mounds are protected as scheduled monuments. The centre of the site marks the backfilled remains of an old ironstone quarry that operated from the 1950s to the 1970s. Barrows A to H are spread across the area, with Barrow A on the parish boundary and the others grouped to the south. The cemetery holds evidence of Middle Bronze Age life and later Roman occupation. In 1959 Ernest Greenfield led a rescue dig after quarrying exposed the site. Inside Barrow J he found a red collared urn placed over cremated bone, decorated with cord impressions. Other barrows contained secondary cremations and stone tools linked to the Yorkshire Food Vessel Culture. Roman pottery fragments and a child’s bronze bracelet were also recovered nearby. Artefacts were sent to Lincoln Museum and Grantham Museum for safekeeping. Visitors walk over ploughed fields where the barrows appear as faint ridges in the earth. The landscape is open and quiet, with no visitor centre or fencing. A small extra mound sits between Barrows C and F, possibly a twelfth barrow. The site is listed on the Heritage at Risk Register because ploughing threatens to wear the mounds away. Despite its quiet appearance, the place holds traces of Bronze Age rituals and Roman farmsteads.