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It's been a while since I've updated so I thought I'd make an effort with this post.

Around the end of April I obtained a new panormic head and legs tripod combination for my camera to aid in taking panoramic shots so that they line up properly when you try to stitch the multitude of images together. I decided that I would head out in my car and look for anywhere interesting that I might try out my new 'toy'. The tripod needs setting up accurately for it to work properly so it was also an opportunity to test out the settings that I'd figured out to see how correct I'd managed to get them.

I eventually ended up around the Dursley area and more specifically the Nympsfield long barrow. The barrow is situated on top of a large hill and would probably have looked impressive when it was still in use. I did not know much about barrows before researching them for this post but they were communal tombs. During the excavations of the Nympsfield barrow the remains of up to 17 individuals were found. I say 'up to' because it seems that long barrows provided a way for the living to include the dead in their every day lives as evidence from other barrows suggest that fresh bodies were placed near the entrance of the barrow and that as the flesh decomposed, the parts of the body were moved further into the barrow until eventually the parts were sorted and piled into the inner chambers.

Not much is left of barrow now as the site was already robbed of stone to repair the nearby road and ploughed over by the time that the first investigations into it in 1862. It was also thought to have been a house for lepers by people in the middle ages and so avoided. The barrow is aranged in the shape of a cross with the burial chambers on the points of the cross.

Below is the panorama that I took. I don't think the panorma is that interesting on it's own hence the history lesson! There was a lot of mist around so there was no chance of getting a good picture of the surrounding area off the excarpment that the barrow is situated on. Still, I like history and you can walk inside this piece of it and imagine yourself sometime between 3000 and 2000BC communing with your dead relatives and stacking their bones and body parts once their bodies have putrified enough to enable them to be disarticulated!

(If you are using Firefox the browser first displays a zoomed out view of the image in the IFrame. You need to click on the image to force the browser to display it full size.)

Original panorama size = 23928px x 3056px

Other references:
On site plaque - English Heritage
Evolution of the Lansdsape, page 12 - Cotswolds AONB Partnership
Barrows by O G S Crawford
Witts' Book of Gloustershire
The Modern Antiquarian