There has been a bit of a dispute whether this is a Long Barrow (Neolithic Long Cairn) or just a spoil heap from a road cutting.
The Lake District National Park HER states:
The mound, first noted by C W Phillips and O G S Crawford in 1938 was dismissed by the RCHME around the same time as follows: "The wayfarer approaching the cross-roads nearly a mile ENE of Lowther Castle might eye suspiciously a long mound withinthe NW angle of the crossing, but would probably conclude that it is nothing more than an old spoil dump from the neighbouring road cutting". Notwithstanding this, the balance of probability appears to have fallen in favour of identification as a genuine long cairn, resulting in the site's scheduling. The most recent published description (Masters 1984) concludes with the following: "In fairness to the contra opinion expressed by the Royal Commission over forty years ago, it must be admitted that the minor road which runs along the S side of the cairn is in a cutting which gets progressively deeper from W to E. This does, of course, correspond to an increase in volume of cairn material, but in the absence of further evidence to the contrary, the balance of probability still seems to me to favour a long cairn rather than a spoil dump."
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=63ad3334-1b06-498c-a67a-3b413dfc1e72&resourceID=19191
The mound is under a belt of trees on the north side of a minor road. It measures 101 metres long and orientated east-west. Its width varies from 13 to 28 metres and the height between 1.5 and 3.8 metres. Lidar clearly shows that the minor road approaching its junction with the A6 has been deepened but the gradients are not huge and one wonders why.
In the absence of information from excavation I wondered if lidar could help solve the mystery.
Scheduled Monument: 1012825
http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/lowmoor.htm
https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2201/low-moor
The mound, first noted by C W Phillips and O G S Crawford in 1938 was dismissed by the RCHME around the same time as follows: "The wayfarer approaching the cross-roads nearly a mile ENE of Lowther Castle might eye suspiciously a long mound withinthe NW angle of the crossing, but would probably conclude that it is nothing more than an old spoil dump from the neighbouring road cutting". Notwithstanding this, the balance of probability appears to have fallen in favour of identification as a genuine long cairn, resulting in the site's scheduling. The most recent published description (Masters 1984) concludes with the following: "In fairness to the contra opinion expressed by the Royal Commission over forty years ago, it must be admitted that the minor road which runs along the S side of the cairn is in a cutting which gets progressively deeper from W to E. This does, of course, correspond to an increase in volume of cairn material, but in the absence of further evidence to the contrary, the balance of probability still seems to me to favour a long cairn rather than a spoil dump."
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=63ad3334-1b06-498c-a67a-3b413dfc1e72&resourceID=19191
The mound is under a belt of trees on the north side of a minor road. It measures 101 metres long and orientated east-west. Its width varies from 13 to 28 metres and the height between 1.5 and 3.8 metres. Lidar clearly shows that the minor road approaching its junction with the A6 has been deepened but the gradients are not huge and one wonders why.
In the absence of information from excavation I wondered if lidar could help solve the mystery.
Scheduled Monument: 1012825
http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/lowmoor.htm
https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2201/low-moor
Elevation profiles from DTM Lidar taken in four places over the road. 1: west of the road cutting, 2: over the road cutting west of the mound, 3 and 4: over mound and road cutting.
Lidar (DTM 1m) overlaid with contours at 0.5m. The road below the cairn is gently downhill from W to E and has been cut into lessening the gradient of descent (and widening the gap between the contours) before its junction with the main A6 shown on the right side. Could the mounds have originated with material supplied by the road cutting?
No mound is shown here on the early OS maps. The profiles seem to suggest to me that you could easily fit the material from the cairn into the road cutting. It should be possible to estimate the volumes from a 3D model (if I knew how). The road was there in 1860 so perhaps the spoil wasn't removed very far. Perhaps most of it would be glacial till accounting for the boulders found inside. Lidar suggests both roads (old and new) approaching Lowther Castle had been graded in several more places with both cuttings and embankments.
To enable further exploration of the Lowther Castle Estate I created a 3D Lidar landscape model on Sketchfab.
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