Photo Quiz no. 5 asked whether this green bump above Dean’s Farm was one of the following:

 

• A Bronze age round barrow (burial mound)?

• A water reservoir?

• An Ordnance Survey Triangulation point?

• A natural feature, a geological promontory?

• All that is left from the motte of Newtown Westgate?

 

 

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Answer

It is a covered water reservoir and sits on a buried water pipeline. There are plenty of barrows in the area, but this is not one. There was a western suburb to Sarum here for the clergy and those who served them, and it may have been called Newtown Westgate, but the only motte was the one the Normans built inside the hill fort.

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Kerry O’Connor

Photos by the author