Hetty Pegler's Tump (Featuring Nympsfield Long Barrow)

Neolithic Gloucestershire Man must have possessed weird and spooky powers. How do I know this? He foresaw a time four thousand years hence, when a traveller and truth seeker, endowed with a profound mystical laziness, would show up looking for a top spot to chill. Why else would he have grouped so many chambered tombs so close together? Clearly his aim was to give said traveller every chance of finding a suitable chill out spot, whilst expending the least possible amount of energy. In this he succeeded. You can hardly move in Gloucestershire with out bumping into one! One of the finest of these tombs is Hetty Pegler's Tump. In fact it was so chilled that it caught me off guard. This really is a little belter.

After experiencing one of the most ridiculous and lengthy diversions ever (perhaps those "Road Ahead Closed" signs were a clue after all), we parked up in a little lay-by, next to the electricity sub-station opposite Hetty Pegler's Tump. This lay by is on the B4066 north of Uley, hence the tomb's other name: Uley Long Barrow. A brief stroll down the edge of a field and you're there. Marvellous! The Tump, although somewhat boxed in is great, a near symmetrical mound with an opening on one side. In order to gain access to the interior you have to crawl under a very low stone at the entrance, which lends the experience a somewhat creepy feel. Inside there is a low passage that in its day gave access to four side chambers, however, two are now blocked. Nevertheless, there is still quite a bit of room and the interior is very chilled indeed. You really do get an odd feeling that you have entered another world. Exactly what the ancient architects intended I imagine!

Buoyant from our delightful encounter, we drove down the road to a country park overlooking the Bristol Channel. Just a few short metres from the car park is another of the Cotswold Severn: Nympsfield Long Barrow. Alas, this poor soul is no Hetty Pegler's Tump. Having survived millennia it has been massively over excavated in the not too distant past. Little of the mound remains and the central passage and side chambers are covered no more. It does, however, give us a better understanding of Hetty Pegler's Tump as it looks like a 1:1 scale cross section of the barrow. The views are nice though!

There are, as I have indicated above, several other barrows in the vicinity but I was informed that on the whole they made Nympsfield look like West Kennet in comparison, so we didn't bother with them. Hetty Pegler's Tump, on the other hand, was a little cracker and I would definitely endure the one-minute walk to visit with it again.