Five Wells Chambered Tomb

Five Wells Chambered Tomb is in The Peak District National Park in England.

Five Wells Chambered Tomb is an Early Neolithic burial monument situated on Taddington Moor, set amidst the limestone plateau of Derbyshire. Today, it appears as a roughly circular mound measuring about 23 metres by 22 metres and surviving to a modest height of around one metre. However, the original mound would have once stood taller, its stone largely removed during the eighteenth century. Subsequent quarrying in the late nineteenth century and further extraction for hard-core in the mid-twentieth century also diminished its size.

What remains visible now are two limestone chambers constructed from standing stone slabs (orthostats), arranged back-to-back along an east-west axis. Each chamber was once accessed by a passage leading from opposite edges of the mound. Inside, the floors of these chambers were paved, and they were originally covered by a cairn of horizontally laid limestone slabs measuring approximately 16 metres by 14.5 metres. This cairn, in turn, lay beneath an overlying mound of earth and stone.

Excavations, both antiquarian and more recent, have revealed significant details about the tomb’s use and its associated rituals. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, workmen recovered human skeletal remains and fragments of pottery. In 1846, Bateman excavated the site, discovering at least twelve individuals buried within the two chambers, as well as burnt bone and a flint artefact. Jewitt’s 1862 investigation added pottery and another flint to the assemblage, while Lukis, in 1865, found three skeletons within the western passage.

From 1899 to 1901, Salt’s more systematic excavation unearthed additional human remains, flint tools—including a leaf-shaped arrowhead and a plano-convex knife—and pottery identified as Neolithic plain ware and Peterborough ware. A barbed and tanged arrowhead, characteristic of the Bronze Age, was recovered from the mound’s surface. Salt also discovered a cist placed beyond the original cairn but still within the earthen mound, holding a contracted inhumation. Another burial and some burnt bone were found in a pit at the top of the mound. These are considered secondary burials, indicating that the site’s use extended beyond the Early Neolithic, with possible later re-use during the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age.

The Five Wells Chambered Tomb presents a layered history of construction, burial practice, and subsequent disturbance, reflecting long-term ceremonial significance and evolving funerary traditions on the Derbyshire landscape.

Created: 16  December  2024  Edited: 16  December  2024