Rare 5,000-Year-Old Neolithic Monument in Northern England Granted Protected Status

The Dudderhouse Hill long cairn is one of the oldest known sites built by humans in England. It now has the highest level of heritage protection available in the country

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

July 30, 2025

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

England is ramping up protections for the Dudderhouse Hill long cairn, one of the country’s oldest visible manmade structures.

The Neolithic burial site has been designated a “scheduled monument,” which gives it the highest level of heritage protection available in England, according to a statement from Historic England, the government agency responsible for maintaining the country’s historic environment. The recognition makes it illegal to alter or damage the site, which is located inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park in northern England.

Archaeologists think early farmers constructed the Dudderhouse Hill long cairn between 3400 and 2400 B.C.E. It likely served as a symbolic final resting place for the dead, although archaeologists don’t think entire bodies were interred at the site, reports the Guardian’s Mark Brown. Instead, they suspect deceased community members were first left to decompose naturally before certain body parts were transferred to the Dudderhouse Hill long cairn for burial.

The Dudderhouse Hill long cairn likely served other purposes, too. It may have been positioned to signal the changing of the seasons, or it may have been used to designate a community’s territory. Whatever its primary function, the site was obviously important to the individuals who used it.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Historic England (@historicengland)

“Building a structure like that would have taken a lot of people a significant amount of time,” says Paul Jeffery, national listings manager for Historic England, to the Guardian. “They would have had to be fed by others, there would have been specialist stonemasons and engineers—a lot of effort would have been invested into those structures. They are a statement of ‘this is us,’ [and] ‘we are here.’”

When it was originally built, the site probably featured structured chambers. But today, roughly 5,000 years later, all that remains is an oval mound of stones that are partially covered in grass. The Dudderhouse Hill long cairn is roughly 75 feet long, 39 feet wide and three feet tall, according to Historic England.

“It doesn’t look particularly impressive, and that’s one of the problems,” Jeffery tells BBC News’ Emily Johnson.

In recent years, visitors to the Yorkshire Dales National Park have been removing stones from the pile and using them to create hiking markers. These unintentional acts of vandalism are what prompted authorities to apply for the protected status in the first place, reports the Art Newspaper’s Joe Ware.

“We hope that its new status as a prehistoric funerary monument of national importance will raise awareness amongst the wider public of both the importance and the vulnerability of this significant part of our shared cultural heritage,” Myra Tolan-Smith, a listing advisor for Historic England, tells the Art Newspaper.

Now that the designation has been granted, authorities can put up signs to explain the monument’s significance and start repairing the recent damage, per the statement from Historic England. They’re also inviting members of the public to share photos, drawings, videos and memories of the Dudderhouse Hill long cairn as part of Historic England’s Missing Pieces Project.

In the meantime, they’re reminding visitors to the Yorkshire Dales to leave everything exactly as they found it.

“Moving stones from archaeological monuments, even for innocent purposes such as creating way markers for walkers, can cause serious damage to irreplaceable heritage sites,” according to the Historic England statement.

Sarah Kuta | Read More

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.