64 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Warminster 
) 
Heytesbury 
Swindon @ 
Marlborough 
@ 
@ Devizes 
© Trowbridge 
© Warminster 
INSET 
@ 
Salisbury 
7) 
ry, @ Codford 
e 
@ Long barrow 
Land over 125m |. 
Built up area 
Corton Hill 
Corton Long Barrow 
Landfall 
Fig. 1 Location plan and the Wylye valley profile 
SURVEY 
When Wm Cunnington visited the barrow in 1804 
he recorded it as being aligned exactly east-west 
but noted that it seemed to comprise two conical 
mounds which he initially thought to be two 
adjacent round barrows. His investigations in 1801 
had found a ‘rude urn, containing burnt human 
bones, on the west end marked A’ (Figure 2a; 
Lambert 1806, plate xvi, fig. 4) which tended to 
confirm these suspicions. Cunnington surveyed the 
barrow and, in a letter to Lambert (14 September 
1804), who communicated it to the Society of 
Antiquaries on 7 February 1805 (Lambert 1806, 
338-446), he records a long barrow 216 feet (c. 65.8 
m) long and 25 ft (c. 7.6 m) wide at its east end, its 
highest elevation being 9 ft (c. 2.7 m) above the 
adjoining ground level. These measurements and, 
in fact, much of the content of Cunnington’s letter 
to Lambert are repeated by Colt Hoare in Ancient 
Wiltshire (Hoare 1812, 102). 
