CARBON dating tests carried out on soil and ash from a bronze age barrow in Bordon have concluded the land is 4,000 years old. A Californian lab analysed samples taken from a barrow on Broxhead Common, near Lindford, by members of the Woolmer Forest Heritage Society and the University of London's Royal Holloway College. The work is part of the society's ongoing project to determine which species of plants were growing in the area thousands of years ago by studying clues preserved in the human-made structures. Barrows were artificial mounds created from large strips of turf to act as graves or funeral pyres and house the remains of the dead. Bordon has a great concentration of barrows, with 52 known examples within a mile of the town centre. The society partly excavated one of these sites hoping to measure pollen counts trapped in the turf, which would yield valuable information about a natural forest which once stood on the site of today's heathland. They soon realised that the Broxhead Common burrow had been made using a natural mound enlarged with heaps of soil, which had not retained the precious pollen they were after. But their work, which will eventually form part of a library exhibition, goes on thanks to a £500 grant from Whitehill Town Council and £1,000 grant from East Hampshire District Council.
