The most noticeable feature at Gib Hill is a round ‘bowl’ barrow, built between 4,000-3,500 years ago during the Bronze Age. However, the history of the site goes back much further, as archaeologist John Barnett explains:
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Audio transcription:
The obvious mound is probably a bronze age barrow, but if you look at it from the right direction you can see that mound is sitting on an oval mound which is low to the ground, but sticks out at one end, and that’s much, much earlier. You can see that both are surrounding by shallow ditches to provide the material for doing the building.
The first mound, any why that’s there, is still very shrouded in mystery, we’re very much using parallels to understand it, but it’s probably the earliest monument on the site. When it was looked at by antiquarians one person said that there was lots of charcoal and burnt human bones, another person dug at the same place and talked about there being scattered oxen bones. So it’s a bit hard to know exactly what was there, but it probably was a site with human remains somewhere on it, but as a communal burial place
The earlier mound underneath the bowl barrow might be an earlier oval barrow. This was built around 5,000 years ago during the neolithic period, making it even older than the henge or stone circle at nearby Arbor Low.
Arbor Low and Gib Hill are managed by Historic England
Gib Hill and other nearby monuments are all listed in Derbyshire’s Historic Environment Record