Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Bowl barrow, lime kiln, and a medieval lighthouse forming the west tower of an oratory, all set within a medieval enclosure on St Catherine's Hill

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1009389
Date first listed:: 14-Dec-1925

User submitted image — Uploaded by Luke Targett This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Also of interest

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1009389
Date first listed:: 14-Dec-1925
Date of most recent amendment:: 01-Nov-1994

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Isle of Wight (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Chale
District:: Isle of Wight (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Niton and Whitwell
National Grid Reference:: SZ 49362 77262

Reasons for Designation

The monument on St Catherine's Hill contains evidence for use in the Bronze Age and medieval periods. Evidence for Bronze Age activity is in the form of a bowl barrow, a burial monument dating to the period 2000-700BC. This example survives well and is known from partial excavation to contain evidence of Bronze Age burials as well as for the later reuse of the site as a lime kiln in the medieval period. Also of medieval date is the oratory, with its west tower serving as a lighthouse. It is likely that the lime kiln was used specifically for the construction of these features. The lighthouse component is of interest as it represents one of the earliest examples in Britain. It is also one of the finest examples of a medieval lanterned house to survive anywhere. The extent and plan of the oratory is known from partial excavation in 1891 and a 16th century survey. The excavation also demonstrated that buried archaeological remains still survive on the site, while the survey confirmed the full medieval extent of the monument, including that of the surrounding enclosure.

Details

The monument includes a Bronze Age bowl barrow, later used as a lime kiln in the medieval period, a medieval lighthouse forming the west tower of an oratory, and the remains of the oratory, all set within a medieval enclosure on a hilltop on the south coast of the Isle of Wight. The lighthouse is visible from a considerable distance and forms the natural focus of the monument. It survives as a stone structure, octagonal on the outside and square within, originally consisting of four stories. Two windows in either side of the upper storey can be seen as single lights in the faces of the octagon viewed from the outside. The two entrances remaining in the lower stories are exactly over one another and would have been entered from the annexed oratory. The lighthouse, which formed the western tower of the oratory is all that remains standing of the original building. However, the remains of the walls, seen as grass covered banks, are visible and form three sides of a square with the lighthouse on the open, west, side. The traces of the oratory walls are c.12m apart and stand to c.1m high in places. Partial excavation of the oratory in 1891 revealed its plan and confirmed the survival of buried remains. The lighthouse was completed by 1328. It was built by Walter de Godeton, a local landowner, who was condemned by the Church for stealing casks of wine from a shipwreck which had occurred in 1314 off Chale Bay. The Church threatened de Godeton with excommunication unless he built a lighthouse above the scene of the shipwreck together with an adjoining oratory. The oratory was to be endowed to maintain a priest to tend the light and to say masses for souls lost at sea. The duties were apparently carried out until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The tower is a Listed Building Grade II. Some 15m away from the southeast corner of the oratory is a bowl barrow representing the earliest evidence for human activity on the hilltop. This bowl barrow has a mound c.20m in diameter and c.2m high. Surrounding the mound is a ditch from which material was quarried during its construction. This can no longer be seen at ground level having become infilled over the years, but survives as a buried feature c.4m wide. The bowl barrow was partially excavated in 1925 when some human female bones, animal bones and flint tools were discovered. During the excavation evidence was found that the barrow was converted into a limekiln, most likely used to produce mortar for the construction of the oratory. Surrounding the lighthouse, oratory and bowl barrow on their north, west and south sides is an earth bank c.0.5m high and c.5m wide. This is shown on a survey of the oratory dated to 1566, and can be seen to form a precinct indicative of a churchyard. It is likely that the fourth side of this enclosure has since been levelled by cultivation. The post and wire fence which crosses the barrow, the metal English Heritage sign, the metal post and wire boundary fence, the wooden styles and stone coin box are excluded from the scheduling, but the ground beneath all these features is included.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 22014
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Newbery, E, St Catherine's Oratory a handbook for teachers, (1987), 2
Stone, P G, Architectural Antiquities of the Isle of Wight, (1891), 27-9
Stone, P G, Architectural Antiquities of the Isle of Wight, (1891), 29
Stone, P G, Architectural Antiquities of the Isle of Wight, (1891), 27-9
Dunning, G C, 'Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club' in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club, (1926), 12ff
Dunning, G C, 'Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club' in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club, (1926), 12ff
Dunning, G C, 'Proceedings of the I.O.W. Nat History and Archaeological Society' in Proccedings of the I.O.W. Nat History And Archaeological Society, (1951), 201-2
Dunning, G C, 'The Isle Of Wight Natural History And Archaeological Society' in Proceedings of the Isle of Wight Natural History and Archaeological Society, (1951), 201-2

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.