Eight of the nine barrows were excavated in a single week by the Reverend John Skinner and his men in 1815, the exhumation motivated by a combination of antiquarian interest and grave robbery. All were found to contain at least one cremation. One of the barrows held the wealthiest burial found anywhere in the Mendips: a woman who had been pregnant, missing her pelvis but buried with beads of amber and faience, a copper awl and an elaborate dress fastening. Twenty-four years after he plundered the Priddy Nine Barrows, Skinner would shoot himself in the face. It is thought that his friends
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