The four criteria for assessing class importance apply to bell barrows as follows:
- Period (currency): Long-lived. The tradition of building and using bell barrows appears to have spanned most if not all of the second millennium RCYBC.
- Rarity: Rare. It is estimated that between 200 and 250 more or less certain bell barrows have been recorded to date. Some further examples may well come to light, especially through the excavation of round barrows provisionally classified as something else, but since the main areas in which bell barrows occur as recognizable monuments have been intensively surveyed for several centuries it is unlikely that the number of certain new examples that are found will be very high. The number of bell barrows known today is likely to be an underestimate of the number originally built.
- Diversity (form): High. Four main types of bell barrow, one of which is subdivided into three major sub-types can be recognised on the basis of form and construction. Further variation occurs in the mode of burial.
- Period (representativity): Very high. Bell barrows are one of relatively few classes of monument typical of the early and middle Bronze Age in England. They contain collections of grave goods that are archaeologically important for the information they yield about the association of artefacts and, because of their distinctive form and fairly widespread distribution, they provide a way of documenting cultural and chronological links over most of southern and eastern England.
Assigning scores to these criteria following the system set out in the Monument Evaluation Manual, bell barrows yield a Class Importance Value of 50. This lies over two-thirds of the way up the range of possible values (max.= 64) reflecting the long duration and interpretative value of these monuments. Examples representing the full range of types, and variations in size and landscape position, must also be included in the sample of nationally important sites.