[2] Marlborough Mound is part of a complex of Neolithic monuments in this area, which includes the Avebury Ring, Silbury Hill, and the West Kennet Long Barrow.

[3] Since construction, the mound has functioned as the motte for a Norman Castle, a garden feature for a stately home, and the site for a water tower within Marlborough College.

Additionally, its relation to the nearby Silbury Hill has generated scholarly interest in how the mound constitutes part of a larger archaeological complex in Wiltshire.

[1] Several academic archaeologists and historians such as Joshua Pollard and Jim Leary have discussed understanding the construction of the mound not in terms of the finished product, but rather as a series of stages.

These materials included several varieties of clay in several colours such as chalky, pale silty and yellowish brown, as well as flinty gravel.

[1] The original purpose of Marlborough Mound is unknown as it dates from circa 2400BC, the Neolithic period, prehistoric times.

[5] In 1067, William the Conqueror assumed control of the Marlborough area and assigned Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, to construct the wooden motte-and-bailey castle on the mound.

[5] After the last Duke of Somerset on that branch died, the stately home became a coaching house, the Castle Inn, which was operating from 1751.

At the height of trade, forty-two coaches passed through the Castle Inn each day as Marlborough was conveniently located on the road from London to Bath.

[12] In the 19th and 20th centuries the mound served as the site for a water tank for Marlborough College, established in 1843, which has since been removed.

One of the first investigations was made by William Stukeley in 1776, who wrote in the Itinerarium Curiosum of the recovery of Roman coins at the site.

In 1892, a publication of recent excavations at Marlborough College included an antler found in the slopes of the mound.

[8] Additional antlers were found in the years afterward by H.C Brentnall, a schoolmaster at the college, and fuelled Hoare's original case for prehistoric origins of the mound in opposition to the idea that it was a burial site for Merlin or constructed solely to accommodate the Norman castle.

As the 20th century progressed, the finding of medieval artefacts as well as a review of previously assembled evidence caused there to be some questioning of the prehistoric origins.

In a paper by Jim Leary, Matthew Canti, David Field, Peter Fowler and Gill Campbell, the age of the mound was dated to the second half of the third millennium.

In the 1980s, work commenced on restoring the shell grotto, supervised by Diana Reynell (a teacher at the college) and assisted by pupils.

In 2016, the restoration targeted the removal of the tree canopy, stabilising the earth with grasses, laying fresh soil, and the injection of a gel on top of the mound in order to hold the structure together.