Monument record MDO19461 - Putative land boundary, Hound Street/ Acreman Street, Sherborne

Katherine Barker has proposed that the curvilinear courses of Hound Street and Acreman Street in Sherborne might mark the course of a pre-Saxon or British monastic enclosure associated with the documented place name Llanprobus. There is little corroborating evidence for this and it has been refuted by Hinton and Keen.

Katherine Barker has proposed that the curvilinear courses of Hound Street and Acreman Street in Sherborne might mark the course of a pre-Saxon or British monastic enclosure associated with the documented place name Llanprobus. [1][2]

There is little corroborating evidence for this despite an excavation at 60 Cheap Street which had the express intention of recovering the line of the enclosure. A shallow gully [G], suggested by Barker to be the continuation of the lan boundary, is very unlikely to be so [1].

The lan enclosure theory has been refuted by Hinton on the grounds of comparison with other curved British or Irish monastic enclosures. He also noted that Hound Street was not included on 16th century maps of the town and the present road may follow a post-medieval line [3]. Keen argued that Hound Street does in fact follow a medieval route but also refuted the lan theory on the grounds that Barker’s excavations produced no good evidence for the continuation of the boundary to the west of Hound Street. He further suggested that the site of Lanprobus was more likely to be located near the Old Castle [4]. Recent radiocarbon dates for burials in the grounds of Sherborne School however, suggest that there may have been an early monastic precursor on the site of Sherborne Abbey (6), although this lends little weight to the veracity of the lan enclosure.

<1> Barker, K, 1977, The origins of Sherborne: a preliminary report; Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, pp.127-8 (Article in serial). SDO10321.

<2> Barker, K, 1980, The early Christian topography of Sherborne, pp.229-31 (Article in serial). SDO10322.

<3> Hinton, D A, 1981, The topography of Sherborne – early Christian?, pp.222-3 (Article in serial). SDO10323.

<4> Keen, L, 1981, The topography of Sherborne, Dorset, Lanprobus, pp.132-4 (Article in serial). SDO10324.

<5> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1983, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1982, 197-8 (Serial). SDO82.

<6> Keen, L, and Ellis, P, 2005, Sherborne Abbey and School, p.9 (Monograph). SDO10263.

Record last edited

Aug 23 2024 1:08PM