Monument record MDO4545 - Field System, Okeford Hill, Okeford Fitzpaine

Part of a later prehistoric field system on Okeford Hill is visible as earthworks on 1940s aerial photographs and current Environment Agency lidar imagery. The features were digitally plotted during the Mid Dorset Downs AIM project.

'Group (57): Okeford Hill (Okeford Fitzpaine and Shillingstone). 'Celtic' fields, much altered, cover about 80 acres of the spurs projecting N. from Okeford Hill between ST 808094, 808098 and 824097, at 500 ft. to 700 ft. O.D. There are also traces of 'Celtic' fields N. of dyke Okeford Fitzpaine (40), 600 yds. To the S.W., at 803090.
On the W. parts of Okeford Hill the fields partially survive only W. of the road to Okeford Fitzpaine. Here they are on Upper Chalk and seem not to have intruded on to the angular flints, sand and clay which cap the ridge immediately S., separating them from Group (56). Only two or three original fields are intact; they are from 1/3 to 2/3 acre. Substantial overploughing and shallow quarrying have reduced or levelled former sides although the surviving lynchets are up to 7 ft. high. A hollow-way up to 4 ft. deep, later than the fields, runs up the spur W. of the modern road following a line of 'Celtic' field lynchets. At 80870975 a slightly hollowed double-lynchet feature of uncertain origin, 21 ft. wide, runs W. downhill.
To the E. of the road to Okeford Fitzpaine the remains have been ploughed almost flat. A dyke, Okeford Fitzpaine (41), now destroyed, was integrated with 'Celtic' fields whose sides sprang N. and S. from it, indicating field widths of 30 yds. To 70 yds. (CPE/UK 1934: 4169). To the S.E., on clay-with-flints, the much broken remains link up with those around dyke Okeford Fitzpaine (42) on the E. parts of Okeford Hill, investigated before the fields were levelled. The lynchets on the Chalk spur were almost entirely low, about 2 ft. Some divisions had been removed by previous secoundary ploughing. The long line of lynchets at E. had attained a height of about 3 ft. before the dyke was built over it.
Air photographs: CPE/UK 1975: 4024-5; 1944: 1327-8'. (1)

Part of a later prehistoric field system on Okeford Hill is visible as earthworks on 1940s aerial photographs and current Environment Agency lidar imagery (RAF 1947; RAF 1947; EA 2018). The features were digitally plotted during the Mid Dorset Downs AIM project.

Royal Air Force, 11-APR-1947, RAF/CPE/UK/1975 RS 4025 (Aerial Photograph). SDO21601.

Royal Air Force, 17-JAN-1947, RAF/CPE/UK/1934 RS 4169 (Aerial Photograph). SDO21600.

Environment Agency, xx-xxx-2018, Environment Agency National Lidar Programme DTM 1M (Aerial Photograph). SDO21483.

<1> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 2, 339 (Monograph). SDO136.

Record last edited

Jan 8 2026 3:20PM