Monument record MDO749 - Enclosure, Cerne Abbas

Possible prehistoric enclosure, just visible in arable land on aerial photographs dated 1975. Its flattened bank is about 20 feet wide, and encloses a rough semi-circle about 70 feet by 50 feet. At least one lynchet appears to join it to the east. A sub-rectilinear banked enclosure 39m by 35m is visible as an earthwork and soilmarks on aerial photographs. No certain entrance is identifiable, although an aerial photograph of 1947 suggests this might be on the northeast side. Additional banked field boundaries and lynchets are also visible and may be associated. The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Cerne and Piddle Valleys AIM project.

A poorly defined field system, centred at ST 67820333 with scattered field banks and lynchets of Iron Age/Romano British type, almost entirely under rough pasture. Visible on air photographs. <1>

At ST 67700275 an enclosure is just apparent on air photographs. The bank, flattened and about 20ft wide, encloses a rough semi-circle about 70ft by 50ft. At least one lynchet appears to join it on the east. <2>

Modern farming methods have completely erased the former Celtic field system. The enclosure of probably contemporary date, is visible as a cropmark on OS AP (b); it now appears on the ground as a slight unsurveyable depression 0.2m deep and approximately 21.0m north to south and 28.0m east to west. <3>

A sub-rectilinear banked enclosure 39m by 35m is visible as an earthwork and soilmarks on aerial photographs. No certain entrance is identifiable, although an aerial photograph of 1947 suggests this might be on the northeast side. Additional banked field boundaries and lynchets are also visible and may be associated. The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Cerne and Piddle Valleys AIM project. <5, 6>

<1> Quinnell, N V, Various, Field Investigators Comments NVQ, F1 NVQ 19-SEP-55 (Unpublished document). SDO11903.

<1.1> Royal Air Force, 11-APR-1947, RAF/CPE/UK/1975 1044-45 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18831.

<2> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 2, 326-327 (Monograph). SDO136.

‘Group (39): BARNE'S LANE (Alton Pancras, Buckland Newton and Cerne Abbas (Dorset I)). The group consists of some 180 acres of much broken 'Celtic' field remains in the N.W. of Alton Pancras and S.W. of Buckland Newton parishes, extending from about ST 680027, S. of Holcombe Wood, to Ridge Hill, 680050. A few traces continue W. into Nether Cerne. There are two possible settlements, (a) and (b).

The fields lie between 575 ft. and 800 ft. O.D. on the E. side of the N.–S. Chalk ridge and on the spurs and in the bottoms E. of it. Even the best-preserved area, about 60 acres, S. of Barnes's Lane (see plan), had been considerably disturbed by chalk pits, by strip lynchets and by ploughing of uncertain date. Lynchets here were up to 6 ft. high and fields sloped up to 24°. Elsewhere, the remains were much broken, though individual lynchets were occasionally prominent. Strip lynchets impinge on 'Celtic' fields on the lower slopes of Ridge Hill, 681049.

At the extreme S.W., 200 yds. S. of Holcombe Wood, at 67700275, inside Cerne Abbas parish, is a hitherto unrecorded enclosure, (a), just apparent on air photographs (CPE/UK 1975: 1044–5). It lies in arable land on the E. brow of the ridge at 800 ft. O.D., its flattened bank, about 20 ft. across, enclosing a rough semicircle about 70 ft. by 50 ft. (possibly comparable with (a) in Group (38), 1 mile S.S.E.). At least one lynchet appears to join it on the E. In Buckland Newton parish, at 68580403, in arable land N. of Ford Down Lane, traces of irregular close-set terraces (b), up to 130 yds. long, may mark the site of a settlement. Romano-British tiles and coarse pottery have been found scattered on the 'Celtic' fields just S. of Barnes's Lane where, at 68370376, a schist hone was also found (Dorset Procs., 76 (1954), 76, 98–9.)

Lynchets formerly crossed the line of Barnes's Lane and there is no sign of a contemporary route to correspond with the 'Great Ridgeway' (cf. Timperley and Brill, Ancient Trackways of Wessex (1965), 20).

Air photographs: CPE/UK 1974:4370–2; 1975:1043–5; 2431: 3354–7).’

<3> Attrill, N J, Field Investigators Comments NJA, F2 NJA 28-OCT-76 (Unpublished document). SDO14743.

<3.1> Ordnance Survey, OS AP 74/088 227 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18832.

<4> National Record of the Historic Environment, 198919 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<5> Royal Air Force, 11-APR-1947, RAF/CPE/UK/1975 1044-45 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18831.

<6> Ordnance Survey, 30-MAY1974, OS 74088 V 227 (Aerial Photograph). SDO20877.

Record last edited

Aug 13 2024 1:42PM