Monument record MDO7522 - Bucknowle Roman Villa, Bucknowle Farm, Corfe Castle

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1976, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1975, 66 (Serial). SDO75.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1978, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1976, 54 (Serial). SDO76.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1980, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1977, 120 (Serial). SDO77.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1980, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1978, 112 (Serial). SDO78.

‘CORFE CASTLE (SY 954815). Excavation by J. Collins and N. Field at Bucknowle Farm began in 1976 in advance of possible plough-damage and continued in 1977 and 1978. The main discovery is a tripartite villa-wing comprising corridor, domestic rooms and service rooms, in all 20 m long and 14-15 m wide. It formed an extension to another earlier building lying on the third side of the yeard first revealed in 1976. In the service range two more stone doorways were found, similar in construction to the one planned and lifted* in 1977, while a robbed doorway was also noted leading from the corridor into the yard. Other details include a corn-drying kiln inside the domestic range and painted wall-plaster from the earlier foundations. There is evidence for the manufacture of shale objects of various kinds during the life of the villa-wing, dating from c. 270 to 350 at least. Further evidence of Iron Age occupation, terminating, c. AD50 was found.’

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1981, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1979, 133 (Serial). SDO79.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1982, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1980, 88 (Serial). SDO80.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1982, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1981, 123 (Serial). SDO81.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1983, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1982, 183 (Serial). SDO82.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1983, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1983, 146 (Serial). SDO83.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1985, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1984, 116-117 (Serial). SDO84.

‘EXCAVATIONS AT BUCKNOWLE, 1984
In the 1984 season, the remaining parts of Buildings 5 and 6 were examined. A thickening of the east wall in Building 5 opposite a probable central passage may have underlain a door threshold which led to an external pathway 3 m wide. Farther west, Building 6 proved after all not to be an aisled barn, as the presumed internal post-base was simply the beginning of the back wall. This building was a narrow structure, divided into two and with most of its west side removed since antiquity. Part of another building (8) was located to the south-east alongside the flagged yard uncovered in 1983. To the north-west of Building 5, the paved area suspected as a building was curiously limited in size (7) and bounded by short walls on west and north only. It was associated on its south-east with the base of what appears to have been a tank (3 m x 1.5 m x ?) which had a lay floor 10 cm thick over a hardcore foundation.

This complex of farm buildings was skirted to the south-west and west by a boundary ditch which had its origins in the late pre-Roman Iron Age. Other earlier features below the buildings included part of a rectangular enclosure and further traces of a round hut.

Finds and dating evidence were less this year, but the construction of these buildings can be ascribed to the 2nd/3rd centuries AD.

In the next field, long unploughed and close to the Corfe river, it appears that peat has accumulated in a series of what are probably Iron Age ditches. Work in 1985 will include sampling and sectioning of these ditches in the hope of producing an environmental history of the local area since they were first dug.‘

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1986, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1985, 164 (Serial). SDO85.

‘EXCAVATIONS AT BUCKNOWLE FARM 1985
Excavations at Bucknowle Farm in 1985 completed the plan of Building 8, another gable-ended structure on the south side of the yard first located in 1983. In several ways, it clearly resembled Building 5, which lay on the north. Both had very similar overall dimensions (close to 10.5 m by 7 m). Both were backed by central open-ended bays, 3 m wide and 4 to 5 m deep. Both possessed a kind of lean-to addition against one gable-end. While Building 5 had produced evidence of shale working the main signs of activity in Building 8 was the discovery of eight loom-weights lying in one corner. A stamp of the Late Antonine potter Lottius of Lezoux, which was retrieved from the wall foundations of this building, came from the edge of an Iron Age ritual enclosure or cemetery, lying below a path and the partly robbed walling of yet another building, 9. Evidence including a crouched burial flanked by Durotrigian pottery; a deposit in a shallow pit of earlier Iron Age vessels (Eldon’s Seat type); and several other unusual pits, one of which was left to be examined in 1986.’

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1987, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1986, 181 (Serial). SDO86.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1988, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1987, 129 (Serial). SDO87.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1989, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1988, 151-152 (Serial). SDO88.

Frere, S S, 1989, 'Roman Britain in 1988: 1. Sites explored' Britannia, 314 (Article in serial). SDO10073.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1990, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1989, 107 (Serial). SDO89.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1991, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1990, 117-119 (Serial). SDO90.

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1992, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1991, 173-174 (Serial). SDO91.

Light, Tony, and Ellis, Peter, 2009, Bucknowle, A Romano-British Villa and its antecedents (Monograph). SDO12246.

Record last edited

Nov 27 2024 2:12PM