EDO5380 - Parsons Pool House, Parsons Pool, Shaftesbury; desk-based assessment 2002

A desk-based assessment, including site visit, of a potential development site. A range of sources were consulted, and showed that the site is located in an area of the town that has been developed from the late thirteenth century, and possibly from the tenth or eleventh centuries. The assessment, however, did not produce unequivocal evidence for the presence of any structures or other remains of this date. Early town maps show substantial buildings on the site during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but no indication of their form or function. There appears to have been no substantial development of the site during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so any archaeological remains will have escaped impacts generated by more recent development. The author concludes that the site is within an area of high archaeological potential and that there is good reason to believe that archaeological remains may be present.