Monument record MDO18009 - St George's Road farmyard

A possible farmyard consisting of a rectangular enclosure containing two post-built buildings (a barn and a grainstore?), a grain drier and pits, with two ancillary enclosures, possibly for stock. These may be late Roman or sub-Roman in date.

SY 704 902 (FCE) A rapid examination of air photography shows a number of ditches and pits, possibly of Prehistoric or Roman date, visible being excavated between St. Georges Road and the railway line. <1>

The features were excavated as part of the Dorchester By-pass excavations of 1987. An area of circa 2000 sq m was machine stripped. The earliest feature was a small post ring ca 7m in diameter to the south of the site. This predated a large subrectangular enclosure 48m by 33m enclosing most of the cenral and western area of the site. It was defined by shallow ditches which were recut several times. Several other ditches outside of this area suggest that comparable ditches existed to the north and south. the enclosure adtes to the early R-B period. A small rectangular post-building in the NE corner of the enclosure respects the line of the eastern ditch. It was 3.5m wide by 9m, and had slightly bowed sides. It bears some comparison with those buildings found at Alington Avenue in Dorchester, which wer late Roman or early post-Roman. All of these elements indicate a Roman farmstead.

The farmstead was succeeded by a three-phase field system of ditches and lynchets. Finally, a later Mediaeval open building on flint footings, probably a barn, cut one of the field boundaries.

A number of features, which may represent a farmyard were found during the excavations at St George's Road, undertaken by Wessex Archaeology in 1987 in advance of the Dorchester By-pass construction. The following description is abstracted from the final published report on the site (1). The numbers in square brackets refer to context numbers quoted in the report.

These comprised a rectangular ditched enclosure, which had been subdivided into at least three sub-enclosures and several structures within the enclosure. The enclosure had two entrances and at least two phases of ditch recutting can be determined. The southern entrance was blocked with a short length of ditch. Within the northeastern subenclosure was a rectangular post-built structure [01462] with an open west side which may have been a barn and a four-post structure [01465] which may have performed a storage, perhaps grain storage, function. To the south of these structures was a possible grain drier [01185]. A pit was found in the eastern entrance. There were also a number of postholes within this subenclosure which may represent the remains of pens or fences. These features would have provided a a complementary set of agricultural structures within the enclosure, suggesting it may have been a farmyard. This interpretation is supported by the snail evidence from the ditch fills which indicate a waste ground and garden type habitat. The absence of features in the other subenclosures suggests that they may have been used for stock.

Outside the enclosure to the east was a semi-sunken structure [01466] of unknown function.

There was an absence of settlement debris from the enclosure and only a small quantity of both earlier and later Roman pottery was recovered. A bone pin beater of possible 7th century AD date was also recovered from the enclosure ditch fills. Animal bone from the enclosure ditches and pits was mainly sheep/goat and cattle with smaller quantities of horse, pig, dog and domestic fowl.

This farmyard was one element of a system of rectangular plots laid out on the southern slopes along the edge of the River Frome floodplain. The location of contemporary settlement associated with this farmyard has not been determined.

The date of this possible farmyard is uncertain. The rectangular enclosure ditches could suggest a later Roman date, but the post-built and semi-sunken structures can be parallelled by similar structures at Alington Avenue, Poundbury, and County Hall, Dorchester which have been suggested as having a post-Roman c. 7th century AD date. <2-5>

<1> Miller, Andrew, 1993, RCHME: AP Primary Recording Project (Unpublished document). SWX1708.

<1.1> Boyden, J R, 15-JUN-1987, NMR SY 7090/1-3 (JRB 3421/19, 21-22) (Aerial Photograph). SDO10732.

<2> Smith, R J C et al, 1997, Excavations along the Route of the Dorchester By-pass, Dorset, 1986-8, 18-27 (Monograph). SDO9379.

<3> Woodward, P J and Smith, R J C, 1987, Survey and excavation along the route of the Southern Dorchester By-pass, 1986-1987 – an interim note (Article in serial). SDO9381.

<4> Wessex Archaeology, 1987, Dorchester By-pass (Excavation archive). SDO9385.

<5> Miller, Andrew, 1993, RCHME: AP Primary Recording Project (Unpublished document). SWX1708.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 983963 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Mar 14 2024 3:46PM