Monument record MDO30697 - Medieval ridge and furrow, Kingston, Corfe Castle

(Area centred 954799) Field system. There are strip lynchets throughout this area. <1>

Strip Fields, around Kingston SY 957796, stretch from Willwood and Lynch Farm in the N to points some 1/2 mile S of the village. Strip cultivation was at times clearly carried further S still to intrude upon `Celtic' fields E of Westhill Farm(SY 97 NE 28). The Purbeck limestone, on which all the remains lie, is approximately flat S of the village, but it falls in a prominent escarpment to the N. The strip fields cover about 130 acres but formerly extended much further. Though now under pasture, most are covered by relatively recent narrow rig.

In most places strips are bound by low, narrow banks or baulks rarely more than 1ft high. They run up and down when on a slope, more often at an angle of 7o and slight lynchets are formed on the secondry slopes. Thus there are no contour strip lynchets of normal form, and risers only reach a height of 3ft where the fields edge a steep gully with a hollow-way (a) (see plan) deep cut by long use along the bottom, 1/4 mile E of the old church of St James. The wastage of land caused by deep contour risers was, it seems, deliberately avoided; this is illustrated by the fact that the furlongs, into which all the strips are grouped, are on the N slope set end-to-end but elsewhere butt against each other at right angles. The only sizeable risers on the N slope flank the downhill edge of the furlongs.

The ends of strips, wherever traceable, run on to the nearest strip of an adjacent furlong or to a headland or to a slightly sunk terminal area. There are traces of slightly hollowed occupation tracks. Strips range in length, where complete, from some 250 yards to 290 yards and in width from 10 yards to 30 yards. In the `reversed-S' furlong (b) below) they vary in width from 15 yards to 30 yards, giving an area of from 4/5 acre to 1 1/2 acres.

The fields cannot be precisely dated. The road from Langton Matravers to Kingston cuts across two furlongs of which (b) preserves the only reversed-S pattern. If this was an early form, most of the other strips have been straightened. The widespread narrow rig, not cut by the road, supports this view, which may be confirmed by the existence of a low bank (c) with a reversed-S curve in marked contrast to the near-by strips. The whole area had already been enclosed by 1844 (Tithe Map).

The division into large open fields cannot be reconstructed, nor is it clear where the Kingston-Blashenwell boundary lay. The deep hollow-way (a) bounding the fields on the E also separates them from the land around Scoles Farm which is medieval in origin. No significant earthworks are connected with the fields or
village. One or two badly mutilated earth platforms, extending NE from the present village, have been broken up by the quarrying which also caused an apparent modification in the furlong arrangment immediately N of (b). An almost square enclosure of about 1/4 acre defined by an unbroken slight bank with external ditch, which lies
over part of a strip, formerly surrounded a small tree-clump shown as a `plantation'on the Tithe Map (95847918). A ditched causeway 20ft wide runs from a point near Lynch Farm SW across strip fields, past the NW edge of The Plantation. It cuts through risers and is clearly later than the fields. <2>

An extensive system of Medieval ridge and furrow is visible as earthworks on aerial photographs to the north, east and south of Kingston <3-6>. The parallel features were digitally plotted during the Wild Purbeck Mapping Project.

<1> Rigg, J, Field Investigators Comments JR, F1 JR 29-JUL-52 (Unpublished document). SWX1255.

<2> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 1, 98-100 (Monograph). SDO148.

<2.1> Royal Air Force, RAF/CPE/UK/1821 5408-11 (Aerial Photograph). SDO19655.

<3> Royal Air Force, 04-NOV-1946, RAF/CPE/UK/1824 4226-7 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13394.

<4> Royal Air Force, 20-MAR-1945, RAF 106G/LA187 4011-2 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13377.

<5> Royal Air Force, 13-MAR-1945, RAF 106G/LA/194 293-4 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13392.

<6> Royal Air Force, 04-NOV-1946, RAF/CPE/UK/1821 5408-9 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13378.

<7> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, Externally held archive: RCH01/093 RCHME Inventory: Dorset II (South-East) (Unpublished document). SDO17434.

<8> National Record of the Historic Environment (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Aug 29 2024 12:02PM