Monument record MDO4009 - Medieval deer park, Ibberton

A medieval deer park in and around Park Wood on the eastern side of Ibberton Hill. Banked and ditched curvilear features visible on 1940s aerial photographs and current Environment Agency lidar imagery are considered likely to be surviving parts of the medieval deer park pale and were digitally recorded during the Mid Dorset Downs AIM project

(Centred ST 798070) Earthworks of a Medieval deer park lie 1/2 mile south east of Ibberton church, in and around Park Wood, on the east side of Ibberton Hill. The "....wood called Parke wood, containing 25 acres" is mentioned in a grant of 1547, which suggested to Cantor and Wilson that the park had by that time been dis-parked. The name Ibberton Park, however, still applied to an identifiable area in Hutchins (1774) time. The Tithe map shows Park Wood and Little Park Coppice and Park Mead whose boundaries have since disappeared.

The surviving pale forms a roughly equilateral triangle with sides approximately 700 yards long and enclosing an area of about 70 acres. Dimensions of the earthworks are:
A - B. (see plan). Bank circa 12ft wide and 2-3ft high with wide inner ditch.
B - C. Few fragments of ditch visible.
C - D. Fragments of bank only, some quite bulky.
D - E. Hedge on north side of lane has a bank a little larger than that on the south. No trace of inner ditch.
E - F. Similar hedge line to D - E.
F - D - H. Eroded bank, 12-15ft wide and 2-3ft high with narrow flat top. Wide inner ditch. <1>

Banked and ditched curvilear features visible on 1940s aerial photographs and current Environment Agency lidar imagery are considered likely to be surviving parts of the medieval deer park pale and were digitally recorded during the Mid Dorset Downs AIM project (RAF 1948; RAF 1948; EA 2018). The earthworks on the east side of the deer park are more confidently identified on available aerial sources. To the southwest and northwest, suggestions of a possible ditch is visible on lidar imagery, the former pale presumed to be marked by historic hedges that now form part of the field pattern, but otherwise not clearly surviving as extant earthworks.

Royal Air Force, 22-JAN-1948, RAF/CPE/UK/2431 RS 4337 (Aerial Photograph). SDO21627.

Royal Air Force, 22-JAN-1948, RAF/CPE/UK/2431 RS 4338 (Aerial Photograph). SDO21687.

Royal Air Force, 27-MAR-1945, RAF/106G/LA200 FS 2068 (Aerial Photograph). SDO21689.

Environment Agency, xx-xxx-2018, Environment Agency National Lidar Programme DTM 1M (Aerial Photograph). SDO21483.

<1> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1968, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1967, 176-177 (Serial). SDO67.

<1.1> John Hutchins, edited by Shipp, W, and Hodson, J W, 1873, The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset. 3rd edition. Volume 4, 360-1 (Monograph). SDO10245.

<2> Historic England, National Record of the Historic Environment, 201788 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Feb 18 2026 11:08AM