Monument record MDO40869 - Post medieval water meadow, Stanbridge, Holt, Hinton

Banked and ditched linear and curvilinear features in fields to the southwest of Stanbridge are visible on 1940s aerial photographs and current Lidar imagery. The features are situated along the east side of the River Allan and are presumed to be a post medieval drainage system or water meadows. They were digitally plotted by the Dorset Stour NMP project.

Banked and ditched linear and curvilinear features in fields to the southwest of Stanbridge are visible on 1940s aerial photographs and current Lidar imagery (1 and 2).

The features comprise long narrow and rectilinear ditches set parallel to each other and off which are set a series of shorter perpendicular ditches. Running between these is a system of curvilinear drainage channels which are recorded on the Os 1st Edition map and which feed into the River Allen to the east (3). Interspersed at intervals along the longer ditches and channels are small structures. These are not well-defined on 1940s aerial photographs but typically appear to be rectangular or u-shaped structures, 7m long by 5m wide. These may be sluices (1).

Together the features are presumed to form an extensive drainage system of probable post medieval date; most likely post medieval water meadows. Additional linear ditches within the group may be trackways and some drainage channels may dually function as field boundaries.

The site is still open ground on current Google Earth imagery and the majority of features remain clearly visible, particularly the larger drainage channels recorded on the OS 1st Edition map. The features were digitally plotted by the Dorset Stour NMP project; the large drainage channels recorded on the OS 1st Edition map were also plotted to give coherence to the suite of features relating to these.

<1> Royal Air Force, 12-DEC-46, RAF/CPE/UK/1893 RP 3101-2 (Aerial Photograph). SDO15961.

<2> Environment Agency, XX-XXX-2015, Environment Agency DTM Lidar 50cm (Aerial Photograph). SDO15306.

<3> Ordnance Survey, 1864, 1886, Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, epoch one (Map). SDO10239.

Record last edited

Feb 4 2020 2:05PM