Monument record MDO43081 - Iron Age/Romano-British field system, Ayles's Hill Bottom, Sydling St Nicholas

Banked curvilinear features are visible as earthworks and cropmarks on aerial photographs across the south side of Wardon Hill and along Ayles's Hill, Sydling St Nicholas. The features may be field boundaries aassociated with an Iron Age/Romano-British field system recorded under NRHE Hob UID 199207. The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Frome AIM project.

Field system plotted from air photographs. <2>

There are the remains of a Celtic field system on Wardon Hill. <3>

Centred at ST 61750185. The south and east slopes of Wardon Hill have pronounced field banks and lynchets forming small
irregular fields of Celtic type. The area is under grass and scrub. The field banks average 0.5m high and the lynchets are
up to 2.0m high. The system is visible though not well defined on air photographs. <4>

The Celtic field system is as described; it is generally best preserved, though not an outstanding example, over an area of
about 7 hectares centred at ST 61650180. <5>

A possible settlement situated at ST 617020. <6>

Banked curvilinear features are visible as earthworks and cropmarks on aerial photographs across the south side of Wardon Hill and along Ayles's Hill, Sydling St Nicholas <1> <8>. The features may be field boundaries aassociated with an Iron Age/Romano-British field system recorded under NRHE Hob UID 199207. The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Frome AIM project.

The majority of features remain visible on current Google Earth imagery.

<1> Royal Air Force, 11-APR-47, RAF/CPE/UK/1974 FS 2382-3 (Aerial Photograph). SDO17053.

<2> Atkinson, R J C, 1949, spec 6 inch (RJCA 1.3.49) (Map). SWX1583.

<3> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 236 (Monograph). SDO97.

<4> Quinnell, N V, Various, Field Investigators Comments NVQ, F1 NVQ 14-MAY-55 (Unpublished document). SDO11903.

<5> Stone, J W, Field Investigators Comments JWS, F2 JWS 28-SEP-76 (Unpublished document). SDO11902.

<5.1> Ordnance Survey, OS/74/087/069 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18866.

<6> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, RCHM Ms File (unpublished revision of Dorset 1) (Unpublished document). SDO17382.

<7> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, Externally held archive: RCH01/088 RCHME Inventory: Dorset I (West) and Revision (Unpublished document). SDO17367.

<8> Ordnance Survey, 13-MAR-95, OS 95033 V 073 (Aerial Photograph). SDO17058.

<9> National Record of the Historic Environment, 199207 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Nov 23 2022 12:01PM