Monument record MDO4995 - Bank and ditch, Tarrant Hinton

Ditched and banked curvilinear earthworks are visible to the northwest of Blandford Camp as earthworks and cropmarks on 1940s aerial photographs, and as faintly surviving earthworks on Environment Agency lidar imagery. The features are considered likely to be part of a later prehistoric cross dyke, possibly Iron Age or earlier in date. The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Middle Stour AIM project.

A, ST 91890982 to B, ST 91930985, and C, ST 91980988. For a distance of 40.0m NE from the parish boundary, all traces of the earthwork have been destroyed by a modern metalled road and, nearer the boundary, by cart tracks. From the E. side of the road, at A a bank with a ditch onits S.E. side is visible as far as B. Both are in poor condition because of ploughing: the bank averages 3.0m wide and 0.1m high, the ditch averages 6.0m wide and 0.1m deep. From B to C the ditch along remains, and this is in poor condition. The fragmentary nature of the work rather obscures its origin and purpose. <2>

This feature has been completely ploughed out. <3>

Ditched and banked curvilinear earthworks are visible to the northwest of Blandford Camp as earthworks and cropmarks on 1940s aerial photographs, and as faintly surviving earthworks on Environment Agency lidar imagery [1, 2]. The features comprise a 142m long central section of linear ditch, just under 3m wide and flanked by 3m wide linear banks on either side. Additonal sections of curvilinear ditch are visible as cropmarks on a 1947 aerial photograph <4> to the southwest and east. The central section remains clearly visible on current lidar imagery <5>. The features are considered likely to be part of a later prehistoric cross dyke, possibly Iron Age or earlier in date. They were digitally plotted during the Dorset Middle Stour AIM project.

<1> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1902 (Map). SWX1540.

[ST 90860981 to ST 91980988] DYKE [OE]

<2> Quinnell, N V, Various, Field Investigators Comments NVQ, F1 NVQ 31-DEC-55 (Unpublished document). SDO11903.

<3> SS 6" (W.E. Cutmore, C,S, Small Scales Field, 22.2.57) (Map). SDO19214.

<4> Royal Air Force, 17-JAN-1947, RAF/CPE/UK/1934 FS 2153 (Aerial Photograph). SDO18613.

<5> Environment Agency, 16-NOV-2021, LIDAR Environment Agency DTM (Aerial Photograph). SDO18034.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 209326 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Oct 16 2023 9:07AM