Monument record MDO583 - Medieval strip lynchets, Burleston

Medieval strip lynchets are visible as earthworks and cropmarks on aerial photographs of the 1940s and 1970s. Two partial lynchets can be seen as surviving earthworks on lidar imagery of 2010.

This strip lynchet has been worn down by ploughing to a rounded scarp which merges with the natural slope of the hillside. <2>

The lynchet described in <1> and a second lynchet parallel to it are visible as earthworks on lidar imagery of 2010. A continuation of these lynchets and further field boundaries can be seen as earthworks and cropmarks on aerial photographs of the 1940s and 1970s, but no longer appear to survive. The lynchets are oriented approximately north-south and are formed of banks and ditches measuring up to 240 m in length. Further boundaries lying perpendicular to them are visible as narrow ditches on lidar imagery of 2010. <3-6> An area of now levelled ridge and furrow is located immediately to the north and may have been part of the same system of cultivation (see MDO30643). This feature was digitally plotted during the Wild Purbeck Mapping Project.

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 1, 54 (Monograph). SDO146.

'(4) Cultivation remains. As late as 1843 (Tithe Map) the open fields of the parish are still unenclosed; they were named Bottom, Hill, and North Fields; the date of enclosure is unknown. A single contour strip lynchet, 130 yds long, some 200 yds. N.E. of the village, is the only fragment that remains; in 1843 it was one of a group of strips which made up Heading Bottom Furlong in Hill Field.'

<2> Barton, J G, Various, Field Investigators Comments JGB, F1 JGB 15-JAN-81 (Unpublished document). SDO11900.

<3> Environment Agency, 2010, Lidar DTM (Aerial Photograph). SDO13148.

<4> Royal Air Force, 20-MAR-1945, RAF 106G/LA187 4028-9 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13352.

<5> Royal Air Force, 27-OCT-1971, RAF 39/3817 0063-4 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13279.

<6> Ordnance Survey, 15-SEP-1979, NMR OS/79123 199-200 (Aerial Photograph). SDO13347.

<7> National Record of the Historic Environment, 454913 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Sep 26 2023 4:49PM