Monument record MDO7777 - Lytchett Matravers deer park

Banked and ditched features visible as broken earthworks on lidar imagery are considered to possibly be the remains of the medieval park pale of Litchett Deer Park and were digitally plotted during the Dorset Middle Stour AIM project.

A deer park at Lytchett Matravers is mentioned in a 1583 survey of Dorset parks as "Litchett park Mr Henry Trenchard lorde thereof ... no dere kept there .... but one mare kept there according to the Assize of the Statute". <2>

Remains of a park pale are visible in the area of Old Park (see illustration card for details). <3>

The only documentary evidence for a park at Lytchett Matravers is the 1583 inventory (see Authy 2). The outline of the park is clearly defined and encloses about 320 acres (see illustration card for details). <4-5>

Almost the whole of the course of the park pale is traceable; in many places well-defined, in others marked by modern hedgebanks. For details see annotation on illustration 6". Extant parts surveyed at 1:2500 on M.S.D. The banks P-Q and R-S (see illustration card) do not appear to be remains of a park pale, but are modern hedgebanks and ditches. <6>

Banked and ditched features visible as broken earthworks on lidar imagery are considered to possibly be the remains of the medieval park pale of Litchett Deer Park and were digitally plotted during the Dorset Middle Stour AIM project <9>

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

(Centred SY 927953). Old Park (NAT)

<2> Page, W (Ed), 1908, The Victoria History of the County of Dorset 2, 294 (Monograph). SWX1805.

<3> Quinnell, N V, Various, Field Investigators Comments NVQ, F1 NVQ 26-NOV-55 (Unpublished document). SDO11903.

<4> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1963, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1962, 149-150 (Serial). SDO62.

<5> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 1, 157 (Monograph). SDO148.

‘(36) PARK PALE (93059620–93069573), bank with inner ditch, survives on the E. side only of the park enclosure.
From the N. end of the best-preserved section, 500 yds. W. of St. Mary's church, the earthwork is traceable N.W. for over 200 yds. along a meandering boundary line to the E. of Park Plantation and West Park Farm; this stretch is much disturbed. To the S.E. it is traceable, in part inside the boundary of the Coppice, for about 500 yds. Its course thereafter is marked only by hedgerows, but it probably once enclosed the area still known as Old Park, returning N. along the parish boundary with Morden, and running N.E. past Post Row back to Phillips's Coppice. The conjectural area is about 320 acres, all on Reading Beds and London Clay, and lying between under 200 ft. and over 300 ft. above O.D.; much of the lower ground is wet.
A typical section across the central length of the earthwork in Phillips's Coppice shows the bank to be 18 ft. across, 4½ ft. high on the E., outer, side, where the scarp has probably been deepened by ploughing, and 2½ ft. on the inside above the bottom of the ditch, which is 9 ft. across at the mouth. The only documentary reference is in a survey of Dorset parks, dated 1583 (Dorset Procs. LXXXIV (1962), 149–50).’

<6> Barton, J G, Various, Field Investigators Comments JGB, F2 JGB 06-MAY-81 (Unpublished document). SDO11900.

<7> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, Externally held archive: RCH01/093 RCHME Inventory: Dorset II (South-East) (Unpublished document). SDO17434.

<8> National Record of the Historic Environment, 457316 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<9> Environment Agency, 16-NOV-2021, LIDAR Environment Agency DTM (Aerial Photograph). SDO18034.

Record last edited

Nov 13 2023 1:50PM