SDO14551 - Land at Barges Close, Litton Cheney, Dorset. Archaeological Field Evaluation in Support of a Planning Application.

Context One Archaeological Services Ltd (COAS) carried out an archaeological evaluation on land at Barges Close, Litton Cheney, Dorset (the ‘Site’) in October 2015. The evaluation comprised four trenches positioned to target the footprints of the proposed residential development and sample areas outside these more generally. Three of the trenches produced archaeological evidence, in the form of pits and postholes in Trench 1, and two ditches in both Trenches 2 and 3. These features yielded a small assemblage of pottery sherds, flint, ceramic building material and animal bone. The remaining Trench 4 was archaeologically sterile. The flint dated to the Early/Middle Neolithic, Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age and later Bronze Age/Iron Age periods, whilst the pottery dated to the Middle-Late Iron Age, Romano-British and medieval periods. The archaeological features and deposits investigated therefore relate to prehistoric and Romano-British periods, and are indicative of domestic and/or agricultural activity on the Site over a number of phases of occupation. Given previous understanding of the distribution of heritage assets in the immediate area, activity of medieval date might have been expected. There are also Romano-British findspots nearby. However, prehistoric settlement or land use had not been anticipated, and the presence of substantial and well preserved cut features, which represent more than one phase of occupation, adds to the corpus of known occupation during the later prehistoric period in the Bride Valley. The evaluation has shown that archaeological features and deposits survive at a depth of c. 0.25m below the current ground surface and would be affected by construction of the proposed dwellings. Given the density of archaeological deposits identified during this evaluation, it is likely that further archaeological features and deposits would be encountered across the Site, particularly in the northern half.