SDO15055 - Catmead, Mill Street, Puddletown, Dorset. Contour Survey and Archaeological Excavation Report

‘Wessex Archaeology was commissioned by Cawdor Construction Limited to undertake a contour survey and archaeological excavation of land at Catmead, Puddletown, Dorset, in advance of housing development. The Site is centred on National Grid Reference (NGR) 375650 094550, and lies on the west side of Puddletown, close to the River Piddle, some 7km to the north east of Dorchester. The contour survey and excavation followed a desk-based assessment of the Site and a subsequent trial trench evaluation, both undertaken by Wessex Archaeology in 2001. Prior to this, in 1988, an earthwork survey of the Site and parts of the immediately surrounding area had been carried out by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME). The extant earthworks were thought to represent a defunct water meadow system of possible 17th century date. The excavation of six trenches produced a small assemblage of worked flint, including material of Mesolithic and Bronze Age date, though no prehistoric features were certainly identified. A possible palaeochannel is likely to represent one of a series of meandering, braided stream channels in the valley bottom, but waterlogged deposits and deep alluvial sequences were absent. Puddletown is recorded in Domesday and archaeological evidence for subsequent medieval activity, on the north-west periphery of this rural settlement, comprised mainly ditches. These were perhaps field boundaries which also served as drainage ditches, with occupation probably being confined to the higher south-eastern part of the Site where there may have been a medieval precursor to the post-medieval earthwork enclosure. Finds comprised almost exclusively pottery with virtually all assigned a broad 12-13th century date. In perhaps the 17th century or 18th century a water meadow system was introduced, representing the eastern limit of the extensive Druce Farm system, and the contour survey has added further detail to the 1988 earthwork survey of this area. Two phases of water meadows might be discerned, with the later and best-preserved system including evidence for sluices, two Y-shaped ditches and a ‘Tail Drain’, perhaps utilising existing watercourses associated with an earlier mill. Part of the Site may have been leased to George Boswell who wrote a treatise on water meadows in 1779, and his possible connection with the Site is of historical significance. An earthwork enclosure on the higher ground in the south-east of the Site was a post-medieval creation of probably the late 18th or 19th century. This contained a possible house platform, and houses, a barn and stables are recorded in the 1839 Tithe apportionment, though no trace of these was found in the excavation. None of these structures appears to have survived beyond the beginning of the 20th century, nor did any of the documented buildings in the north-west of the Site which, in the latter case, were abandoned and demolished due to frequent flooding.’