SDO21255 - Archaeological Observation at Mason's Lodge, 43 Bell Street, Shaftesbury

‘During conversion works at this property, a small vault was discovered. At the suggestion of Mr Barney Moss, North Dorset District Council’s Building Inspector the developer, Mr Pike, informed the DCC Archaeology Section on 9 June 1995. I visited the site that day. The main axis of the present building lies north-west to south-east. It has a cross-wall about one-third of the way from the north-west end. The vault was beneath this cross-wall, approximately halfway along it. The vault’s main axis was close to north0south. It was roughly rectangular (although attention had not been paid to constructing an exact shape), being 1.2m long, 0.9m wide and 1.6m deep. The walls of the vault were entirely of coursed rubble. One example was inspected and found to be greensand, which Mr Pike thought was likely to have come from Melbury Abbas rather than Shaftesbury itself. There were two brick arches (one a replacement of the other (in the cross-wall above the vault, indicating that the vault was taken into account during the present building’s construction. There was no indication of how the vault had originally been roofed. Mr Pike and his team had cleared the backfill of the vault. His description of this fill indicated a 19th- or 20th-century date for this fill. The vault seemed to be an underground storage room, probably of an earlier building than the present one. The absence of brick from its walls indicated that the vault is likely to pre-date the widespread use of brick in Shaftesbury. Mr Pike’s team had removed the present floor over the south-eastern two-thirds of the building. There had been a void beneath this, about 0.75m deep. The walls of the present building were of brick above the removed floor, but of stone beneath, perhaps indicating that the present building used the foundations of an earlier one, unless stone was used below ground to save costs. According to Mr Pike, on the south-west side of the building, this stone wall cut into the subsoil beneath the void, but the wall on the north-east side and the cross-wall rested on the subsoil.’