SDO21763 - Manor Farm, Verwood. Heritage Desk-Based Assessment

‘In January 2014 Cotswold Archaeology was commissioned by Solstice Renewables Ltd to carry out a Heritage Desk-Based Assessment relating to land at Manor Farm, Verwood, Dorset. The proposed development comprises a 45.7ha (37ha development area) solar PV installation. No World Heritage Sites, sites included on the Tentative List of Future Nominations for World Heritage Sites (January 2012), Registered Parks and Gardens, Registered Battlefields or Conservation Areas are located within the study area. Four Scheduled Monuments and five Grade II Listed building are situated within the study area. A protected hedgerow crosses the site. The geological makeup of the site does not indicate any potential for in-situ Palaeolithic remains, rather the superficial deposits of the type recorded within the site are typically associated with re-deposited individual finds, to which the nature of the development poses a very low level of threat. The potential for Mesolithic and Early Neolithic remains is considered to be very limited. The proposed development site lies within an area containing evidence for Late Neolithic/ Bronze Age funerary practices, with a burial mounds recorded to the west of the site, on Horton Common and Redman’s Hill. Cropmarks of ring ditches within the site may represent the below ground remains of barrows dating to this period. However given the topographic differences between the known, Scheduled, barrows, and cropmarks within the site, an alternative interpretation of the cropmarks as evidence of later prehistoric settlement appears more likely. Linear features and possible enclosures visible as cropmarks may represent field systems and enclosures possibly associated with later prehistoric settlement. A linear earthwork, the upstanding remains of which are Scheduled, lies in the area adjacent to the site. The earthwork is thought to represent the remains of a prehistoric boundary. The orientation of this earthwork indicates that any possible trajectory may pass through the western part of the site, and cropmark evidence and the presence of a linear depression in this area supports this.’