SDO9914 - Dorchester Western Bypass, Report on Magnetometer Survey of Proposed Route

Wessex Archaeology commissioned a geophysical survey during September 1987 in advance of construction of the new western bypass. The survey concentrated on the southern part of the route where several linear soil marks intersect the road line and may indicate nearby settlement activity. This part of the route was surveyed with a Geoscan fluxgate gradiometer in 30m grids. The remainder of the route was merely scanned in four transects, supplemented by a series of magnetic susceptibility measurements made on soil samples collected at the grid points of the survey. The recorded survey failed to reveal any clearly defined plan of a settlement site. Anomalies were generally weak, although the northernmost grids did produce stronger signals that could reasonably be interpreted as a ditch and activity was altogether more concentrated in this area. The scanning on the northern part of the route suggested little or no activity in the vicinity of Fordington Bottom.