EDO5391 - Land east of Shaftesbury; desk-based assessment 2001

A desk-based assessment report, submitted as part of an Environmental Impact Assessment. The principal sources consulted were the Dorset and Wiltshire Sites and Monuments Records, the Dorset Record Office, the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, and the National Library of Air Photographs at the National Monuments Record. A site walkover was also conducted. Very few sites or findspots are known from the study area. Some prehistoric worked flints were recovered from observation of water pipe laying in 1991, and early maps show a group of nineteenth-century barns. There are several listed buildings in the general vicinity, and significant known archaeology at the Mampitts Lane cemetery where gravedigging in the 1940s and 1950s revealed two pits containing pottery of Neolithic/early Bronze Age date and presumed to represent a small settlement. However, as the author points out, there is at present no evidence to indicate that this settlement extends into the development area. The majority of the existing field boundaries in the development area are shown on the tithe maps (1841 and 1845). The master plan for the proposed development takes these hedgerows into account, incorporating major elements as boundaries within the new development with the intention of preserving the historic field pattern.