EDO722 - Wareham Fishing Club, Holly Hedge Farm, Lytchett Minster; observations and recording 1996

An intermittent watching brief carried out during construction of a fishing lake (Planning Application 6/95/0234F). Work started on 13 May 1996 and was largely complete by 21 June 1996. Excavation revealed a 0.3m thick surface mat of roots and other vegetable matter including fallen tree bolls. Below this mat was a deposit described as a homogeneous, fine silty wood peat, also containing tree bolls, of varying thicknesses up to 2m with an undulating base. This peat deposit sat on very soft, homogeneous, water-bearing alluvial silt which was bright yellowish brown and up to 2m thick, and this rested on light grey lias clays. No archaeological structures or artefacts were revealed; the period over which the the peat deposit accumulated is therefore unclear. The report on this work concludes: '… at this high point in the local river system, though it is impossible to reliably ascribe peat formation to either natural or anthropogenic causes, the alluvial deposits are more likely to relate to the more recent periods of prehistoric occupation, principally the Bronze Age and the Iron Age when the on-set of increased agricultural activity deposited large quantities of colluvial silts in the local river systems. The work has revealed that the conditions necessary for the survival of palaeoenvironmental evidence exist within a few hundred metres of a known prehistoric settlement and within a landscape otherwise well populated with archaeological and historic sites. Had definable horizons been visible within the alluvial deposits, accompanied by dateable artefacts, the work would have produced a valuable addition to the developing landscape history of south-east Dorset. Although it has not proved possible in this case to relate, directly, the alluvial deposits to the dated components of the surrounding prehistoric landscape, the work has been valuable in indicating that the potential for doing so elsewhere does exist.'