Monument record MDO1588 - Settlement on Hog Cliff Hill, Maiden Newton

A large irregular sub-oval enclosure on Hog Cliff Hill is visible as a cropmark on aerial photogrpahs and was digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Frome AIM project.

An Iron Age 'A' settlement covering 26 acres of Hog Cliff Hill was enclosed by a contemporary ditch, 4ft deep, and external bank once thought to be a Medieval park pale. Within the enclosure were about ten roughly circular exbanked features; four of which were totally excavated by P A Rahtz in 1959-60 and proved to be circular hut sites of combined post hole and wall-slot construction with no central supports. All the four huts had ill-defined hearths and a few small pits within their perimeters; one of which was a typical "storage-pit". One hut had been replaced completely some 10ft away from its original position; the second hut here was perhaps of slightly later date than the others. Finds included querns, rubbing stones, burnt flints, charcoal, a spindle whorl and a loom or roof-weight. A large quantity of Iron Age 'A' pottery sherds, probably representing the earliest phase of this culture so far identified in Dorset, were also found on the site. The characteristic features of this "early" Dorset 'A' pottery were the pulled-out bases and fingertip and fingernail decorations the latter in the local Late Bronze Age tradition. Rahtz interpreted the site as an Iron Age 'A' village and stock enclosure of a type not hitherto found; the nearest analogy probably being the 'pound' enclosures and hutclusters of the south west moorland areas. (The ditched and banked linear feature extending from SY 62469644 to SY 62539638 is annotated on OS 25" 1888 at `Old Chalk Pit'). <2-5> Area of the settlement has now been ploughed out. <6> The ploughed down bank and ditch of the settlement enclosure can be clearly traced on OS air photographs but no internal features are readily discernible. <7> The enclosure has been almost entirely ploughed out a fragment only surviving in the wooded garden to the south as a ditch 5.0m wide, 0.4m deep and 20.0m long, at SY 62509639. To the NW of it a, now mostly destroyed, ditch was possibly part of an original trackway into the enclosure. RCHM plan shows it extending into the enclosure but it also extends southwards beyond the relatively modern chalk pit to SY 62659629. where bifurcating ditches 0.3m deep are visible. These ditches (or ? Hollow ways) have been isolated between, and truncated by, the modern road and the Roman road (R.R.47) on the north-west. Revised at 1:2500 on MSD. <8> A large irregular sub-oval enclosure on Hog Cliff Hill is visible as a cropmark on aerial photogrpahs <13-14> and was digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Frome AIM project. The feature is cut by Long Ash Lane, the line of the former Ilchester to Dorchester Roman road. On the south side of the road the enclosure is defined by an outer bank and internal ditch, with some possible traces of an internal bank alongside this. On the north side of the road a section of the outer bank is fossilised by a later field boundary. The east side of the enclosure is not well defined or visible and there is no clearly evident entrance. The enclosure is situated adjacent to an extensive field system (MDO42838) to the west, which may be broadly contemporary. Additional ditched linear features (MDO42841) adjacent to the east side of the enclosure are also visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs. These may also be associated field boundaries of contemporary date, although a later origin for these is also possible.

Record last edited

Jul 21 2023 4:37PM