Monument record MDO7377 - Medieval settlement, Coombe Keynes

Field boundaries, hollow ways, strip lynchets and house platforms associated with the medieval village of Coombe Keynes are visible as earthworks on aerial photographs.

(Area centred SY 844842) Field systems. <1> Area under grass. Field banks and small strip lynchets. <2> The desertion earthworks south of Coombe Keynes may represent the remains of Southcombe, a manor held separately to Coombe Keynes from before 1286 to 1514, but possibly an identifiable part of the same village. <3> SY 84508430-84208395. Settlement remains forming part of Coombe Keynes village cover 20 acres of pasture north east, east and south of the church; the Hearth Tax returns of 1662-4 give only fourteen taxable householders in the village. An estate map of circa 1770 shows that most of the site had been abandoned by then, which together with the evidence of Hearth Tax returns could suggest that desertion was early and perhaps Medieval. Most of the remains lie south of the present road where a hollow-way follows the narrow valley bottom. Closes on the slope east of the hollow-way are much cut into by shallow quarrying. Probable house sites lie west of it. At (a) - on plan, three approximately level oblong areas are cut into the gentle slope: the two on the north are 9 ft to 12 ft by 45 ft: that on the south is 15 ft by 55 ft but much disturbed. To the south and west are almost level scarped platforms above a scarp to the west, 10 ft high and largely nartural. At (b), 60 yds north of (a) is a low-banked rounded oblong enclosure, about 25 ft by 9 ft with a gap in the south east side; the interior slopes east at an angle of 3 1/2o. Among earthworks south of the church are a mound 2 ft high and a platform (d) perhaps a house site, 40 ft by 12 ft, opened on the west and cut into the gentle slope. At (c), are two disturbed platforms among irregularities which might indicate or conceal other house sites. Immediately south west of the pond the closes are bounded by a curving ditch or hollow-way which, before the pond was made, might have continued the line of a substantial bank up to 4 ft high running on the shoulder of the slope north east of the pond. On the widening valley floor north of the road and east of East Farm a bank marks the east and south sides of an enclosure (e) open to the north; at the south east angle it is 2 ft high on the outside and 3 1/2ft high inside. The ground rises gently west from the east bank and becomes very wet. <4> The desertion recorded by Authority 3 at Coombe Keynes has now been destroyed by ploughing. Some slight parch marks in pasture indicate former closes, and amorphous depressions along the valley bottom represent the shallow quarries. N.E. of the recorded area, at SY 84598427, about 1.3 ha. of probable desertion survives in pasture on a west facing slope. Two or three closes are demarcated by lynchets up to 1.2m. high, though the westernmost seems to have been a field boundary in 1770 (see Authy 3b). There are two possible building platforms (A & B on plan); 'B', 24m. by 7m., is enclosed on three sides by a ditch 0.5m. deep. Remains surveyed at 1:2500 on M.S.D. <5> Platforms and closes recorded during an historic landscape survey of the Weld Estate. <6> Field boundaries, hollow ways, strip lynchets and house platforms associated with the medieval village of Coombe Keynes are visible as earthworks on aerial photographs <7-10>). They were digitally plotted during the Wild Purbeck Mapping Project.

Record last edited

Jul 10 2023 11:27AM