Monument record MDO7544 - Iron Age Settlement, Rope Lake Hole, Corfe Castle

Iron Age shale working settlement

An Iron Age and Romano-British settlement, midway between Kimmeridge and Chapman's Pool on a gently sloping piece of high ground on the cliffs above Rope Lake Hole, revealed by badgers diggings on the cliff top, from SY 93007762 to SY 93207762. Examination of the site in 1963 yielded two pieces of unfinished hand cut armlets in the Iron Age A tradition. <1> Excavated by Weymouth College students in 1974. Finds indicated occupation from the Early Iron Age to the late Roman period, with evidence of a shale bracelet industry, both hand-cut and lathe turned, salt production and metal-working. Stone lined water gully identified, cut into Iron Age occupation layers. Further excavation has revealed that the earliest settlement (Iron Age to 1st century) consisted of unenclosed circular stone buildings within a system of contoured lynchet fields and work areas, overlaid in the 2nd century by a rectilinear building and yard which yielded lathe-turned shale waste and flint chisel tools representative of large-scale production of armlets. <2-7> Following partial excavation in 1979 Woodward described circular huts with dry limestone sill walls ranging from 8-15m diameter and a rectilinear stone sill-wall building and yard laid out in the 2nd/3rd century. <5> In July 1979 Woodward also discovered a crouched Iron Age cist burial with a Durotrigian bowl and shale lid-like object. SMR card Any settlement or field system remains which may have existed to the N of the coastal path have been ploughed out. On a steep cliff slope of 20m extending for 80m along the cliff there are numerous badger diggings continuing to produce bones, fragments of IA and Ro pottery and a few shale cores, but no evidence of any structures. <9> Small copper alloy brooch and the base of a small Samian cup recovered following badger activity 1992. <10>

Record last edited

Jan 10 2024 7:18AM