SDO14548 - Walled Garden at Upton House Country Park, Upton, Poole, Dorset. An Archaeological Field Evaluation.

‘Context One Archaeological Services Limited (COAS) undertook an archaeological evaluation on behalf of Poole Borough Council Leisure Services, within the Walled Garden at Upton House Country Park, Upton, Poole, Dorset (centred on NGR SY 99275 92825) to inform and assist a proposal to enhance the historic garden. The work was carried out between the 27th and the 29th of November 2006. A prior geophysical survey carried out by COAS earlier in 2006, combining both resistivity and magnetometer surveys had identified a series of 19th and 20th century formal garden features associated with the Walled Garden. This evaluation, involving the excavation of six trenches, was carried out to investigate further, and to confirm the results of the initial survey. Overlying the natural yellow sand was an earlier (pre-19th century) post-medieval ploughsoil horizon, which did not yield any artefacts. However, it was stratagraphically earlier than, and clearly pre-dated the 19th-20th century Walled Garden. The formal garden features consisted of gravel and clinker pathways, a soakaway, a drainage gully, and two planting beds. Evidence for a formal pond that was known to have existed in the Garden was not found. However, its existence may have been denoted by a layer of redeposited natural, which may have been used to backfill this feature when the garden went out of use in the second half of the 20th century. The various fills of the garden features yielded finds of 19th-20th century date, which spanned the period when the Garden was extant. In addition, the evaluation also identified several modern features comprising an electric cable trench and a ceramic drain that in turn was overlain by a modern topsoil or garden soil horizon.’