General

Around 1800 BC invaders from the Rhineland settled Britain, bringing with them a pagan tradition that emphasised the importance of stone sanctuaries rather than mere earthworks as foci of old religion ceremonial or ritual. The Beaker Folk as these people were called (after the style of their pottery) left behind many standing stones arranged in rows, avenues, circles, and in isolation, in the highland and lowland regions of the UK. Stonehenge is only the most sophisticated and large-scale of these ceremonial centres, but many far more minor stone circles were constructed.

The Beaker and later Bronze Age people of Dorset left a legacy of about six stone circles, mainly in the south of the county. Some have virtually disappeared while others have been damaged, either through natural erosion or subsidence, or by man’s actions.

About halfway along the B3351 between Corfe and Studland and in the north shadow of the Purbeck Ridge below Nine Barrow Down lies Rempstone. This is the site of a hitherto unknown and ignored stone circle, as it is not shown either on the first OS map of the 1890’s, or even the present Internet Megalith Map. Yet the circle must once have been a complex and impressive one, and Cope mentions it in ‘The Modern Antiquarian’ as being lost in undergrowth, neglected, obscured, and cut by ditches and embankments. The site remained in this condition until 1966 when the enclosing woodland was felled to open it up to the view from the road, and new saplings planted nearby.

Ten stones have been relocated at Rempstone: a few standing, some nearly complete, with others lop-sided or sunk through subsidence. Surveying has found that some of the stones would have stood almost 6 feet high while others would have been less than knee height. Another recorder has noted four stones 4 feet high, and another four large stones fallen. These form a half circle 80 feet across, later sliced in two by a bank and ditch.

To the south the area has largely been cleared, with rocks piled together a short distance to the east. This pile comprises eight identical stones, and it has been suggested this feature could represent the remains of a large outlier subsequently collapsed. The stone nearest to the road is speckled with holes and cracks, which were found to have a number of coins wedged into them. Other stones related to the circle are scattered throughout the present wood.

In 1957 a local farmer ploughing his field half a mile to the west of the main site uncovered 26 stones arranged in two rows to form an avenue three yards wide. This avenue was found to be aligned directly with the circle, and is thought to indicate that the Rempstone Circle has – or had – alignments to mark the autumn and summer equinoxes. Another 23 stones about 2 feet 6 inches long were found in the field immediately south of the B3351, and west of the track from Rempstone Farm. Were these once part of a ceremonial way or a line of sighting to the circle?

Besides being impressive, the Rempstone Circle is also unusual. It was sited along the foot, rather than the summit of a ridge or downland favoured in most other cases, including other sites in Dorset. But it has been pointed out that it would have been in easier reach of the Bronze Age populations both on Nine Barrow Down and living in the Purbeck heath area. Another mystery is that one researcher found unexplained light effects on a photograph of one of the stones which resembled fairies or elemental spirits.

Other Circles. There is a stone circle at a focus of paths on a downland knoll about 1 km south east of Lower Kingston Russell (OS SY577877; Landranger Sheet 194.) This has been described as an unimpressive ring of slabs (assumed to be fallen, as recumbent stone circles are not otherwise known in southern England.) The circle is a scheduled ancient monument, but is not mentioned by Burl in his impressive treatise ‘Stone Circles of Brittany, Ireland and Britain.’ This monument is more impressive from the air, but any further information about it is clearly needed.

Just over 4 km to the NE of the Kingston Circle however, stands the much better known and protected Nine Stones near Winterborne Abbas (SY 661904;LR194.) Owing to its good preservation and situation directly on the south side of the A35, this monument, in the eastern corner of a block of woodland, has been fenced off and gated, though with access to the enclosure.

This circle has very large and very small stones ranging from 90 cm to 3.4 metres, which Burl has suggested may represent sex symbols. Some have also noted some influence of the Caledonian or northern highland circles in the Nine Stones, and small clay objects like elongated dice inscribed with symbols have been found on some of the stones following the summer solstice. This monument, which is in the care of English Heritage and has an information board, is difficult to park nearby. Another location (given as OS SY600900) half a kilometre south of the Nine Stones has been recorded as the site of another small circle since destroyed.

A feature described as a cluster of stones has been recorded under some trees in the corner of a field at Little Mayne (SY 723871;LR194.) This was certainly part of the remains of a once larger feature, as another stone lies in a field to the east (SY 724870.) The stones occur mainly on the north side of the road, with a few on a hedge-line on the south side. Minor stone rows also occur nearby. The Little Mayne stones are described by Peter Knight in Ancient Stones of Dorset.

Considerable megalithic activity seems to have been centred around Portesham, with a stone circle surviving on a spur of the coastal ridgeway only 1 km NW of the village. This circle (SY 596864;LR194) also lies just 2.5 km south east of the Kingston Russell circle, while immediately to the north is the area known as the Valley of Stones. The valley is recorded on the Dorset Monuments Record as a possible prehistoric site with a circle of sarsens, of which one sarsen found a few feet north of the circle had been used to grind axes. However, Jeremy Harte of Dorset Archaeology Unit couldn’t find the stone being mentioned in any literature, so with a colleague he checked it out. While certainly unusual it cannot be stated with certainty if the stone is genuinely prehistoric-placed or not. But it is not thought the Valley of Stones has ever been systematically excavated.

Though actually the exposed cairn of a round barrow, the Hellstone, 1 km north of Portesham, broadly resembles a stone circle (ST 606867;LR194.) On Moynes Down near Upton (SY745836;LR194) there is a cairn of stones less than a metre in height set in a circle about 6 feet across. Another circle is said by Charles Warne in Ancient Dorset (1872) to have stood: “..within living memory between East Lulworth and Povington, but not a vestige remains of it remains.” The story goes that the stones were removed by a farmer to build a stream-bridge and two gateposts!

In his landmark study of 1954 ‘The Lost Villages of England’ landscape historian Maurice Beresford cites nineteen places in Dorset where a village had existed in the middle ages, but was later abandoned.

This tally of lost parishes or hamlets does not include the contemporary example of Tyneham, which is probably best known throughout the county as a textbook case of a deserted village. But Tyneham was a community deserted under duress, and under the national emergency of a world war in which the military were above the law in commandeering land and properties for gunnery training. The desertion of by far the majority of England’s medieval villages however, was a much more insidious process, and was mainly underpinned by instances of failed harvests, plague, enclosure, ecclesiastical sequestration, economic decline, or combinations of these. And this process was taking place at least a century before Tyneham and more typically several centuries before it.

Rural depopulation of course is still going on today. Some may say that in a sense many villages still occupied are “lost” or deserted in winter because of their high proportion of second homes owned by affluent townies who have priced local people out of their local housing. The present generation has therefore been forced out in search of employment and an affordable home.

There is no question of second home ownership causing the decline of those villages lost before the 20th century, but rather the other factors already mentioned. We tend to think of villages as collections of houses, farms, a few shops or pubs clustered around a church, green or pond. But following complete dereliction the buildings will progressively fall into ruin. If the buildings were mostly of brick or stone they would understandably persist for many decades, even in the erosive British climate. But the housing stock in medieval times was usually of much more perishable materials such as timber, thatch, wattle, daub and cob, which would have vanished completely over four or five centuries, hastened probably by robbing or re-use of the materials.

What would be left once the buildings had disappeared? As over the centuries of its use the streets of a former village would be worn down relative to the surface upon which buildings stood, what then remains is a field of earthworks in very low relief showing home platforms (tofts) usually aligned along one or two streets preserved either as holloways or shallow linear depressions. Crofts or gardens, quarry pits, well-shafts or rubble footings may also be present. Often beyond the settlement earthworks one would see the ridge-and-furrow of the medieval open-field system of arable farming. Of course, we invariably see these features preserved only in fields, which have permanently reverted to pasture and have never been ploughed, since this activity would destroy the earthworks.

The later 14th and 15th centuries in Dorset are noted for villages either abandoned entirely or reduced to a hamlet or single farmstead. For instance Holworth in the parish of Chaldon Herring is one of the few sites to have been excavated. Here, a rectangular field of about 6 acres shows house platforms and a holloway, marking when a row of cottages once stood along the north side of a single street. Behind the tofts can be seen linear strips and boundaries of each property’s garden and field running down to a stream.

In Dorset several instances occurred where a village was moved to another site by a monastic house or a powerful country squire wishing to empark more of his estate. This is what happened to the first Milton Abbas, one of a long string of villages along the Milborne Brook. This village prospered from the estate of the Benedictine Abbey in the 10th century, but between 1770 and 1776 the then squire Lord Milton (Joseph Damer) relocated 100 homes, 3 inns and a school to a new site, so that he would have an un-interrupted view from his new manor house. The old Milton then disappeared beneath a new ornamental lake.

Again, Moor Crichel was moved to a new site in the parish of Witchampton and re-named New Town by Humphrey Sturt when he enlarged the estate of Crichel House, though in New Town only one cob and thatch house remains today. East Lulworth was a thriving coastal community with a castle and deer park in 1770, but by 1790 the village had been relocated half a mile to the east so that the castle estate could be enlarged. Fortunately for posterity, on this occasion the village life before removal was recorded in a painting by Margaret Weld. Kingston Russell declined in the 16th century, though nine cottages survived east of the manor house until the turn of the 18th century. The building of Kington Russell House (16th-17th centuries), arrested the decline until the 19th century, when landscaping removed what remained of the village.

It is noticeable that in their distribution the abandoned villages are most abundant on the chalk lands. For example in the Cerne Valley there are six within two miles of one another. Those so far identified have been named Pulston (A&B); Herriston (A&B); Cowden and Charlton. Even more noteworthy are a group of four in the upper Piddle valley south of Piddlehinton, all but one of these being completely deserted. There are Combe Deverel and North and South Louvard. Another group lies along the upper North Winterborne valley and includes West Philipston, which was deserted in the 15th century, and West Nicholston.

The valley of the Piddle is also notable as the location of Bardolfeston, one of the most familiar deserted villages of Dorset, which lies adjacent to Athelhampton. Bardolfeston was originally a parish in its own right but was finally abandoned in the 16th century after a long decline attributed to the building of Athelhampton House in 1495. The manor and hamlet of Cheselbourne Ford, near Dewlish House, had a population of 6 in Domesday, just 4 in 1327, and no inhabitants at all by the mid 17th century. It is only visable today as a series of closes on the west side of Devil’s Brook.

Knowlton, in the parish of Woodlands is better known for its complex of ancient henges and ruined church, but the village itself, which grew up along the south bank of the River Allen, was long ago deserted. However, nearby is the farmstead Brockington, which impinges on extensive settlement remains covering 10 acres. This area includes the site where Knowlton once stood, and seems to indicate that the two were once almost united.

In the north-east parish of Sixpenny Handley was once the village of Minchington, one of two settlements belonging to Shaftesbury Abbey in the reign of Edward II. Its size and extent remain unknown and no part of the site is occupied by a building today. Similarly, Philipston is recorded as being in the parish of Wimborne St. Giles, but does not appear on Isaac Taylor’s map.

Two other places who’s names and buildings only survive today in a single farm are Didlington and Lazerton. Didlington was a hamlet held by the church at Domesday, but by 1743 all that remained were some building foundations, the chapel’s font, and a mill on the Allen. The village had disappeared entirely by 1765, leaving only as Didlington Farm. Lazerton is much better known as an authenticated site between Stourpaine and Iwerne Stepleton. Domesday recorded a population of 30, but the hamlet had almost vanished by the mid 15th century, leaving the name to survive only in Lazerton Farm. Iwerne Stepleton was itself deserted by 1662, leaving only the house with the remains of the parsonage in its grounds. The RCHM placed Cripton as a manor and villa reduced to a small farmhouse on or very near to Came Home Farm, though no remains have been found here.

Winterborne Farrington was a separate parish in the south Winterborne valley. Hutchins wrote that by 1773 Winterborne Farringdon was entirely de-populated. Both Farringdon and Winterborne Came were experiencing decline as early as the 14th century. On the site of Winterborne Farringdon only the east gable of St. Germains Church is still standing amid the earthworks of the village it once served.

Other of Dorset’s Medieval Villages’s, which may be noted are:

Modbury is one of two truly deserted villages in the Bride valley north of Bridport, located across the road between Litton Cheney and Burton Bradstock.

Holworth was a village of Saxon origin found on excavation to have had Romano-British occupation on its site. It was part of the Milton Abbey Estate at Domesday.

West Burton and West Ringstead represent two former settlements in a coastal position. West Burton is first mentioned in a Charter of Bindon Abbey in 1313 but was entirely abandoned between the 14th and 15th centuries. West Ringstead is a 10 acre site showing clear outline traces of a village with some remains of the church on land near Ringstead Bay.

Sturthill lies adjacent to its chapel and has a traceable plan. It was disused and in ruins after the 17th century.

Colber is the only authentic deserted village site north of the chalkland belt. It lay west of the Stour opposite Sturminster Newton. Eight acres in size it was a royal manor at Domesday, but is now only a parcel of empty open ground.

Gatemerston is the only instance so far known of a hamlet being spontaneously evacuated by fire. Its exact location is no longer known, but is thought to lie on the West to East Lulworth road.