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Dorset’s Ancient Fields

Generally speaking, Dorset is notably a bonanza for the archaeologist or landscape historian.

Prominent among its prolific remains of early human habitation are the ancient field systems popularly known as Celtic fields, a term used to indicate all fields of regular shape. These are much smaller than the fields of modern intensive arable farming and appear as clusters of square or oblong plots separated by boundary banks. Often, remains of  the farms, settlements and trackways associated with these field systems can still be seen. In one respect the term ‘Celtic’ is misleading, as these field systems also include some laid out later than the Saxon conquest, whereas true Celtic fields are of Iron Age origin or even Roman at the latest, while a large proportion will date from the preceding Bronze Age. 

By the late Bronze Age, the early arable agriculturalists had developed the ard, a light plough that made only shallow furrows in the soil and drawn by oxen along and across the squarish fields. However, where ploughing resulted in downhill creep of the soil, more pronounced linear banks called lynchets often formed. These fields continued in use and increased in number on the chalk downland throughout the Iron Age. Although the number of people was slowly increasing, it should be born in mind that in pre-Roman England the population was much smaller than it is today, so only a small area of land was needed for subsistence crops.

Dorset is an especially fine area in which to see ancient field systems and theassociated settlements and trackways that served them. This is because it is in this county that archaeological field research into these features has been more intense than elsewhere. We can therefore regard Dorset’s field systems  as establishing the model for lowland Britain as a whole. In the highland zone of Britain, however, where soils are better suited for pasture and sheep farming, the field pattern still closely resembles the ancient lowland type. The croft system of the western isles of Scotland may be regarded as a vestige of this elementary subsistence system for sparsely populated areas surviving into the present day.
  
South and south-east Dorset are particularly rich in these field remains, where they cover an area of approximately 4,000 acres. Most are on chalk orlimestone, but some are on the clay-with-flints where this caps the chalk hills or on sandy or gravelly areas. One very clearly defined example of a Celtic field system is visible off to the east side of the Yeovil to Dorchester stretch of the A37 opposite the point in the road known as Breakheart Hill. The field system lies on the flank of a downland spur slightly west of Church Bottom near Sydling St Nicholas and, as in other similarly orientated examples, is particularly well-defined in early morning or evening on a clear day when the sun is low on the horizon. Also, in the presence or absence of sunshine a light dusting of snow can produce a similar effect, the topography being etched out in relief by the casting of shadows.

Six other examples of particular note are:

On the high downland at Turnworth, one can still see today vestiges of a prehistoric field system which once served a contemporary farmstead enclosed by a circular bank. The farm lies to one side of a holloway (sunken trackway) leading off through the fields, which here cannot be dated precisely, but which must have originated at some time between the early Bronze Age (1800 BCE) and the late Iron Age (c100 BCE).

Even more impressive by virtue of its extent is the complex of prehistoric fields that has been revealed from soil-marks on Dole’s Hill near Puddletown. Here a system of croft-like plots over 1000 feet across from west to east is bisected by a stream and penetrated by a winding system of service trackways. The fields and tracks straddle a narrow chalk valley. Not far away, at Winterbourne Houghton, a system of small fields is associated with two former settlements. What is particularly interesting at this location is that one of these settlements had a track leading from it in a north-east direction, which stops abruptly at the line of a modern hedge. Beyond this boundary all trace of the trackway has apparently been erased by medieval and modern ploughing, though the surviving un-eroded portion indicates that it formerly led off in the direction of “modern” Winterbourne Houghton village.

The South Dorset Ridgeway was an important geographical feature in the lives of the early farmers who left behind the traces of fields such as those on Crow Hill. Here, a small complex of plots of the Bronze Age lies at the head of a dry valley or combe, just off from the entrance of which there is a later post-Roman valley-floor enclosure (see photo in the gallery).

Relatively close to Dorchester, Shearplace Hill, again in the parish of SydlingSt Nicholas but this time lying east of the unclassified road to the village, is another site in the county where Celtic fields are associated with a Bronze Age farmstead, and field systems of the prehistoric period have been located and mapped at St Aldhelm’s Head, near the famous 12th century chapel.

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