Battery Bank: a linear boundary on Great Plantation, 450m north east of Woodside

Reasons for Designation

Linear boundaries are substantial earthwork features comprising single or multiple ditches and banks which may extend over distances varying between less than 1km to over 10km. They survive as earthworks or as linear features visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs or as a combination of both. The evidence of excavation and study of associated monuments demonstrate that their construction spans the millennium from the Middle Bronze Age, although they may have been re-used later. The scale of many linear boundaries has been taken to indicate that they were constructed by large social groups and were used to mark important boundaries in the landscape; their impressive scale displaying the corporate prestige of their builders. They would have been powerful symbols, often with religious associations, used to define and order the territorial holdings of those groups who constructed them. Linear earthworks are of considerable importance for the analysis of settlement and land use in the Bronze Age; all well preserved examples will normally merit statutory protection.

The linear boundary on Great Plantation survives well and will contain archaeological and environemntal evidence relating to the monument and the landscape in which it was constructed.

Details

The monument includes a linear boundary, known as the Battery Bank, situated on the south western edge of a plateau known as Great Plantation, overlooking Baker's Well Valley to the south west. The linear boundary forms part of a group of similar monuments which extend (discontinuously) for a distance of c.5.55km along the natural ridge separating the valleys of the Rivers Frome and Piddle. The boundary includes a bank, aligned north west by south east, composed of earth, sand and turf, with maximum dimensions of 188m in length, 5m-7m in width and c.0.6m in height. To the north east of the bank is a ditch from which material was quarried during its construction. The ditch runs the full length of the monument and is visible as an earthwork 5m wide and c.0.5m deep.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

28382

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 518
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 518
Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume I, (1970), 518

End of official list entry

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