Reasons for Designation
The Isles of Scilly, the westernmost of the granite masses of south west
England, contain a remarkable abundance and variety of archaeological remains
from over 4000 years of human activity. The remote physical setting of the
islands, over 40km beyond the mainland in the approaches to the English
Channel, has lent a distinctive character to those remains, producing many
unusual features important for our broader understanding of the social
development of early communities.
Throughout the human occupation there has been a gradual submergence of the
islands' land area, providing a stimulus to change in the environment and its
exploitation. This process has produced evidence for responses to such change
against an independent time-scale, promoting integrated studies of
archaeological, environmental and linguistic aspects of the islands'
settlement.
The islands' archaeological remains demonstrate clearly the gradually
expanding size and range of contacts of their communities. By the post-
medieval period (from AD 1540), the islands occupied a nationally strategic
location, resulting in an important concentration of defensive works
reflecting the development of fortification methods and technology from the
mid 16th to the 20th centuries. An important and unusual range of post-
medieval monuments also reflects the islands' position as a formidable hazard
for the nation's shipping in the western approaches.
The exceptional preservation of the archaeological remains on the islands has
long been recognised, producing an unusually full and detailed body of
documentation, including several recent surveys.
Regular field systems are one of several methods of field layout known to have
been employed in the Isles of Scilly from the Bronze Age to the Roman period
(c.2000 BC - AD 400); closer dating within that period may be provided by the
visible relationships of the field boundaries to other classes of monument
with a shorter known time-span of use, or by their relationship with an
earlier recorded sea level.
They comprise a collection of field plots defined by boundaries laid out in a
consistent manner, along two dominant axes at approximate right angles to each
other. This results in rectilinear fields which may vary in their size and
length:width ratio both within and between individual field systems. The
fields are bounded by rubble walls or banks, often incorporating edge- or end-
set slabs called orthostats. Within its total area, a regular field system may
be subdivided into blocks differing in the orientations of their dominant
axes.
Regular field systems may be associated with broadly contemporary settlement
sites such as stone hut circles. Some regular field systems on the Isles of
Scilly contain a distinctive association, rarely encountered elsewhere,
whereby certain of their field boundaries directly incorporate or link cairns,
entrance graves and cists in some groups of prehistoric funerary monuments.
Although no precise figure is available, regular field systems form one of the
three principal forms of prehistoric field system, along with irregular field
systems and some groups of prehistoric linear boundaries, which survive in
over 70 areas of the Isles of Scilly. They provide significant insights into
the physical and social organisation of past landscapes and they provide
evidence for the wider contemporary context within which other nationally
important monuments were constructed.
The prehistoric field system on the northern slope of Mount Todden survives
well, clearly displaying the manner in which it was laid out and with only
minor and limited disturbance from a water pipe trench. The field system
retains substantial lynchets which the recent observations have confirmed will
preserve earlier land surfaces and evidence for cultivation methods and
boundary structures contemporary with the lynchets' formation. The nearby
broadly contemporary settlement and funerary remains on Mount Todden and
Toll's Island provide the wider prehistoric context for this field system,
giving valuable evidence for the organisation of land use in the
pre-submergence landscape of the islands.
Details
The monument includes a prehistoric field system on Mount Todden, a prominent
rounded spur on the east coast of St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly.
The field system survives over approximately 0.5ha of the spur's northern
slope as a series of small adjoining plots defined by a network of slight
banks, mostly 0.1m-0.75m high but over 3m high on the lower slope in the north
east corner of the scheduling. The banks generally run WNW-ESE or north east-
south west, almost directly along or across the slope, giving a pattern of
small rectangular plots. Where banks follow the contour they appear on the
slope as marked steps called lynchets, reflecting soil movement against and
from the former boundaries due to prehistoric cultivation on the steep slope.
Observations in 1992 during pipe trenching across the lynchet in the north
east of the scheduling revealed a stone bank or wall facing the upper part
of the lynchet, while the lynchet's stony soil sealed an earlier old soil
layer.
The prehistoric field system survives largely within a modern pasture field
though some banks extend into unenclosed land to the east. At least seven
field plots are visible, the largest approximately 0.1ha in extent in the
north west and north of the modern field. On the higher land in the south of
the scheduling, three smaller plots are stepped one behind the other up the
slope; the north west banks of the lower two of these plots extend in parallel
up the slope, 1.5m apart, appearing as a narrow trackway. Late 19th century
maps show that two of these banks formed the 19th century course of the
present field's south east wall, since realigned 10m to the south east.
However the continuation of at least one of those banks beyond the 19th
century wall courses and their conformity with neighbouring prehistoric
lynchets indicates their prehistoric origin. The lynchet sectioned by the pipe
trench in 1992 is also extended by the line of a modern field wall to the WNW.
Samples taken during the pipe trenching revealed good pollen preservation in
the lynchet's soil fabric; two stone artefacts were found beneath the turf on
top of the lynchet: a probable rubber-stone from a prehistoric saddle quern, a
type of hand-mill for grinding corn, and a broken whetstone.
This is one of a series of prehistoric field systems surviving on the coastal
spurs and downs of St Mary's. That on Mount Todden is inter-visible with a
broadly contemporary field system on Toll's Island, 350m to the north east
across the present Pelistry Bay but formerly linked by dry land in the
pre-submergence landscape when these field systems were laid out and used.
Other nearby prehistoric features include a linear boundary descending the
steep eastern slope of Mount Todden, 100m to the ESE, and a large prehistoric
funerary cairn located 100m SSW of this scheduling.
The modern water pipe and its pipe trench are excluded from this scheduling
but the ground beneath them is included.
MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.
