South Lodge camp Bronze Age enclosure with associated field system and round barrow cemetery, 350m east of Rushmore Farm

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Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1020962
Date first listed:: 10-Apr-1957

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1020962
Date first listed:: 10-Apr-1957
Date of most recent amendment:: 15-Jul-2003

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Wiltshire (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Berwick St. John
National Grid Reference:: ST 95386 17439

Reasons for Designation

Cranborne Chase is an area of chalkland well known for its high number, density and diversity of archaeological remains. These include a rare combination of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites, comprising one of the largest concentrations of burial monuments in England, the largest known cursus (a linear ritual monument) and a significant number and range of henge monuments (Late Neolithic ceremonial centres). Other important remains include a variety of enclosures, settlements, field systems and linear boundaries which date throughout prehistory and into the Romano-British and medieval periods. This high level of survival of archaeological remains is due largely to the later history of the Chase. Cranborne Chase formed a Royal Hunting Ground from at least Norman times, and much of the archaeological survival within the area resulted from associated laws controlling land-use which applied until 1830. The unique archaeological character of the Chase has attracted much attention over the years, notably during the later 19th century, by the pioneering work on the Chase of General Pitt-Rivers, Sir Richard Colt Hoare and Edward Cunnington, often regarded as the fathers of British archaeology. Archaeological investigations have continued throughout the 20th century and to the present day.

South Lodge camp is one of about 15 known Martin Down enclosures (named after a typical example on Martin Down in Cranborne Chase) which survive, mainly on the chalk downland of central southern England. It is typical of its class being a sub-rectangular enclosure, about 0.3ha in size, bounded by a low bank and/or fence, with a surrounding ditch with a single causeway leading to an entrance. Dating to the later Bronze Age, the enclosure was clearly the focus of a small domestic settlement. Martin Down enclosures are one of a limited range of monuments dating to this period and all examples with surviving remains are considered to merit protection. The round barrow cemetery at South Lodge developed over a long period of time, both pre-dating the enclosure and continuing in use throughout its occupancy. It included burials both beneath the mounds and `flat' burials just outside at least one of them. The barrows are particularly representative of their period and a substantial proportion of surviving or partly-surviving examples are considered worthy of protection. The field system includes banks of rectangular fields, which predated the enclosure and the barrow cemetery but also continued in use throughout the period of occupation. The monuments at South Lodge provide a rare survival of an unploughed Bronze Age settlement complex and the association of settlement, cemetery and field system at one site is an unusual survival. They contain archaeological deposits providing information relating to all aspects of Bronze Age society and the contemporary environment. The excavations of the 19th century and 1978 present the most detailed and extensive examination of this monument class in Wessex, providing information which enhances knowledge of this settlement type and its place in the Bronze Age landscape. The 19th century reconstructions represent pioneering attempts at the display of archaeological sites.

Details

The monument includes South Lodge camp, a Bronze Age settlement enclosure of Martin Down style, together with a round barrow cemetery containing six barrows situated about 145m to the north, and the surviving portion of a surrounding field system. The monument is situated on a gentle west facing slope overlooking a dry valley. The enclosure and barrows were excavated by General Pitt-Rivers between 1880 and 1893 and subsequently restored as earthworks. Pitt-Rivers recorded only one lynchet but the field system was more extensively surveyed in 1924 by his assistant, Toms. The enclosure, the field system and three of the barrows were re-examined between 1977 and 1981 by Richard Bradley and John Barrett. The irregular rectilinear enclosure, little disturbed prior to the 19th century excavations, is about 0.3ha in size with an entrance on the western side. It was positioned in the corner of an existing field, overlying two lynchets. It was originally defined to the north and south by a steep-sided ditch, on average 2.9m wide at the top, with a flat bottom, about 0.3m wide, and about 2m deep. Inside the ditch was a slight bank, rising no more than 0.5m above the interior, defined on the eastern and western sides by the positive lynchets of the earlier field and, on the northern and southern sides, by banks of chalk derived from the ditch. Bradley and Barrett suggested that the ditch was partially backfilled almost immediately and the remaining chalk upcast spread over the interior of the enclosure. Found within the enclosure was a mound of burnt flint, about 4m by 7.5m in size and probably signifying a cooking area, which probably belongs to an earlier phase of unenclosed settlement. The remains of two round timber buildings were also identified in the interior, one apparently aligned on the entrance, together with other post holes and pits. Finds include fragments of pottery and worked flint as well as a few pieces of worked bone and six bronze objects. The lynchets of the field system are visible as slight earthworks, up to 0.75m high, surrounding the enclosure and barrow cemetery. They are probably part of a more extensive field system, the full extent of which is not known as it has been reduced by ploughing and forestry activities. Two main phases of use were identified, the earlier represented by a short stretch of lynchet extending north-south adjacent to the eastern side of the most westerly barrow, pre-dating the cemetery. The main lynchets are largely evenly spaced down the hillside running approximately north west/south east, ending on the western side at the edge of a dry valley. To the west of the enclosure, running parallel to it, is a short length of double lynchet defining a trackway. A large pit on the edge of this trackway, excavated in the 19th century, was a maximum of 7m in diameter and 2.25m deep and contained fragments of a female skeleton and a Neolithic polished flint axe fragment. The relationship of the pit and the lynchet was not determined, making its exact date unclear. However, the axe suggests that it was earlier than the field system. The cemetery, known as the Barrow Pleck cemetery, originally contained six closely spaced barrows, one of which Pitt-Rivers recorded had been destroyed before he came to the estate. The remaining barrows were all excavated and reconstructed by the General between 1880 and 1883. Three barrows were partially re-examined in 1978 when sample areas around all the barrows were also excavated. Originally the barrows ranged in diameter between 7m and 17.2m and in height from less than 0.4m to 2.6m. All the mounds were surrounded by quarry ditches from which material was derived for their construction, ranging in width between 1m and 2.5m and between 0.25m and 0.9m in depth. Two of the barrows had causeways across the ditch on the south east side of the mound. Three barrows had single cremations placed beneath the mounds while one had nine recorded burials and one had none. Cremations were placed in pits beneath the mounds and were sometimes associated with pottery urns, within the ditches, on the causeway and outside the ditch in at least two cases. At least 24 cremation burials were identified, along with a crouched inhumation. All barrow ditches were recut at a later stage and deposits of flint deliberately placed in them, sometimes sealing cremation deposits. Other finds include fragments of pottery and worked flints as well as a small fragment of twisted bronze neck ring and the tip of a bronze spearhead, found with a cremation. For display purposes Pitt-Rivers constructed concrete plinths to show the positions of the cremations under the barrows and reconstructed the enclosure bank and barrow mounds. In some cases the recreated earthworks may be more substantial than they were in the Bronze Age. The excavations identified a long history of activity at the site in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, although most of the earthworks of this monument date to the later part of that period. An open settlement, the character of which is undefined, existed at the site prior to the first phase of agriculture in which the lynchets began to form. The cemetery was located in an uncultivated plot of land and the field system continued to develop around the barrows. A sequence of barrow construction was suggested by the 1978 excavators and the cemetery as a whole was used over a long period of time, continuing during the occupancy of the enclosed settlement. The enclosure, constructed over the boundaries of an earlier field, marks the latest phase of occupation and the end of cultivation at the site. Radiocarbon dates from the enclosure and the cemetery indicate a date of occupation between about 1250 and 1050 BC. All fence posts, walls, water troughs and pipes, road signs and the road surface are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath these features is included.

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:: 33564
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 143-183
Bradley, J, Bradley, R, Green, M, Landscape, Monuments and Society:The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase, (1991), 151
Pitt Rivers, A, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, (1898), 42-43
Pitt Rivers, A, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, (1898), 1-44
Pitt-Rivers, LG, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, (1888), 28-30
Pitt-Rivers, LG, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, (1888), 28-30
Pitt-Rivers, LG, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, (1888), 28-30
Pitt-Rivers, LG, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, (1888), 28-30
Kinnes, I, 'Occasional Paper No 7' in Round Barrows and Ring-Ditches in the British Neolithic: Occasional Paper No 7, (1979), 126
Toms, H, 'Procs Dorset Natural History and Archaeol Society' in Bronze Age or earlier lynchets, , Vol. 46, (1925), 88-100

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.