Summary

Circular Middle Neolithic enclosure half excavated between 1986 to 1987 prior to the construction of the Dorchester bypass. The unexcavated half lies beneath the garden of Thomas Hardy's house, Max Gate.

Identification Images (0)

Most Recent Monitoring

None Recorded

Monument Types

Description

Excavations prior to the construction of the Dorchester bypass in 1986-87 uncovered the west half of a Middle Neolithic causewayed enclosure. The unexcavated half of the site lies beneath the garden of Thomas Hardy's house, Max Gate. The site consists of an interrupted outer ditch, an inner ring ditch and a central burial pit. The exposed interrupted ditch can be taken to be a half-part of a full ring, c. 100m diameter, as can an inner ring ditch c. 25m in diameter. Any logical projection of the circuits to the east suggests that the monument is circular there is a hint of an extended break at the western side of the site which might suggest an entrance, although definition is clouded by the western boundary wall to the site. The interrupted ditch segments consisted of oval or 'sausage' shaped pits generally c. 3-5m long and c. 1.5-2.5m wide. They varied in depth from c 0.5 to 2m, with the segments generally becoming less deep towards the north of the site. The pits were generally near straight sided and flat bottomed. The basal fills of the segments consisted of dense and occasionally cemented chalk rubble, interspersed with occasional individual turfs or turf lines. The upper fills were humic, brown clayey loams. The chalk rubble suggests the segments of the outer ditch were partly backfilled immediately after cutting, sealing broken antler picks at the base of some segments, and were flanked by an irregular low bank both inside and outside the circuit. Two infant burials were located in separate ditch segments on the western side of the monument; a cremation below a metre long sarsen stone and an inhumation of a 2- to 3-year old below a slab of ridgeway limestone. Both were sealed below the chalk at the base of the infilled ditch. On the sides of the segmented ditches of the outer circuit were four instances of in situ engravings. The canvas for these pictograms was provided by the exposed faces of near vertical joints in the Upper Chalk through which the ditch segments were cut. Available surfaces were not present in all ditch segments and the four most suitable were used for picture making. These pictograms were fresh and showed little sign of erosion, which suggests that they were buried soon after cutting. The four pictograms were removed for conservation and preservation. The inner ring consisted of a near-circular continuous ditch. 1.8m wide and 0.75m deep, with near vertical sides and a flat base, containing predominantly chalky fills in a silty loam matrix. Centrally placed within this ring was a near circular pit, 1.5m in diameter and 1.1m deep. Within this pit a large sarsen boulder sealed an adult crouched inhumation. This central burial was not well preserved and only some of the principal long bones, skull fragments and teeth survived.

Analysis of the prehistoric pottery from these features identified a plain, flint-gritted Peterborough ware from the lower silts of the causewayed enclosure. Two small pits on the northern side of the enclosure contained considerable quantities of burnt charcoal and seeds in association with Hembury ware closely comparable with pottery from Maiden castle. Hembury ware did not otherwise occur on the site; and these pits can be taken to belong to an earlier settlement episode. A sample from an antler pick from base of causewayed ditch segment returned a date of 4080 +/- 80 years BP ( 1988). (P.J. Woodward 1987, p.81-84).


2022 Evaluation excavations within the Paddock and along the access drive at Max Gate, Dorchester, ENA10465, SNA69448.

From July 25th-29th and August 31st-September 1st, investigations were carried out at Max Gate, the house designed by Thomas Hardy and built by his brother Henry.
The 2022 excavation was inspired by two agreed actions recommended in the conservation management plan for the property (Bohea 2022).

The first action was to gain evidence to enable protection of the potentially significant buried archaeology below Max Gate. Ultimately, to seek designation of the site as a scheduled monument, but first to determine whether a Middle Neolithic enclosure, discovered west of Max Gate (Smith et al 1997, 27-48), continued across the Max Gate property.

Excavations in 1987-8 had discovered the western half of a 100m diameter enclosure, known as ‘Flagstones’. If circular: the trajectory of the enclosure should cross just south of the front door of Max Gate; continue through the east garden, where, in the 1880s, Thomas Hardy had found a large sarsen megalith; then arc north and west through the north field of the property, known as ‘the Paddock’.

Trenches I-III were located along the drive and Trench IV was excavated in the Paddock.

Below this lowest gravel drive, within Trench III, was found a chalk cut ditch at SY70437 89899. This lay 6m south-west of the front doorstep of Max Gate. It was aligned east to west and was at least 1.4m long and 1.2m wide. The north slope of the ditch was revealed, cutting at an angle of about 60 degrees with a flat bottom at least 0.4m wide.

The position of this ditch would coincide with the trajectory of the ‘Flagstones’ Middle Neolithic enclosure and the filling was typical for a prehistoric ditch, a thin film of dark dirt at the bottom with frost fractured chalk above and above this, increasingly rounded fragments mixed with a yellow-ochre brown chalky clay. Finds were confined to the upper filling of the ditch and these were undiagnostic patinated struck flakes. The surface of the ditch had been truncated by the 1885 drive works. Two OSL samples were taken from the middle ditch filling where there was enough clay soil content to potentially enable a date.

The Paddock Trench IV was a large rectangular cutting aligned north-west to south-east measuring 12m by 9m. It was positioned to coincide with the trajectory of the Middle Neolithic enclosure. The soil above the natural chalk 0.25 - 0.30m deep was found to be mixed cultivated soil containing mainly pottery of the 18th-20th centuries but also occasional earlier material including abraded medieval and Roman pottery and struck flint flakes. The spoil was sieved.

The chalk surface was cleaned and any visible features were plotted where they cut the bedrock. This revealed two mirrored ‘L’-shaped 0.6m wide ditches spaced 1.0m apart and aligned north to south. The north ends of the ditches running into the north-east trench section but to the south, where the right-angle of each ‘L’ ran on the same alignment but in opposite directions, east and west, were two post-holes. These appeared to mark the position of an entrance gate to the passage formed between the north to south parallel sides of the ‘L’-shaped ditches. Eight other scattered post-holes also 0.2m-0.4m diameter cut the chalk to the south and west but none of these features had dateable finds associated with them.

At the south-west edge of the trench were found two pits measuring 2.2m in diameter and spaced 0.75m apart. The south-east pit had an upper filling of compacted weathered chalk fragments and was not excavated. For the north-west pit, the trench section was cut back and its full extent exposed. It was found to be oval in plan, measuring 1.9m north-east to south-west. The south-east half of the filling was excavated, and the pit was found to be almost vertical sided. A fine upper filling of orange-brown clay loam, a middle filling of weathered chalk fragments in a yellow brown clay and the lower filling of weathered and frost fractured chalk. The pit was excavated to a depth of 1.3m where the soil became darker containing fine fragments of charcoal enabling a Radiocarbon sample to be taken. Other finds were limited to three small fragments of plain black pottery probably of Late Iron Age or Romano British date and six struck flints. The pit was not fully half-sectioned, the lowest filling was left in situ.

Oval pits of this size and depth were found to form part of the Neolithic enclosure found in 1987-8 but the pottery in the upper filling seems to preclude this interpretation. However, in 2022, the lower sides of the pit were found to have preserved on the chalk cut walls, long indentations made with round pointed implement, typical of those created by the impact of red deer antler picks. Similar markings had been found when the ‘Flagstones’ Neolithic enclosure pits and ditches were dug 35 years earlier (Roland Smith pers comm.).

References

Designations

Other Statuses and References

None Recorded

Associated Events

Associated Finds

None Recorded

Related Records

None Recorded