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The Grim's Ditch Complex in Cranborne Chase

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

C. M. Piggott
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Extract

Many of the Grim's ditches and others of similar character in East and South England have been tentatively dated to the Late Roman or Saxon periods. The question of their date and purpose has frequently received attention in Antiquity, notably by Sir Cyril Fox and Mr O. G. S. Crawford.

But all these Grim's ditches need not be alike, and the group of linear earthworks known by this name in Cranborne Chase is especially distinctive. Parts of it can perhaps best be compared with the Grovely Grim's ditch, with which it is almost certainly associated, and which was described by Mr Crawford in his article on ‘Our Debt to Rome’ as being pre-Saxon. Since then Sir Charles Oman has suggested a later date for it, and put forward the view that Grim's dyke, and other ditches in the southeast of Wiltshire ‘were thrown up to mark the limit of the Saxon frontier’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 18 , Issue 70 , June 1944 , pp. 65 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1944

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References

1 ANTIQUITY, 1929, III, ‘Dykes’, pp. 135-55.

2 ANTIQUITY, 1930, IV, ‘Grim’s Ditch in Wychwood, Oxon.’, pp. 303-15, and ibid. 1931, V, ‘The Chiltern Grim’s Ditches’, pp. 161-71.

3 ANTIQUITY, 1928, 11, 180.

4 Arch. Journ., 1930, LXXXVII, 68.

5 The Ancient Earthworks of Cranborne Chase, 1913.

6 Kindly drawn by Miss V. M. Dallas.

7 Ancient Dorset (Bournemouth, 1872), p. 6-7, and Appendix, p. 309.

8 Ancient Wiltshire (London, 1810), 1, 232 ff.

9 Quarley Hill report, Proc. Hants. Field Club, 1930, XIV, 143.

10 See also, ‘Five Late Bronze Age Enclosures in North Wiltshire’, in Proc. Prehist. Soc., 1942, VIII, p. 48 ff.

11 Excavations in Cranborne Chase, IV, 190.

12 It is unlikely that a northward extension of this small ditch could have been obliterated by ploughing, like so many stretches of Grim’s ditch proper. For Vernditch is known to have been kept as a deer preserve since early medieval times.

13 Codex Wintoniensis, quoted by the Rev. Du Boulay Hill in Wilts. Arch. Mag., XXXVI, 50-6, ‘The Saxon Boundaries of Downton, Wilts.’ See also Mr Crawford’s note at the end of this paper.

14 Beyond Clearbury to the north and east the ditch is not traceable across the Avon valley, but a similar ditch, possibly the same one, reappears on Standlynch Down, 3 miles to the east and ‘runs up and along the west slope of the Down to the Sarum and Romsey high road, after which it is lost in cultivation’. (Heywood Sumner).

15 ANTIQUITY, 1931, V, pl. 1, opp. p. 444.

16 ANTIQUITY, 1931, V, 454.

17 The Ancient Earthworks of Cranborne Chase, pl. XXXIV.

18 See J. P. Williams-Freeman, An Introduction to Field Archaeology as illustrated by Hampshire, p. 418 and plan opposite, and Earthworks of Cranborne Chase, p. 20.

19 See Proc. Hants. Field Club, 1939, XIV, 144 et seq., and map, Fig. 1. This map is of the greatest importance in showing the system of land division in Late Bronze Age times.

20 Field Archaeology of Hants., p. 400 and plan opposite, and Earthworks of Cranborne Chase, p. 28.

21 Ancient Wilts., 1, 234.

22 Excavations in Cranborne Chase, III.

23 See Wessexfrom the Air, pl. XLIII, and pp. 230-2. It is suggested that nos. 2 and 6 on this plate may be part of a ‘long mound’ of Maiden Castle type, with another mound similarly aligned but just out of the photograph. This looks very possible from the ground. Its length would be a little over 600 ft.

24 Excavations in Cranborne Chase, III, pl. CLXX.

25 ibid. p. clxii.

26 Heywood Sumner, Local Papers (Chiswick Press, 1931), p. 89 ff.

27 Air Survey and Archaeology, Ordnance Survey Professional Papers, no. 7, 1928.