Scotland Lodge

Just west of Winterbourne Stoke, in the small area of ground between the village of Winterbourne Stoke and the SSSI and Nature reserve of Parsonage Down, is a large enclosure of uncertain date.  Prior to the English Heritage survey it had appeared as a rather unclear sub ovoid feature of uncertain provenance, having been seen on high level vertical photographs in 1981.

Photographs taken in plough soil in October 1997 revealed that there is in fact more than one enclosure and also that the area is absolutely covered in pits.  The size and shape, together with its position on the end of a ridge overlooking the river valley, make it a very likely candidate as one of the group of Iron Age enclosures recognised to the north on the Salisbury Plain Training Area NMP.

This photograph coupled with the threat of a proposed by-pass led Wessex Archaeology to carry out an excavation of the site, preceded by geophysical survey. This survey confirmed the overall layout of the site as consisting of a number of phases of enclosures, and helped to decide on the location of six trenches to investigate the site. Their aim was to assess the state of preservation of the various features and also recover any dating evidence.

The results of the excavations were somewhat unexpected as the appearance of the site as a soilmark suggested that it had been heavily ploughed and was likely to be very truncated. In fact although there was severe degradation due to medieval and later ploughing and there were no traces of any in-situ floors etc the ditches of the main features were extant to a depth of over 1m in most cases.

Evidence from finds across the site, including unstratified finds in the ploughsoil, suggests that the first major occupation of the site occurred in the Early Iron Age. At this time the main oval enclosure was established, consisting of a "V" shaped ditch with traces of an inner bank visible in the quarry ditches. Shortly afterwards the rectilinear ditch on the NE was added, but this is much less substantial and not of a defensive nature. There is a scattering of pits across the area, both inside and outside the main enclosures. This coupled with a general presence of Early Iron Age pottery across the site suggests there may have been earlier unenclosed settlement. A number of the pits contained unusual deposits sealing them such as animal bone deposits. By the time of the Roman era the large oval enclosure had gone out of use to be replaced by the small square enclosure to the north-west. This is itself was quite short lived as in the Late Roman period burials were inserted into the ditch which had been silted for some time. Fragments of box flue tiles found in fields to the north suggest the presence of a substantial building in the vicinity, but no traces were found during the excavations.

The very small sampling nature of the excavation means that there is insufficient evidence to be certain about whether occupation was continuous or intermittent, but the silting episodes of various ditches suggest it is more likely to have been intermittent. The results of the survey have been published in a report by Wessex Archaeology and the findings of the survey and excavations were provided to the Department of Transport for them to assess their impact on the proposed route of the Winterbourne Stoke by-pass.