Dorset Natur Hist Archaeol Soc Proc 108

Estate maps made from surveys of 1750, and new research into the ownership of the manor and the surrounding lands, throw light on the period after the desertion of the medieval village of Kingston Russell and before the construction of the present house and gardens in late 16th/early 17th. F B

The renewed excavations have retrieved environmental and cultural material which amounts to an important database covering three centuries of Iron Age agricultural strategy, animal husbandry, and cultural transformation. Four-post structures, storage pits, and three round houses (two repeatedly rebuilt) were examined, ten 14C dates were obtained, and Wheeler's trench through the N portal of the E entrance was reopened to check the Neo outer ditch and recover samples.

A water-main from Burton to Dorchester cut across an important sequence of remains spanning four millennia: Neo settlement; BA buildings, pits and field 'systems'; part of the Durotrigian settlement and Iron Age burials; an RB farmstead and ?Christian cemetery for Durnovaria; buildings and enclosures of 5th-8th centuries over the cemetery. Neither the aqueduct nor the Dorchester-Ilchester road was found. Human and animal bones reported. F B/Ed

The Old Malthouse has recently been identified as the watermill of the Abbey. Most of the fabric dates to the 14th century. It probably housed two water-wheels in a single chamber, each driving a pair of mill-stones. The mill may have replaced an earlier one, possibly on the same site. A single smaller wheel later replaced the original arrangement. Au (abr)

Scattered fragments of earthwork in the Poundbury - Maiden Castle - Mount Pleasant triangle give some inklings of the former prehistoric landscape.