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Lost Secrets - an adventure during Neolithic times

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<< Our Photo Pages >> Flagstones Enclosure - Causewayed Enclosure in England in Dorset

Submitted by CatrinM on Thursday, 25 March 2004  Page Views: 12374

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Flagstones Enclosure Alternative Name: Max Gate House
Country: England County: Dorset Type: Causewayed Enclosure
Nearest Town: Dorchester
Map Ref: SY704899  Landranger Map Number: 194
Latitude: 50.707976N  Longitude: 2.420562W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
1 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
2 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
4 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Catrinm visited on 7th Sep 2023 - their rating: Cond: 1 Amb: 3 Access: 5 Two stones thought to be originally part of an avebury- style stone henge are in the garden of Max Gate. This is explained in the house tour.

Flagstones Enclosure
Flagstones Enclosure submitted by Catrinm : The second stone at Max Gate - Almost certainly from the neolithic enclosure ( was buried 6 feet below surface) (Vote or comment on this photo)
Flagstones is a late Neolithic interrupted ditch enclosure (similar to a causewayed enclosure) in the English county of Dorset. The enclosure is formed by a ring of pits dug into the chalk bedrock, with 'causeways' between the pits. Half of the enclosure was discovered beneath the site of the demolished Flagstones House in advance of the construction of the Dorchester by-pass road.

The part of the enclosure in the grounds of Flagstones House was partially excavated archaeologically, by Wessex Archaeology, and then the grounds were totally removed to make a deep cutting for the bypass at this point. The other half still exists under the grounds of Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's house.

The 100 m diameter enclosure itself contained a variety of human remains in its pits including those of a two or three year old child beneath a sandstone slab and a newborn baby crushed in the terminal of a pit. A young man had been buried in a later Early Bronze Age tumulus in the centre of the site beneath a sarsen megalith. Carbon dating of the remains put the building of the enclosure at around 3486–2886 BC with the central burial dating to around a thousand years later. Neolithic carvings were found carved into the sides of three of the pits.

It may have been connected with other nearby Neolithic sites such as Maumbury Rings and Mount Pleasant henge.

Further reading: Roland J. C. Smith, 1997, Excavations along the Route of the Dorchester Bypass, Dorset Wessex Archaeology Report

Source: Wikipedia
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Flagstones Enclosure
Flagstones Enclosure submitted by Catrinm : The Druid stone at Max Gate Almost certainly from the neolithic enclosure ( was buried 6 feet below ground) (Vote or comment on this photo)

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Nearby Images from Geograph Britain and Ireland:
SY7089 : A35 towards Poole by JThomas
by JThomas
©2022(licence)
SY7089 : Max Gate by Richard Croft
by Richard Croft
©2016(licence)
SY7089 : Max Gate with hardy trees by Ibn Musa
by Ibn Musa
©2019(licence)
SY7089 : Max Gate, Alington Avenue, Dorchester by Jo and Steve Turner
by Jo and Steve Turner
©2019(licence)
SY7089 : Max Gate by Gary Rogers
by Gary Rogers
©2015(licence)

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 607m E 80° Mount Pleasant (Dorset)* Henge (SY710900)
 1.2km SW 215° Conygar Hill Barrows* Barrow Cemetery (SY697889)
 1.3km WNW 302° Dorchester, Tudor Arcade* Timber Circle (SY693906)
 1.4km W 270° Maumbury Rings* Henge (SY69018992)
 1.5km WNW 301° Dorset County Museum* Museum (SY691907)
 1.8km NW 306° Dorchester Roman Town House* Ancient Village or Settlement (SY68969095)
 2.1km SE 141° Whitcombe* Standing Stone (Menhir) (SY717883)
 2.4km SW 231° Herringston Long Barrow* Long Barrow (SY68548844)
 2.4km SW 232° Herringston Bowl Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SY68478842)
 2.5km WNW 299° Poundbury* Hillfort (SY68199113)
 3.1km ENE 63° Heedless William's Stone* Standing Stone (Menhir) (SY732913)
 3.3km SSE 151° Little Mayne* Stone Circle (SY720870)
 3.7km WSW 256° Maiden Castle Linear Earthwork Misc. Earthwork (SY66798902)
 3.7km NE 55° Rainbarrows* Round Barrow(s) (SY735920)
 3.7km WSW 247° Maiden Castle Causewayed Enclosure* Causewayed Enclosure (SY66938848)
 3.7km WSW 248° Maiden Castle Bank Barrow* Long Barrow (SY66928850)
 3.8km WSW 247° Maiden Castle (Dorset)* Hillfort (SY66908846)
 3.8km W 259° Lanceborough Enclosure Misc. Earthwork (SY66658920)
 3.9km W 259° Maiden Castle Barrow Cemetery* Barrow Cemetery (SY666892)
 3.9km W 262° Maiden Castle Long Barrow 2 Long Barrow (SY66578938)
 4.0km SSW 205° Came Down* Barrow Cemetery (SY687863)
 4.0km WNW 299° Bradford Peverell 2* Long Barrow (SY669919)
 4.0km WSW 254° Maiden Castle Long Barrow 1 Long Barrow (SY66518879)
 4.1km S 187° Whitcombe 1* Long Barrow (SY699858)
 4.6km SSW 211° Winterborne Came 18b (Bincombe) Cairn (SY680860)
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"Flagstones Enclosure" | Login/Create an Account | 6 News and Comments
  
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Re: Pictures of the Neolithic: discoveries from the Flagstones House excavations, by Andy B on Monday, 20 September 2021
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Ian A writes: Two of the large stones stand in the public gardens to Max Gate - one in the upper formal gardens and the other nearer to the road beside what looks like a croquet lawn..... Both might have been moved.

Other stones were moved when they built the main road, but we were told that there were rare engraved chalk blocks to the walls of the ditch that surrounded the stones - very odd - and now in Dorchester museum (somewhere).

As regards the rest of the 50% of the circle, they say its 6-10ft under the paddock that adjoins Max Gate and that its neolithic..... Pity that NT can be persuaded to put in a raised platform carpark on concrete piles over the paddock and to excavate and display the site underneath the new car park slab..... .
[ Reply to This ]

Flagstones Henge artwork carved onto the ditches by Andy B on Tuesday, 03 October 2017
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The survival of two dimensional artwork from the British Neolithic period is rare, and incisions on chalk even more so. One image that repeats across the above larger chalk plaque and carved in chalk in situ on the sides of segmented ditches at Flagstones Henge in Dorchester are compositions referred to as:

An angular meander.
A sinuous serpentiform set.
Angular serpentiform

A diagram of the sinuous serpentiform set from flagstones henge here :
http://www.silentearth.org/stonehenge-chalk-plaques/

Stonehenge is located to the northwest of an almost ox-bow lake meander in the the River Avon. Flagstones Henge is located southwest of a similar meander in the River Frome. Similarly to Stonehenge, Flagstones Henge sat in a Neolithic landscape close to the western bank of a river amongst other prehistoric structures. It is immediately west of Mount Pleasant and east of Maumbury Rings.

Simply, ‘The shape of the river at this place is the reason we placed a structure here’.
[ Reply to This ]

Flagstones House excavations by Andy B on Tuesday, 03 October 2017
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A substantial Neolithic ditched enclosure (AMIE uid 983955) located just 400
metres west of Mount Pleasant (Fig. 3). Around half of it was excavated in 1987-88. The enclosure itself appears to have been near circular in shape, around 100 metres in
diameter, and defined by a single circuit of pits or ditch segments of varying length, depth and spacing. The chalk walls of four of the segments featured engraved designs, while human burials – one adult plus two child inhumations (and bones from a third) were found in the primary silts of three further ditch segments. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the enclosure was constructed in the late fourth millennium BC.

In the early second millennium BC, a barrow was constructed at the centre of the
enclosure – a central grave covered by a mound and surrounded by a ditch from which, presumably, the mound material was quarried. The grave contained what was probably a crouched inhumation, described as being a young adult male.

Ref: Smith, RJC, F Healy, MJ Allen, EL Morris, I Barnes, PJ Woodward. 1997. Excavations along the route of the Dorchester By-pass, Dorset, 1986-88. Wessex Archaeology Report No 11. Wessex Archaeology, Salisbury.

Source: Historic England Research Report
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Flagstones Enclosure by Andy B on Thursday, 06 July 2017
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Plan and more information here

This whole area is a top level Neolithic-Early Bronze Age ceremonial landscape. Dorchester has a line of henges and Neolithic enclosures of various dimensions overlooked by the most impressive of Iron Age hillforts, Maiden Castle. This overlies a unique monument, the later Neolithic bank barrow 600m long which in turn overlies the causewayed enclosure built about 3600 BC.

https://archaeologynationaltrustsw.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/max-gate-and-the-south-dorset-ridgeway/
[ Reply to This ]

Pictures of the Neolithic: discoveries from the Flagstones House excavations, by Andy B on Thursday, 22 August 2013
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Pictures of the Neolithic: discoveries from the Flagstones House excavations, Dorchester, Dorset Antiquity Volume 62, Issue 235, June 1988

The new Dorchester by-pass is being constructed (scheduled completion in autumn 1988 through a busy landscape of later prehistoric England – and one where fieldworkers have been very active recently, especially at the Maiden Castle hillfort, and in the county town itself. Survey and excavations along the by-pass route were undertaken by the author for the Trust for Wessex Archaeology. The excavation at Flagstones House, directed together with Martin Trott, identified a late Neolithic causewayed enclosure. This note concentrates on the chalk engravings from that site, which lies to the west of Max Gate, the house of Thomas Hardy. It is perhaps apposite that the Wessex novelist built his home so close to the heart of a sacred Wessex site.
[ Reply to This ]
    Re: Pictures of the Neolithic: discoveries from the Flagstones House excavations, by Catrinm on Friday, 08 September 2023
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    I was stunned on visiting Hardy’s Max Gate that it was on a neolithic site - two interests collide ! And whats more, the two stones there are said to be from the henge and described by the guides as coming from a stone circle inside the henge/enclosure ( but moved) . Pictures uploaded. CM
    [ Reply to This ]

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