This summer we visited the fascinating Down Farm, on Cranborne Chase in Dorset, run by farmer/archaeologist Martin Green who conducted us on a tour of his wildlife pond and wildflower meadow, his own very well stocked museum of hundreds of artefacts from various periods found locally, to Bronze Age barrows Martin has excavated, plus a deep natural shaft in the chalk, the emptying of which has yielded much information about the evolution of the local landscape over millennia.

After a picnic lunch in the sunshine and a flint knapping demonstration by Martin, it was on to nearby Knowlton rings, a complex of henges on one of which stands a ruined medieval church, taking in glimpses of the remains of Ackling Dyke Roman road and the Dorset cursus. Finally back on the farm we viewed Martin’s ongoing excavations of a pond barrow, a couple of small neolithic causewayed enclosures plus adjacent house remains, further indication of the various prehistoric settlements which must once have proliferated in the area.

Yvonne Masson