Newsletter 43 - Spring 2005

Richardson Circles – the work of the Forest’s first field archaeologist

Anthony Pasmore

I suppose that most people who have a good knowledge of the Forest’s history would regard J P Williams-Freeman and Heywood Sumner as the first true field archaeologists of the district.   Certainly they were the first to use modern ideas of recording and interpretation, but fifty years earlier John Wise, in his “New Forest” had contributed a great deal to our knowledge of the Forest’s distant past, despite his rather unfortunate excavation methods.   Before Wise, we have to go back quite a long way – in fact to the first decade of the 19th century when the Ordnance Survey was preparing the first One Inch map.   That contained a remarkable amount of archaeological information and was the basis of all future work.   Those early fieldworkers are anonymous except for Phillip Crocker who worked for Colt Hoare in his archaeological researches and was also employed by the Ordnance Survey, partly in the New Forest – see Harry Margary’s “The Old Series Ordnance Survey Maps of England and Wales.  Not only did the first edition One Inch show barrows, but some of the more prominent earthworks were also recorded.

Before the arrival of the Ordnance Survey, the canvas is largely blank, leaving aside the barrow-robbing activities of Richard Warner at Setley in about 1792 and recorded in his “Topographical Remarks relating to the South-Western parts of Hampshire”, but there is one important exception. This is the work of Thomas Richardson in the 1780s, yet it was not until last year, more than two centuries later, that the full extent of his contribution became obvious.   That discovery establishes his claim to be the true father of New Forest field archaeology.

In 1789 there was published the famous survey of the New Forest commonly known as “Driver’s Map”.   It accompanied the Fifth Report of the Land Revenue Commissioners and was the collaborative work of four different surveyors (and probably assistants) namely Thomas Richardson, William King and Abraham and William Driver. The work of surveying the Forest seems to have been divided geographically between them.   The Drivers took the north of the Forest, King the south west and Richardson an area chiefly east of the present A337.   The finished map, published by William Faden, is uniform throughout.   It was presumably the work of a single draughtsman amalgamating the three surveys, but the drawings from which he worked are very different.   They are at a larger scale, up to 20 chains to one inch, and are partly based on the walks of the Forest.   With the unfortunate exceptions of Castle Malwood, Bolderwood, Holmsley and Burley Walks, they survive in the Public Record Office with copies at the New Forest Museum.   The Drivers’ work is relatively coarse and lacking in detail (plotted at 10 chains to one inch), while that of William King is clear and neat, but again not highly detailed.   Richardson’s work is entirely different.   It is almost unbelievably fine and detailed, giving the most wonderful record of the south east part of the Forest at the time.

Unlike the first edition of the Ordnance Survey, Driver’s Map does not, with one important exception, record antiquities for their own sake.   Some sites, such as the Stag Parks and Bishop’s Dyke are shown, but because they were topographical features and not for their antiquarian interest. Bank alignments, which today are important to archaeologists and make the map an invaluable source for fieldworkers, are recorded simply because they coincided with woodland margins or were in some other way prominent.

Laurences Barrow on Beaulieu Heath from the published version of Driver’s Map

The great exception to this rule of ignoring antiquities falls within Thomas Richardson’s zone of the Forest at Beaulieu Heath west.   Here the published version of Driver’s Map shows fourteen barrows marked as hachured circular features.   Six are named: Watt’s Parlour, Coldpixie’s Cave, Laurence’s Barrow and Three Barrows.   On the large scale drawings is one other name “One Bush Barrow” which was not carried forward to the published map.   Also of interest (and not transferred) is the plotting of the linear earthwork commonly called Cerdic’s Bridgehead. The published map records “Pudding Barrow” at Lodge Heath, but with no symbol, despite this being a very prominent mound to this day.   None of the numerous barrows at Hill Top is shown and the remainder of the Forest also lacks detail of this type.   From this absence, we may assume that there was no instruction from the Crown to plot such features, or presumably, to omit them; so why did Richardson depart from the general rule on Beaulieu Heath?   Was he engaged on some private research, or was he perhaps working for a local antiquary in parallel with (or under cover of) his duties for the Crown?

These unanswerable questions might have been the end of the matter, but for the fact that I needed to check something on the New Forest Museum’s copies of the large scale drawings of Richardson’s survey.   Like most photocopies they are a rather muddy grey, with the heathland notation further obscuring the background, but it was immediately obvious that there was something strange about the barrow recording.   It was not, like the remainder of the detail, carefully inked in.   Instead, very faint circles, sometimes with a dot in the middle, marked the barrow sites, as though the cartographer was uncertain as to whether or not the feature should be included on the final map.   In many cases the circles are so faint as to be barely distinguishable from blemishes in the copy or from coincidental aggregations of dots in the heathland notation.   It was during attempts to unravel this difficulty that a discovery was made – these “Richardson Circles” are not confined to the sites of barrows which appear on the published map.

A Richardson circle north of Pilley on the large scale drawings (indicated by arrow)

Thomas Richardson (or just possibly, I suppose, some anonymous assistant) had recorded far more barrows than ever reached Driver’s Map.   Shadowy circles lurked in every part of the heath.   Some are clear and some so faint that their existence must be doubted.   On and around Beaulieu Heath are to be found in the region of twenty five probable barrow symbols.   The exact number depends on the eye of faith in interpreting phantom circles and perhaps examination of the original drawings in the Record Office might resolve the problem.   Some of these additional sites appear to coincide with barrows later recorded by the Ordnance Survey.   Some are in quite different locations and would probably have been destroyed by the construction of Beaulieu Aerodrome.   One, perhaps the clearest, must have fallen victim to the making of the Greenmoor allotments at Pilley in the 19th century.

Further fieldwork, requiring a fairly liberal interpretation of scale and bearing, may eventually tie in most of these circles with barrows we know today.   If we are very fortunate, it may lead to entirely new sites, or rather to sites which have been lost for more than two centuries.

As examination of the circles progressed southwards, a further mystery emerged.   Three barrows which appeared on the published map (in the Crockford area) are completely absent from the drawings and must have been added from another and so far unknown source.

An obvious next step was to examine the drawings for circles elsewhere – notably on Hill Top Heath where massive barrows dominate the skyline.   Here not a trace could be found.   West of Beaulieu the cartographer was recording the most insignificant of archaeological features: east of it he was ignoring huge mounds.   A search further north showed the same pattern.   The great barrows of Black Down were omitted and it looked as though Beaulieu Heath was the limit of archaeological interest to the surveyor.   Then three more circles came to light, the first being the large barrow in the cemetery at Kings Hat and the other two near Beaulieu Road.

In 2000, Chris Read identified a probable large barrow above Decoy Pond and reported it to the Section as Site 34/01, but with some reservations as to its authenticity.   The Richardson drawings show a clear circle corresponding with the find, and this was a barrow which had escaped the notice of the Ordnance Survey and all later fieldworkers.   Another circle is visible to the northwest, roughly corresponding with the Ordnance Survey barrow east of the road from Beaulieu Road to Denny.   This time it was Richardson who seemed to entertain doubts about the find (or perhaps the accuracy of its plotting) because it is struck through with a cross.   That is the only example of such a correction so far identified.   The barrow is certainly a very indistinct one in long heather.

The Decoy Pond Farm barrow – site 34/01 from Richardson’s drawings

Further search of the drawings proved fruitless.   The barrows at Denny Wait had been ignored and so had those at The Ridge and Shatterford.   What could explain this strange selectivity?   My only suggestion is that one surveyor in a team, possibly Richardson himself, was interested in the features and was employed principally around Beaulieu Heath.   For some reason he also dealt with an area north of Beaulieu Road through to Kings Hat.   Meanwhile his colleagues steadfastly ignored the barrow groups, which surrounded them on all sides.

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