Archaeology and local history for the parishes of Damerham and Martin.

Together with a number of extra parochial parishes, they comprised The Hundred of South Damerham from the tenth century. This hundred was the land held in the south of Wiltshire by The Abbot and Monastery of Glastonbury.

The earliest written record that mentions Damerham is the will of King Alfred (the Great) in the ninth century.

The archaeology of Damerham and Martin includes many earthworks including the impressive Bokerley Dyke which still forms the county boundary between Hampshire and Dorset. Martin derives from the Anglo Saxon mere-tun meaning meeting-place;the boundaries of Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire meet on the parish boundary of Martin.

General Sir Pitt-Rivers' excavations in Martin are recorded in the famous publications Excavations in Cranborne Chase and Excavations on Bokerly and Wansdyke.

Other than the interest of Pitt-Rivers, Damerham and Martin whilst being within the Cranborne Chase, one of the most famous later prehistoric landscapes in Europe, has been relatively overlooked; probably due to archaeology being pursued on a county-by-county basis, and Damerham and Martin sitting on those boundaries.

Collin Bowen, a former head of the Royal Commission's (now English Heritage) Salisbury Office recognised this anomaly and led a project resulting in the publication of The Archaeology of Bokerley Dyke. This provides the definitive context of archaeology in this landscape.

In 2008 a team of archaeologists launched the Damerham Archaeology Project to investigate numerous earthworks that had been identified from aerial photographs. This major find has now been the subject of geophysics and excavation for a few weeks over each of the past four Summers.

This activity has given a boost to research of the local community, and this is one of the visible results.