Archaeologists investigating a mysterious wall beneath a field near the village of Corfe Castle in Dorset, believe they have uncovered the remains of a farmhouse dating back at least 1,000 years.
Substantial stone walls were first discovered during a university training dig at Wytch Farm in 2018, but their age and purpose remained a mystery until Derek Pitman of Corfe Castle, whose family farms at Wytch, returned for a second dig in summer 2025 with a top team of archaeologists.
Dorset archaeologist and podcaster Meg Russell worked with Derek Pitman to uncover the walls of the Wytch farmstead
Regular members of Time Team
New discoveries suggest that it could have been built as early as 900 AD which would make it the first known farmstead built on the Purbeck side of Poole Harbour.
And an exciting discovery shows that it could have been a long vanished landmark on the first ever detailed map of Purbeck from 1585, a house overlooking the harbour called Vyche – perhaps the original Wytch Farmhouse.
The site lies close to the Corfe River, which historically provided an important shipping route between Corfe Castle and Poole Harbour, with goods including stone from Purbeck quarries then transported by sea around the country and into Europe.
A copy of Ralph Treswell’s 1585 Survey of Purbeck, made during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, appears to show a house called Vyche in roughly the same area as the dig led by Derek Pitman and Lawrence Shaw, both regular members of the Time Team crew.
They have just released a YouTube video of the latest dig at Wytch Farm as part of the award winning Careers In Ruins podcast, which has already received almost 20,000 views in less than two weeks.
Derek points to a 1585 map of Purbeck showing a long vanished building called Vyche
“This site has bugged me since 2018”
Speaking on the Career in Ruins podcast, Derek Pitman said:
“So we know that the current Wytch farmhouse wasn’t there in 1585, but Treswell’s map does show a house he calls Vyche, which could easily be the name of today’s farm – Swanage is recorded on the map as Sandwiche and we know that names and spellings change over the years.
“While Treswell’s map isn’t perfect – it’s pretty illustrative – it is in the right broad place, and it is set in the middle of this peninsula which is where this field would be. Have we found this house? It would be nice to think that’s the case!
“This site has bugged me ever since I first put a trench through it in 2018. We knew there were substantial walls beneath the field, but we couldn’t explain what they belonged to, when they were built or why the structure was there.
“We wanted to return with a larger team, carry out a more detailed excavation and see whether we could finally begin to answer some of those questions.”
A 2018 dig, one field away from the farmhouse, uncovered five large salt making workshops
“Five salt making work shops”
Derek added:
“In 2018, we also dug a whopping great trench in the adjoining field and found five salt making workshops, each one with multiple big clay hearths, absolute mega structures, dating to the Saxon Norman period of around 900 to 1200 AD.
“What was interesting was that the site was entirely industrial, there was no evidence of any domestic architecture or ceramics, it was all industry. I’d love to think this new discovery could be the place where those folks working the site were living.
“The only real evidence of habitation we have in this area is from the last few hundred years, where we have 18th century farmhouses and buildings, but nothing before that, apart from this purely industrial background.
“We found the rim of a cooking pot amongst the stones, probably 11th to 13th century, which ties in quite neatly with our salt working sites over there.
“So we have two scenarios – one is where folks were living as they were producing salt in the fields next door, or more likely as the nature of industry in the harbour shifted towards a more agricultural focus they started to live here in crofters’ cottages, mini farmsteads.”
An artist’s impression of what the farmhouse may have looked like with an extension added between the 11th and 13th centuries
Bleak industrial landscape
The remains of the building showed a stone foundation possibly dating back to 900 AD, with a later extension.
The structure would have had cob walls – a natural mixture of clay soil, sand, straw and water – and was probably thatched, as there was no evidence of roofing and reeds were abundant in Purbeck.
It is likely that the farmstead was the first step in a transition from a bleak industrial landscape to a much more agricultural scene as Purbeck transformed.
Time Team mates Lawrence Shaw (left) and Derek Pitman joined forces again for the Careers In Ruins film from Wytch Farm
“Filling the air with smoke”
Lawrence Shaw, lead historic environment advisor for Forestry England, said:
“Our dig site was close to the edge of Poole Harbour, a site surrounded by tidal salt marshes, inlets that connect to Corfe River and go out into the harbour.
“For much of history, this whole landscape was so different to what we see now. At the moment it is all fields, agricultural land, but a thousand years ago, as far as the eye could see in all directions this would have been industrial.
“There would have been salt production workshops, ceramics workshops, and metallurgical workshops all filling the air with smoke, it would have been a much more derelict place.
“What is lovely about this project is that we are seeing a transition from that bleak industrial landscape to a much more agricultural landscape, but figuring out the history of the building and the people who live here will take more work.”
The dig site is prepared ahead of more careful excavations
“A lot more questions”
Lawrence added:
“In summer 2025, we brought together a brilliant group of archaeologists, opened the trench back up and set ourselves a fairly simple challenge: find out what on earth was going on in this field.
“What followed was a weekend of digging, geophysics, metal detecting, unexpected discoveries, changing theories, plenty of disagreements and inevitably a lot more questions.
“It’s taken almost a year to turn that weekend into a film. We wanted to make something that captured what archaeology with a group of friends actually feels like, including that point where everyone becomes far too emotionally invested in a pile of stones!”
Watch a trailer for the dig at Wytch Farm
Further information
- Watch the Career in Ruins podcast including the Wytch farm episode called Did We Find a Lost Medieval Building?
