Key Special Features

Eight thousand years ago, Neolithic peoples first started to change and manage the land. They built the first burial mounds and mysterious constructions such as the Dorset Cursus. During the Bronze and Iron ages the area became settled and large areas of pasture and arable farmland were created. The pastures of the Downs date from this period and basic woodland management was practised.

During the Anglo Saxon period large landholdings began to change rural society and the manor of Cranborne became part of The Honour of Gloucester. This was already a royal hunting area when the Normans invaded. The Honour of Gloucester passed to William I's queen and forest law was imposed on the area that had become known as Cranborne Chase. Agricultural expansion continued outside the Chase and by the Fifteenth Century the land was consolidated into large blocks divided by hedges and walls. This trend continued as sheep production became vastly profitable and large houses were built with extensive parks. Forest law persisted in the Chase until 1828 when the Chase was disfranchised. The period 1900 to the present has seen the most rapid changes in agriculture, but the settlement patterns are very similar to those that existed in the seventeenth century.

Rights of Way

Many of the Public Rights of way in the AONB are of immense historic importance. The AONB lies at the hub of the ancient routes that connected the south west of England, across the great arc of chalk geology, to East Anglia. Many of these routes are designated as bridleways and by-ways as well as footpaths. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 created about five thousand hectares of open access land in the AONB.