Spoil from a pipe-line trench was being used to fill in a ditch, previously unrecorded in the grounds of Thorngrove. A preliminary contour survey showed ditches and banks on three sides of a roughly rectangular feature some 100m across, which was thought to be a moated site. The corners of the north and east banks were cut by a rough pond in the NE which was obviously all that remained of the moat. Various internal features included parch marks of a rectangular building over an area of stony ground.

Although not named, Thorngrove may have been one of the nine Domesday entries for the Royal Manor of Gillingham, but lay outside the bounds of the Royal Forest. This royal estate was continually granted to the queen on the day of her jointure (i.e. after her husband’s death) and reverted back to the king on her death, and is so recorded from 1299.

Thorngrove is also described as ‘the Quenes ferme of Gyllyngham’ in Forest Proceedings, ‘where was supposedly to have been anciently a house for her reception‘. It was part of the ‘capital messuage’ or ‘site of the manor’ of over 300 acres in the Survey of the Manor of Gillingham c 1612-13 (Dorset Record Office).

In view of the importance of the archaeology and historical background, the Royal Commission of Historical Monuments carried out a survey which was completed in 1991