The Battery Banks are a small series of discontinuous earthworks, snaking south-east along the river Piddle and Frome from Stoke Heath to Wareham. Most of it has been destroyed by field ploughing or later development, but the surviving sections of the Banks form part of a number of small dykes around in southern Dorset, such as Comb's Ditch, south of Blandford, and the Worgret Dykes situated on Worgret heath, immediately south of Wareham.
Like the larger Bokerley and Grim's Dyke in the north of Dorset, these dykes were originally Bronze Age boundary markers, perhaps for delineating fields or enclosures, but were repurposed during the late Roman and post-Roman period, defending the strategically important settlement of Wareham from outside incursion. In this sense, they can be seen as the precursor to the Saxon walls of Wareham, built as part of Alfred the Great's burh system to defend the realm from Viking raiders.
In its intact state, the Banks and its accompanying dykes (including a number of 'cross-ridge dykes' that stopped an invading force from attacking along ridges) cut off the isle of Purbeck from the north. Exactly when they were used actively as a means of defence is unknown, as unlike Bokerley dyke no Roman coins have been found associated with the Banks, which have been used to date the stages of Bokerley's construction.
In the post-Roman period, if the Banks were used for a military purpose it could have been patrolled by small groups of cavalry, there to summon the local militia of Wareham and the surrounding farmland in the event that a Saxon warband, or a rogue Dumnonian princeling, came barrelling southward. Interestingly, the construction of the Banks and the dykes themselves suggests a level of coordination that would not be the case if Wareham was simply an ecclesial hamlet or a fishing village with little relevance to the ruling elite of the day. This is despite the fact that Wareham, as Werham, is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 784, its name meaning a small fishing homestead. What, then, might have made defending Wareham and the isle of Purbeck necessary? Much larger earthworks, such as South Cadbury or Dunster Castle, fell to the Saxons through disuse rather than a military confrontations, and there is no sign that Maiden Castle was ever refortified to defend Duronovaria/Caer Durnac against enemy attack.
There is one entry in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, though, that might explain the earthworks. In 682, the ASC records that Centwine, the West Saxon king, 'drove the Britons into the sea', which cannot refer to the Britons of Dumnonia/Cornwall, as Egbert was the first to accomplish this feat following the Battle of Gafulforda in 825 and Hingston Down in 838. It could refer to a defeat of the Britons still living independent of Wessex's control in the marshes of Somerset and along the Severn, but by then Dumnonia, nor any other Briton polity, had control over the area, so there would not have been a reason to wage war against them. According to Aldhelm's Carmina Ecclesiastica (written in the late 7th century), Centwine won three great battles during his reign, at least one of which might be connected with the ASC entry.
The fact that the Carmina also states that Centwine was a pagan might support a possible campaign against the Britons of southern Dorset; the church of Lady Saint Mary was evidently visited by high-states individuals, and recent excavations in Poundbury have shown that Christian burials continued during this period, continuing Romano-British patterns of burial. Given the bitter ecclesiastic schism between the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon church that reached its zenith by the turn of the 8th century, an attack against Christian Britons might not have been viewed entirely negatively by Centwine's Christian courtiers and bishops; after all, it would amount to another bishopric or two under their control.
To conclude, while the Battery Banks and adjacent dykes are slim evidence in themselves for the socio-political landscape of post-Roman Dorset, together with the Bokerley Dyke and other certified Dark Age sites in Dorset, they add to a picture of a highly defensive and localised society, eager to protect the ways which their mothers and fathers had followed at any cost.
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