The rolling chalk downlands of Cranborne Chase, once a mediaeval hunting estate, are far more than an area of outstanding natural beauty. This tranquil corner of Dorset is blessed with some of southern England’s most engrossing pre-historic and Roman remains, including a complex of henge monuments contemporaneous with Stonehenge.

More than 5,000 years old, the Dorset Cursus is an enigmatic ceremonial site – perhaps an ancient processional route – that snakes for over five miles across the undulating uplands of Cranborne Chase. On Martin Down we will admire Bokerley Dyke, a massive frontier earthwork built shortly after the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.

Down Farm is the setting for the singular private museum of Martin Green, one of Dorset’s foremost field archaeologists. Martin has been exploring and excavating the archaeological remains that lie scattered over his Dorset farm for over 40 years. At his private museum we will inspect at close hand, and perhaps even handle, artefacts dating back to the Stone and Bronze Ages.

Our course will tell the tale of one of England’s great pioneering antiquarians, General Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827-1900). A soldier and archaeologist, Pitt Rivers was also a committed philanthropist: Larmer Tree Gardens, which he created from the early 1890s onwards, has rightly been called “an extraordinary example of Victorian extravagance and vision”. As well as delighting in Larmer Tree’s parkland, pagodas and free-flying parrots, we will visit some of the ancient burial sites and villages unearthed by Pitt Rivers.

We stay at the Crown Hotel in the Dorset market town of Blandford Forum, a fine Georgian residence with views across water meadows to the River Stour.