NHER 18555 (Cropmark and Earthwork record) - Undated earthworks

22 May 1977. Air photography by Aerial Archaeology Foundation.
Earthworks.
Circular ditch with remains of upstanding mound within.
Together with sub-rectangular ditched enclosure with remnant mound within.
Possible remains of barrow group. Or could they be cattle refuges in this low-lying area on marsh edge?
D. Edwards (NAU), 22 October 1982.

Possibly salterns; compare site 3263.
E. Rose (NAU), 1 December 1982.

Documentary reference to saltings here; these are set over extinct creeks.
E. Rose (NAU), 1 February 1983.

1986. Greatly extended area.
See reports and plans in file.
Other sources (S1) and (S2).

1944, 1945 & 1958. RAF air photography.
Grid reference amended from TF 651 260
An area of ridge and furrow is visible as earthworks north of North Wooton.
Much of the area consists of straight (and therefore presumably later) ridge and furrow but there are a number of areas of presumably earlier, curved ridge and furrow.
The straight features may relate to drainage as much as cultivation.
A. Miller (Suffolk County Council NMP), 7 July 2000.

1966, 1967 & 1971. Ordnance Survey air photography.
These features are part of a more extensive group with more to the east (and possibly an isolated example further west).
The enclosures are unlikely to be barrows; they apparently overlay straight ridge and furrow in this area, implying a post medieval date.
This would also seem to deny any link to salt making (they do not resemble any of the salterns in this area).
There are two main forms of enclosure; fairly circular, and more rectangular, numbering fourteen and five respectively.
The physical appearance of the features is an external ditch within which is usually a bank and a hollow in the middle, although one is just a ditch, and one has a mound instad of a bank and hollow. Two of the levelled circular enclosures seem to have concentric ditches.
There does seem to be a link between these features and the creek/drainage channels in this reclaimed marshland; the quantity of these features and this proximity to water would seem to suggest that they are not animal refuges or stack stands.
the exact function of these features is then currently unclear, as is the distinction, if any, between the two forms.
A. Miller (SCC NMP), 7 July 2000.