NHER 31746 (Monument record) - Cropmarks of undated boundaries, enclosure and trackway

28 June 1990. NAU aerial photography.
Triple linear boundary ditches.
D. Edwards (NAU).

There is a fourth ditch in one place. Also other attached enclosures predating present fields. Very strange! Could it be Iron Age?
E. Rose (NLA), 26 January 1996.

December 2004. Norfolk NMP.
A multiple ditched boundary (described above) is visible as a cropmark on aerial photographs (S1 to S2), centred at TG 2810 3599. Similar features have been mapped from aerial photographs in Lincolnshire (S3) and the Yorkshire Wolds (S4). The shared orientation of the site with the field system located predominantly to its west (NHER 38961) suggests that the two are contemporary, or that the field system was laid out in relation to the multiple ditched boundary. In the absence of a direct relationship, however, this is not necessarily the case. Furthermore, as with the field system, elements of the site described here seem to line up with field boundaries depicted on historic maps (for example, S5). This suggests that either the dating (and perhaps the interpretation) of the site is doubtful, or that there was perhaps a certain continuity of landscape division, and/or that the boundary survived as a significant landscape marker after the Roman period.

The boundary consists of four discontinuous ditches made up of curvilinear or sinuous segments. It is visible for approximately 390m from TG 2824 3613 to TG 2806 3578 and is up to 38m wide. 80m to its west, parallel ditches may define a second multiple ditched boundary made up of two to three ditches. Narrow parallel ditches between the two (from TG 2803 3593 to TG 2814 3589), which correspond with a causeway in the eastern boundary, may mark a trackway or a further boundary. To the north, beyond more narrow ditches, what appears to be part of a semi circular enclosure is visible, apparently butting onto the west side of the boundary. The function of this enclosure is uncertain, and it is not possible to tell whether it is a contemporary feature.

The principal boundary occupies a distinctive topographic position, cutting across the narrowest point of the watershed between Mundesley Beck and Brandfield Beck.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 6 December 2004.