NHER 43793 (Monument record) - Cropmarks of field boundaries and an enclosure of medieval to post medieval date

June 2006. Norfolk NMP.
The cropmarks of field boundaries and an enclosure of medieval to post medieval date are visible on aerial photographs to the immediate west of Rose Farm, Potter Heigham (S1-S3). The site is centred on TG 4087 2009. One of these ditches corresponds with the edge of the former trackway from Rose Farm. It therefore seems likely that all of the boundaries, including the rectangular enclosure, are also medieval to post medieval in date. These cropmarks are located within a larger multiphase cropmark site (NHER 43791).

The cropmarks suggest a large, but incomplete, polygonal enclosure measuring 220m by at least 150m and centred on TG 4085 2009. This would appear to have no obvious relationship with the modern and post medieval field layout. However the southernmost ditches of this ‘enclosure’ correspond with the edge of the former trackway marked on the 1840 Potter Heigham Tithe map (S4) that ran from Rose Farm out into the fields to the west. A field boundary is also marked running in-between the trackway and the field boundary to the north, again this coincides with cropmarks exactly. The cropmarks suggest that this boundary originally continued around to the northwest, forming a series of angled sections and then turning back to the south at TG 4077 2018. Conjoined to this boundary to the north was a rectilinear enclosure, centred on TG 4086 2017. Not all of the enclosing ditches are visible, although it seems likely that the enclosure measured approximately 50m by 60m. It is therefore possible that all of these boundaries are medieval to post medieval in date, with only the southern component and trackway surviving as late as the 1840 Tithe map (S4). Although as this site is located within a large and complicated area of multiphase cropmarks (NHER 43791-2, 43794-6), it is also possible that the apparent continuation of Tithe map boundary is a coincidence and that the northern ditches are not the same date.
S. Massey (NMP), 12 June 2006.