NHER 50947 (Monument record) - Cropmarks of a trackway and/or boundary ditch of probable Roman date

March 2008. Norfolk NMP.
The cropmarks of a trackway and/or boundary ditch of probable Roman date are visible on aerial photographs (S1-S2) within the Police House Field cropmark site (NHER 50591). This site forms the northern part of the late Iron Age to Roman settlement at Watlington (NHER 39458) and has been excavated as part of NHER 39457. The site is centred on TF 6344 1088. The relationship between this probable Roman trackway and boundary ditch and the Roman enclosure (to the north) and the fields to the east, the cropmarks of which are all recorded under NHER 50945, is not certain. The trackway appears to head towards the enclosure to the northeast, but no definite link between the two components can be demonstrated by the aerial photographs. In fact the possible entrance to the enclosure, which faces west, would appear to completely ignore the potential trackway route coming in from to the southwest.

This feature consists of a sinuous trackway and/or boundary ditch that runs from TF 6351 1097 to TF 6343 1074. The slight differences between the rectified position of the cropmark mapping and the excavation plan locations meant that it was sometimes hard to tell which the excavated features lined up with those visible on the aerial photographs. However it would appear that some sections of the ditches were encountered within evaluation trenches placed across Police House Field in 2003. Trenches 41 and 48 appeared to cut across parts of this feature and Roman pottery dating to 1st to 4th centuries AD was recovered from some sections (S3). Further excavations on the site, the full details and phasing sequences of which are as yet unavailable, are likely to have revealed additional evidence for this boundary or trackway. The excavation plans to date suggest that a number of additional Roman ditches were present to either side of this boundary and these were not clearly identifiable on the aerial photographs.
S. Massey (NMP), 05 March 2008.