NHER 52757 (Monument record) - Remains of post-medieval farm buildings

April 2008-June 2010. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of excavation of new soke dyke as part of the Broadland Flood Alleviation Project (Compartment 11).
The topsoil stripping at this location exposed the remains of post-medieval buildings associated with Marsh Farm (Site 2), which had originally comprised a much more extensive group of structures. This farm is depicted on the Acle tithe map of 1838 (S1) and shown in much more detail on the Ordnance Survey First Edition Six-inch map (S2). The form of the farm is markedly different on the latter, suggesting it had been rebuilt - although the extent of this is impossible to determine due to the schematic nature of its depiction on the tithe map.
The late 19th-century farm comprised a compact group of buildings arranged around a small courtyard, with the remains exposed during this work representing elements of the northernmost, east-to-west aligned range. The western end of this range had comprised a fully enclosed brick-built structure with an internal division but the eastern half was probably an open-sided barn or animal shelter. The southern side of the latter consisted of a brick wall with two openings that had been blocked with brick and flint at a later date. A linear band of compacted clay and chalk to the north was probably the footings for a dwarf wall that had supported structural posts on the open side. Flint nodules to the south of this building probably represented the remnants of the courtyard surface, the eastern side of which was shown to have been partially bounded by a freestanding red brick wall. Spreads of compacted chalk and ceramic building material to the east represented the remains of a north-east to south-west aligned trackway that is also shown on (S2).
It is clear from later Ordnance Survey maps that most of the buildings surrounding the courtyard had been demolished by 1905, when only the southern range and the farmhouse to the south survived. Today only the latter remains intact.
A small number of late post-medieval to modern pottery sherds were recovered at this location. Unstratified material of a similar date was also collected during the excavation of a dyke to the west of this site (see NHER 69624).
See (S3) for further details.
P. Watkins (HES), 1 December 2025.