Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

An extensive area of cropmarks is visible lying in fields between the Sandwich Bay Estate and the North Stream on aerial photographs taken in 1996 and 2001. The cropmarks form complex overlapping patterns and visible over an area measuring c.800m (NW-SE) by c.250m (NE-SW). They include interlinked subrectangular enclosures, curvilinear trackways, smaller subcircular and subrectangular enclosures and possible field boundaries. At least two phases of enclosure system may be represented since some of the subrectangular ditched enclosures appear to be crossed by the curvilinear trackways. The cropmarks are similar in morphology to enclosure systems of later prehistoric and/or Romano-British date. It is possible that settlement activity may be indicated within the systems by the presence of smaller enclosures.

Monument Types

• ENCLOSURE (Prehistoric or Roman - 500000 BC? to 409 AD?)
• TRACKWAY (Prehistoric or Roman - 500000 BC? to 409 AD?)

Full description

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An extensive area of cropmarks is visible lying in fields between the Sandwich Bay Estate and the North Stream on oblique aerial photographs taken in 1996 and 2001 [1-3].

The cropmarks form complex overlapping patterns and their interpretation is further hampered by localised areas of "reversal" within the cropmarks (whereby ditched features produce marks usually produced by banks and vice versa). The features are intermittently visible over an area measuring c.800m (NW-SE) by c.250m (NE-SW) and include large interlinked subrectangular ditched enclosures, curvilinear trackways, smaller (c.21m across maximum) subcircular and subrectangular enclosures and possible field boundaries. It is likely that at least two phases of enclosure system are represented since some of the subrectangular ditched enclosures appear to be crossed by the curvilinear trackways.

Although undated, the cropmarks are similar in morphology to enclosure systems of later prehistoric and/or Romano-British date. It is possible that settlement activity may be indicated within the systems by the presence of smaller enclosures.

A transcription of the features recorded from aerial photography exists within a GIS layer held by this HER [4].

<4> Wessex Archaeology, 2009-10, South-East Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey - Aerial Photographic Transcriptions (Digital archive). SWX15705.

<4> Wessex Archaeology, 2011, South East Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey - (SE RCZAS) Phase 1: National Mapping Programme Report (Unpublished document). SKE25955.

<4> Cornwall Council Historic Environment Projects and Gloucestershire County Council, 2011, South East Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey National Mapping Programme Components 1&2: Results of NMP Mapping (Unpublished document). SKE25954.

Sources and further reading