West of Chiverlins Farm
Aerial photograph, taken 2nd June1982, for the National Monuments Record, showing the crop marks of an Iron Age/Roman enclosure across a farm track. Second photograph, the site of the enclosure, taken 13th April 2023, from the entrance to the track
Aerial photograph 2118, taken in 1982, had the broken lines of crop marks, indicating an Iron Age/ Roman enclosure, visible in the top left portion, with a modern farm track cutting across them. The crop marks to the north of the track were inaccessible, behind a hedge. However there were two positions from which I could photograph most of the site. I had been there the previous year, taking pictures from the farm track and I could also position myself on the footpath below the farm.
Firstly I worked from the footpath. From the aerial photograph I could plot the position of the enclosure – jutting out from between two specific trees. Were those trees still here? Had they grown much since 1982? What else had flourished to fill in the gaps and confuse my calculations? I found the correct trees and lined up the position of the enclosure so it was central to the picture, photographing the field with the track cutting through the enclosure at the top. I went back to the road and walked up the lane to the entrance to the farm track, from here I could photograph the major half of the enclosure without trespassing.
I returned later to collect a stone and an object. I picked up a small stone from the furrowed earth, a typical yellow grainy one, but as with the adjacent field where the round barrow had been, there were no objects, dropped or abandoned.
I wandered along the footpath, looking for something. A red kite was moving around in the air above me, wings spread, tail flattened. It circled the field, disappeared, came back. I could see the underside of its wings, the light shining through its tail feathers. It drifted off, turned and flew purposefully back. On the ground, something caught my attention; a round object, lying on the edge of the ploughed field; light grey-blue, it had the pale look of something seen by moonlight, but it was a tennis ball, weathered of its furry nap, gaping open. A dog’s toy, thrown but not fetched. I put it in my bag, then went back out on to the lane.
Tennis ball, worn and broken, found near the site of the Iron Age/Roman enclosure
Acknowledgements
Aerial photograph © Crown Copyright. Historic England Archive, published with their kind permission
References
Heritage Gateway: Iron Age/Roman rectilinear enclosures are visible as crop marks on air photographs. Some of the enclosures show evidence of having been recut. This subdivided enclosure (c 110 x 60m) is crossed by a farm track. It lacks evidence for associated fields, but may be related to the enclosure 250m to the north, about 45m across
HER number: MWI2274