Monument record BRD 260 - Earthworks and vegetation marks of enclosures, boundaries and platforms of potential Roman date

March 2016. 'Brecks from Above' and Breckland National Mapping Programme.
An area of low earthworks and vegetation marks of enclosures, boundaries and platforms of potential Roman date are visible on aerial photographs (S1-S6) and to a lesser extent, the Environment Agency 1m resolution lidar data (S7). Much of the land adjoining the Little Ouse River in this area appears to have evidence relating to Roman settlement and landuse, for example (BRD 007-008) and to the north of the river within Hockwold in Norfolk (NHER 5587). A similar area of earthworks, also interpreted as Roman in date, have been mapped to the immediate west (BRD 257).
It must however be noted that the effects of vegetation and drainage works made the earthworks hard to confidently map and interpret. It must also be noted that the potential earthwork and vegetation mark evidence frequently differed on the available sources, this may be in part to the covered vegetation and levels of saturation of ground. A degree of caution must therefore be applied to the mapping. It is possible that additional earthworks are present, but are either obscured or altered by the later drainage features within alongside the river.
The platforms and small sub-rectangular mounds potentially relate to building platforms and/or the remains of buildings themselves. However, it is not clear whether all the sub-rectangular negative vegetation marks mapped from (S4) relate to archaeological features or not, in particular within the southwestern part of the site.
S. Horlock (Norfolk Historic Environment Service), 19th March 2017.