Post-medieval field system at land at Moors Fields, Station Road, Flitch Green, Little Dunmow (EHER 81108)

The post-medieval field system was discovered during the evaluation.

September to October 2023. Trial trenching. Many of the features relate to the late post-medieval agricultural field system of Moors Field. Possibly the earliest field boundaries were located in the north-east of the site in Trenches 24 and 38. The ditches here correspond to two geophysical anomalies that hint at a subcircular enclosure. The features do not appear on the 1839 Tithe Map and may be a stock enclosure or related to the building shown on the north-east boundary of the site. Most of the other ditches relate to known former field boundaries shown on the Tithe Map; their absence from the 1777 Chapman & Andre map and the 1799 OSD map suggests they were excavated post-1799. Very modern objects were recovered from these features. Historic OS maps show that the majority were backfilled by the 1923 edition except for the ditch running through Trenches 19, 50 and 64, which was present until the 1968 edition. The large feature recorded in Trench 40 likely represents a west-north-west to east-south-east trackway shown on the Tithe Map; it appeared to have some gravel metalling and likely would have originally had significant ditched boundaries on either side. The trackway can be seen on OS maps up until 1968, when the ditches appear to be backfilled and it is marked as a footpath. The ditch running between Trenches 59 and 64 is not shown on the Tithe Map and was not detected by the geophysical survey, but it did contain post-medieval material. A small number of features did not contain any dating evidence, but are likely related to the Roman or post-medieval land use on site. A ditch shown on the geophysics survey but not the tithe map and could be an unrecorded element of the post-medieval field system. The small ditch or gully in Trench 26 is close to the Roman and medieval features noted in Trench 25 and may be related but this was not clear. The posthole recorded in Trench 71 did not contain any dating evidence but was seen close to Roman features. <1>