Undated circular mound, Pepper Mill Hill, east of Middleton (EHER 9388)

Several possibilities for the site have been documented, including a motte and bailey, a barrow, or a windmill mound.

Original HER entry merged with NRHE data import: Motte and bailey on Auberins Estate - could be round barrow. It is near the supposed half hundred of Thundersham (now lost). <1> July 1976. Field survey. A circular earthen mound known locally as Pepper Mill Hill (name confirmed from Tithe map). It stands on level wooded ground on the edge of the Auberies estate by the side of the main Sudbury to Halstead road and close to the Essex/Suffolk boundary. It measures about 30.0m. in overall diameter by 3.2m. high with a ditch 1.0m. deep on the north side. The mound has been mutilated on the west side and a rectangular depression possibly later, has been dug on the east side. There are no traces of a ramp or causeway and there is no ditch on the south side. The mound stands in a non-defensive position, and no tradition of a motte or earlier barrow is known by the estate office. It may, therefore, be Medieval, but it is possibly an early mill mound as suggested by its name. Its exact purpose is uncertain. Re-surveyed at 1:2500. <2> - <4> 1983. Survey. A moated mound, 50m in diameter, situated in woodland, adjacent to the Halstead-Sudbury road. A wet ditch survives around two-thirds of its circuit. It is tentatively suggested as a small motte, and faint traces of a further ditch to the north may represent a small bailey. <5>