Pondhalton enclosure, Pondhalton Farm (EHER 14047)

This area was once enclosed by several ponds (now infilled and built over), leading to the suggestion that it was a ditched or moated enclosure. The exact date and nature of this enclosure are unknown, but archaeological evidence implies that these ditches date from the medieval period and most likely enclosed an area of woodland.

Ponds, possibly part of a moated enclosure. Cartographic evidence from 1839 onwards indicates substantial ponds in the south-east and south-west angles of the crossroads: the former has recently been infilled and built upon, while the latter remains a prominent landscape feature. It is not so much a pond as a length of water-filled roadside ditch. The width, however, which is up to c.7m is moat-like. Further west the ditch is dry and infilled to varying degrees, but is nevertheless a visibly continuous feature for 280m. This appears to represent the complete northern side of an enclosure. The northern part of the west side is defined by another elongated pond, while the remainder is no more than a field boundary. The east side of the enclosure is marked by a narrow, partly sunken lane (Howbridge Hall Road) and the southern side by a field boundary and a further length of water-filled ditch. The enclosure thus defined is a near rectangle measuring approximately 330m x 245m and enclosing around 8 hectares (20 acres). <1> Rodwell suggests that an early date does not seem likely and possibly the earthwork enclosed no more than a tract of medieval woodland. <1> Two parallel linear cropmarks, possibly a trackway (EHER 8462), approach the enclosure from the south-west. <2> 1995. Systematic fieldwalking. The complete absence of Anglo-Saxon pottery and the almost complete absence of medieval pottery found in this area weakens any claim that this is the location of either an Anglo-Saxon or early medieval town (burh). Rodwell's preferred option, that this could be an enclosed medieval or later woodland is very much in keeping with the results of this survey. The fact that the Roman finds recovered during this survey appear to spread across the western boundary of the Pondhalton enclosure imply that this boundary is not of Roman origin, and must be later. See <3> for further details. Trial trenching. Evaluation of the site, prior to possible housing development, by trial trenching, located a ditch which may mark the western boundary of the Pondholton Enclosure. The boundary could not be closely dated but stratigraphically it was later than the Anglo-Saxon deposits it truncated. There is circumstantial evidence provided by another ditch on the same alignment that the boundary was backfilled sometime in the late post-medieval period. <4>