NHER 21269 (Monument) - Site of possible medieval trackway east of Martham

29 July 1983. NAU air photography.
Positive cropmarks.
Ring ditch (very faint) and adjacent parallel ditches of trackway. Ditch at right angles to track aligns on ring ditch.
D.A. Edwards (NAU) 11 March 1985.

Numbered principally for parallel ditches.
'Ring ditch is very dubious'.
Right angled ditch seems to be old field boundary as shown on (S1) 6" OS, but change of field shapes makes accurate location difficult.
E. Rose (NAU) 22 April 1985

March 2006. Norfolk NMP.
NMP mapping has led to the alteration of the central grid reference of the site from TG 464 181 to TG 4593 1839.

The trackway (or ‘parallel ditches’) described above is visible as a cropmark on an aerial photograph (S2), between TG 4583 1847 and TG 4606 1831. Its curvilinear shape, which is characteristic of medieval strip fields, its parallel alignment with the lane 70m to the southwest, and the fact that it is ignored by rectilinear field boundaries depicted on Martham Tithe Map (S3), all suggest that it may be a medieval (or at least early post medieval) feature. If this postulated date is correct, the trackway presumably divided and provided access to the pre-Parliamentary Enclosure pattern of fields, which would have once surrounded Martham.

As described above, the ‘right angled ditch’ corresponds with a field boundary depicted on historic Ordnance Survey maps, e.g. (S4), and consequently it has not been mapped by the NMP. Other linear cropmarks visible on the same aerial photograph cannot be distinguished from recent agricultural activity or the underlying geology of the site with enough certainty to warrant mapping them. Similarly, the archaeological origin of the postulated ring ditch, which is barely visible, is extremely doubtful and it too has not been mapped.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 15 March 2006.