NHER 22943 (Monument record) - Possible site of Honing Broad/Crostwight water

1986.
The estate map of Crostwight in Honing Hall Estate Office shows the lands of manor belonging to Robert Walpole (and therefore dating to between 1720 and early 19th cent) and shows Alder Carr at Crostwight as a lake, Crostwight Water, with arms (a decoy?) and East Ruston and Honing Commons as occupied by a much larger lake, Honing Broad, with a wide channel extending down Mown Fen to where the canal arm now is.
(S1) shows only a small remnant of Honing Broad in the centre of the area.
Not included by (S2).
E. Rose (NAU), 1 October 1986.

Boundary of area as marked on NHER is partly arbitrary because of difficulty in reconciling maps.

(S3) gives diagram of earthworks of pattern of peat cuttings marked by baulks at TG 343 283 within this area. This presumably indicates these lakes are indeed turbaries.
E. Rose (NLA), 25 April 2000.

East Ruston 'Common', in spite of its name is not technically a common at all, but a large poors' allotment. It calls for comment for two reasons. Firstly, because its management was described in some detail in (S4). Secondly, a severe fire in the early 1990s ignited the more recent, less combustible peat that had filled old workings; these were, as a result, clearly exposed and remain visible. They consist of a series of parallel doles, about 10m wide separated by baulks of uncut peat (centred at about TG 3437 2830).
D. Gurney (NLA), 27 May 2003.

January 2007. Norfolk NMP.
Former doles, presumably from peat cutting, are visible across a large proportion of the former Broads described above, as earthworks and vegetation marks on aerial photographs (S5)-(S10). These would have been shallow workings used to extract surface peat deposits in the medieval or post medieval period, rather than the deep cuttings that became the Broads. Their extent has been mapped by the NMP, although this is not entirely certain as some of the features could relate to drainage rather than peat cutting. What proportion of the doles still survive as earthworks is unclear.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 5 January 2007.