NHER 30624 (Monument record) - Post medieval and undated drainage ditches on Halvergate marshes

8 March 1989. Ordnance Survey air photography.
Apparent mark of double ditched trackway. Continuation from northeast end is masked by sheds on allotments; but no trace on photographs of continuation to southwest beyond dyke, despite clear marks of old drainage ditches in same field. It is not impossible this is in fact a drainage ditch itself, but it appears to cross midway the cropmark of a winding creek, and does appear more like a trackway.
See photocopy in file.
B.Cushion and E.Rose (NLA), 1 June 1994.

January 2006. Norfolk NMP.
NMP mapping has led to the alteration of the central grid reference of the site from TG 5117 0705 to TG 5105 0717.

The trackway described above is most likely to be a drainage ditch, part of an extensive drainage system visible as earthworks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S8). For the most part this system is depicted on the South Town Tithe Map of 1843 (S9), indicating that it was in use in the post medieval period. Its irregular layout, comprising several curvilinear and sinuous drains, is very different in character to the rectilinear drainage scheme that had replaced it by the late 19th century (the scheme depicted on the Ordnance Survey 1st edition 6 inch map (S10) which is still in use today). The boundaries depicted on the Tithe Map do not capture the substantial nature of many of the drains, several of which are made up of multiple banks and ditches, perhaps representing a combination of dykes, ‘soke dykes’, flood banks and levees (see Williamson (S11) p 7 for example). A number of drains not depicted on the Tithe Map have also been mapped by the NMP. Some of these may be natural channels but their accompanying banks suggest that they are at least partially man-made and they may instead have fallen out of use by the mid-19th century. The additional narrow drains could also be modern but they seem to fit the same large-scale drainage pattern and are perhaps subsidiary drains to the larger dykes.

A large number of features of less archaeological significance, which consequently have not been mapped by the NMP, are also visible on the photographs. Principally these consist of relict saltmarsh creeks, visible as curvilinear ditches with little evidence of accompanying banks. The curvilinear and sinuous ditches mapped by the NMP may have originated from such creeks, the adaptation of natural channels being typical of early drainage schemes perhaps dating back to the medieval period (see Williamson (S11) pp 64-5). The curvilinear ditch visible between TG 5085 0701 and TG 5097 0704 may be an unmodified creek but has been mapped as it may have once joined to the embanked ditch approximately 83.5m to its east. A number of the drains which correspond to boundaries on the Tithe Map have also been left unmapped, as they have continued in use (or been recut) in the 20th century and are depicted on modern maps (e.g. the drain visible between TG 5074 0677 and TG 5078 0689). Other drains, principally narrow linear or rectilinear ditches which are probably the ‘foot drains’ described by Williamson ((S11) p 7), have also not been mapped. These appear to be field-scale drains of relatively recent origin, placed to drain their immediate locality and peripheral to the main drainage scheme. The latest photographs of the site, taken in 1989 (S8), indicate that at least some of the earthworks have been levelled.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 20 January 2006.