NHER 38656 (Monument record) - Earthwork of unknown date

A small oval mound, which is partially surrounded by a ditch and of unknown date and function, is visible as a slight earthwork on aerial photographs. While a number of Bronze Age round barrows and other prehistoric monuments are known from the area, the mound lies on the floodplain of Hagon Beck, a location which is generally atypical of prehistoric funerary mounds. Similarly, it is an unlikely location for a windmill mound. The earthworks are rather insubstantial and the site may not be of archaeological origin or significance. The mound lies adjacent to a former drainage channel and, if a genuine feature rather than a product of different vegetation growth, may have also been somehow connected with drainage and with the agricultural management and use of the floodplain. It might even be associated with the 'Smithy' marked in this approximate location on the 1st edition of the Ordnance Survey 6" map (probably the building 40m to the south-east of the site on the same map) or with the 19th-century industrial building slightly further to the south (NHER 17125). Later aerial photographs and modern Ordnance Survey maps indicate that the area has now been built over.