Untitled - Council for British Archaeology

67route across the Chil Brook stream connecting the line of Mill Street, LombardStreet, Abbey Street and the road to Stanton. This road was divertedto the W when land belonging to 'Radulfus filius Walteri' was acquired bythe Abbey (Eynsham Cartulary p.165). The plan is based on a study of thepresent earthworks - already partly destroyed by tipping, the splendid airphotograph taken in May 1961 (Fairey Air Surveys 4031) and the 25" to 1 mile0.S.Survey work on other medieval earthworks of Oxfordshire continues. JohnSteane and James Bond, helped by members of an Oxford University Departmentfor External Studies class at Bicester, carried out a survey of the desertedmedieval village of Wretchwick(PRN 3257), where the enclosure of 200 acresand destruction of 5 houses in 1489 by Bicester Priory is reported in the1517 Depopulation Inquiry. This record probably represents the final stagein the extinction of a community which in 1279 had comprised the holdingsof 25 villeins and 7 cottages. The site occupies two fields to the SW andone field to the NE of the present Middle Wretchwick Farm. The area to theNE is on slightly higher ground, and is perhaps the earlier part of thesettlement. A central hollow-way divides a somewhat irregular series ofcrofts and building platforms. The earthworks to the SW are more regularand perhaps represent a later, planned extension to the original settlement.There is clear evidence of much post-medieval alteration to the earthworks,including the excavation of deep drainage ditches apparently along the lineof alternate croft boundaries, ditches around the existing fields, andvarious irregular hollows and mounds interpreted as claypits and dumps.Allowing for the part of the site obliterated by the existing farmyard andbuildings, over 30 separate crofts can tentatively be identified on theground, which corresponds well with the documentary evidence. Thanks aredue to the farmer, Mr. Keene, who willingly allowed access onto hisfield.The deserted village of Whitehill (PRN 1106) was surveyed by James Bondand Barry Mackay (Fig. 19). The depopulation of this site is less well documented;but several houses and-Open fields still survived in 1605. Ahollow-way follows the contours of the steep western side of the Cherwellvalley. Along its eastern side 6 building platforms, some of which appearto be long-houses at right-angles to the street, and croft boundaries, occupythe sloping ground down to a boundary ditch parallel with the river.At Sugarswell in Shenington (PRN 983), where there is a reference tohouses being burned down in 1318, field investigation by David Hall and Pauland Sarah Gosling revealed the extensive earthworks of a deserted villagesite, together with a previouslyunknown double-islanded moat (PRN 10,782).A moated site at Standlake (PRN 4127) was surveyed by James Bond andLouise Armstrong with the help of a group of teachers on an In-ServiceTraining Course on Archaeology for Schools, arranged by the Department'sEducation Section (Fig.20).Following a suggestion to clean out, deepen and establish a fishery atthe Oxfordshire County Council's property at Holton Park Moat (PRN 1771), asurvey was made of the archaeological potential of the moat. Its most likelyconstruction date was in the late C13th: a reference exists to the manorhouse and dovecote in 1317. By 1665 a large house with 18 hearths stood onthe island, and this had become ruinous by 1801, when a drawing in theBodleian Library shows it as a rambling, L-shaped building with three storeysand a penthouse, apparently of C15th to C17th date. This house was pulleddown in 1805, but the stone dovecote and C18th stables still survive. Thestone-revetted moat is 65 m. from the NE to NW corners and 106 m. from NEto SE. It is partly cut out of the oolitic limestone on the higher western