More information : SO 642 996 (FCE). Earthwork remains of the post-dissolution formal layout of a former grange of Much Wenlock Priory. Cartographic evidence (1a) suggests that a substantial post-dissolution house stood on the site of the Marsh around 1620, indeed a surviving L-shaped building within the present farm complex appears to be sixteenth century in origin. The earthworks around the farm are poorly preserved having been subjected to considerable disturbance, but there is an under-lying regularity that represents the layout of the grounds of this former house. This layout appears to be aligned perpendicular to a pre-existing feature - a well-defined scarp (probably a lynchet) that crosses the surveyed site on an E-W orientation marking the boundary between low-lying, marshy ground to the N from plough-land to the S.
The former approach road is preserved in the line of a scarp that runs S of the modern road for a distance of around 140m, parallel to the modern farm access road. East of the present farmhouse are earthworks representing a former terrace, 7m in width, which is overlain by the farmhouse garden wall. Immediately N of the terrace is an amorphous pond, the former regularity of which is suggested by scarps to the E and S of the pond. This pond now drains into a smaller pond to the NW (which may be a later addition to the site), and from there into further ponds lying N of the modern road (see SO 69 NW 26). SE of the farmhouse are two well-preserved furlongs of ridge-and-furrow, orientated roughly NW-SE and defined to the N by a ditch on the same alignment as the lynchet described above; these furlongs probably represent post-medieval cultivation.
The above description is summarised from a detailed level 3 RCHME 1:1000 scale survey conducted in November 1987. The results of the survey are held in the NMR archive. (1-1a) |