Monument record 0509500000 - CHASE FARM, WHADDON

'Water cultivation works' 300 yards NNE of Chase Farm (NGR); in 1912 were a series of parallel strips of soil, separated by linked ditches. Ditches once fed by stream to E; were then dry. N part of works were mostly wooded (B1).
'Works not visible, field ploughed', OS Inspector's visit (no date)(B2).
Contours on 1:10000 shows that the ground is sloping down from the SW to the NE. It is difficult to envisage this area as a suitable one for a water meadow on the basis of analogies with Chenies and other water meadows located elsewhere which are sited on floodplains (B3).

The probable remains of a post-medieval bedwork water meadow system is visible on historic aerial photographs and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located in a south sloping field adjacent Broadway Wood about 375 metres NE of Chase Farm and centred at SP 81578 32028, aerial photographs taken in 1946 show a grill-like system of very narrow parallel ditches, channels or ‘floats’ about 0.5 metres wide and up to 50 metres long, aligned SW-NE, that extends for an area about 142 x 63 metres, with longer perpendicular linear ditches regularly spaced extending over a larger area, being about 250 x 150 metres, suggesting the extent of the former water management system may have been greater than that mapped. A possible leat or carrier drain appears to connect to the system at the west end by a curving ditch that leads from/towards Chase Farm. Some of the drains were visible on aerial photographs taken in 1944 and 1946; by 1947 most of the features appear to have been plough-levelled and nothing can be seen of these features by 1954 (4-7).