Monument record 0041800000 - OLD LEIGHTON FARM, STEWKLEY

STEWKLEY GRANGE, SITE OF MANOR ONCE HELD BY WOBURN ABBEY. REMAINS IN C18, OF SEVERAL FISHPONDS & HOUSE, MOATED ROUND (B3).
IN 1862 THERE WERE TRACES OF MOAT & 2 LARGE FISHPONDS IN FIELD CALLED THE GROVE (B1).
SURVEY AT1:2500, FILED (B4).
NGR TO SITE CENTRE (B5) . SEE ALSO CASS 2468 & 4326.
After the Dissolution the manor was granted to Charles Duke of Suffolk in 1538, with licence to alienate to Edmund Peckham in fee simple (B2).
Sherd of Roman greyware pottery found in animal burrow from the ditch wall, outside face, about 1/3 of way down face (B7).

Stewkley Grange, a medieval moated site, fishponds and deserted settlement is visible on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data as earthworks and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located and depicted in a field called The Wilderness on the 1813 Ordnance Surveyor Drawing opposite Old Leighton Farm and centred at SP 83830 27333 covering an area about 50,000 square metres, the site’s main features comprise a trapezoidal homestead moat ditch between about 9.7 to 13.5 metres wide encloses a platform about 41 metres NW-SE and 27.5 metres SW-NE upon which formerly stood the house. By the early 20th century it had been held by the Palmer family for 100 years. In the middle of the 18th century the house still stood, though in a ruinous condition with holes in the roof and was the property of William Wigge who lived in squalid conditions in one of the house’s dilapidated rooms. There was an adjacent wheat-house and barns, which were also in poor repair at that time. The house (and presumably other outbuildings) was demolished about 1760. The NE facing side of the moat ditch appears to lack a bank that would contain water within a moat that open out into a large 51 x 24 metres rectangular fishpond, suggesting that fishpond post-dates the moat’s construction. Another subcircular pond about 37 metres at its widest adjoins and links to the rectangular fishpond on its NW side. To the SE, a system of interconnected ditches creates a series of irregularly shaped platforms, some partly bound by earthwork banks, over a large area and leads to a third and a linked fourth subrectangular pond. Adjacent these ponds and contained within the platforms are areas of undulation and amorphous banks, hollows, scarps and mounds. To the SE of these are a grid of linear and curvilinear interconnected ditches with no apparent features upon them. Blocks of ridge and furrow cultivation abut the ditch system on the NW, NE and SE facing sides (8-11).