Landscape record 0634700000 - Open fields, Hulcott

Block(s) of surviving ridge and furrow of Hulcott parish, enclosed 1779. Total acreage (1995): 19% survival - 140 acres. Assessment made for Monuments Protection Programme (MPP) (B1)

An extensive swathe of medieval and/or post medieval ridge and furrow cultivation blocks, part of the former common open field system, is visible on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data as earthworks and was mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located across Hulcott parish and centred at SP 85584 16341, abutting Hulcott village on all sides. Contained within this system are plough headlands and boundary ditches, as well as linear and sinuous sections of earthwork bank, likely being furlong boundaries. These earthwork furlong banks are part of a much more extensive system of land division boundaries that extends eastwards into Bedfordshire and East Cambridgeshire. Whilst many of these features originate in the medieval period with the establishment of the common field cultivation system, some of the boundary banks may have earlier origins. They remain visible chiefly as broad and low earthworks on recent lidar remote sensing data, probably having been spread by post-war ploughing regimes. Whilst some of these linear banks respect the boundaries of the ridge and cultivation blocks, others pass through and apparently under the ridge and furrow, likely indicating former medieval cultivation boundaries that were subsequently readjusted. On aerial photographs taken in 2023 and recent remote sensing data, about 80 percent of the earthworks visible as extant on aerial photographs taken in the 1940s remain extant, with the remainder having been plough levelled (2-14).