Monument record 0420809000 - Deer Park Boundary, Stowe Designed Landscape

The English Heritage Survey of Stowe undertaken in 2001 notes that the northern boundary of the Deer Park is marked by a park pale earthwork. The best preserved stretch lies to the west of Dadford Close where the ditch is 3m wide and up to 2m deep. The ditch gets shallower in the north and has a small bank on the northern side. The boundary runs as far a Haymanger Pond and then begins north of the site of the kennels at SP67093898 and continues ot the southern end of the Roothouse River at SP67573911. Here the park pale takes the form of a slight ditch 2m wide and 0,3m deep with an intermittant bank on the south side. The survey also notes that it cuts through broad ridge and furrow west of Dadford Close (1)

A sinuous post-medieval deer park boundary ditch 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 in fields east and north of Dadford village and centred at SP 66992 38456, The sinuous 7 metres wide ditch extends from just north of Vancouver Lodge north for about 175 metres, turning north-west for a further 270 metres, terminating W of North Hill. It is depicted on the 1814 Ordnance Surveyors Drawing as a parkland boundary, but only as a field boundary on the 1881 1st Edition OS map. It may be that part of the course of the deer park boundary just east of the village was formally part of a medieval hollow way that wound through a series of earthwork platforms and terraces that may represent medieval village shrinkage (3-6).