Monument record MBC43667 - Possible Bronze Age round barrow, Stewkley

A possible Bronze Age round barrow is visible on historic aerial photographs as earthworks and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located in the centre of a field about 475 metres SW of Old Leighton Farm and centred at SP 83494 27313, a slightly subcircular earthwork mound is about 11 metres in diameter at its widest, around which is a ditch between 2 and 3 metres wide. The 1813 Ordnance Surveyors Drawing shows that this field was (at that time) woodland called ‘Wards Grove’. Ward was the name of the family who bought the adjacent medieval grange about 1760 until it was sold in 1822 to R. Palmer. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Earls of Carnarvon held the oak woodland and before that it was known as Abbot's Wood or Stewkley Wood, referring to the time the manor was held by Woburn Abbey. The oak woods are said to have been felled at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, but that must have been post 1813; the woodland has been completely cleared by the 1881 1st edition OS map. The area is still known as the Grove. Given that the woodland had stood for centuries prior to its destruction in the early 19th century, it seems unlikely that the earthwork features represent the remains of a windmill mound. However, given its close proximity to the manorial grange earthworks (HER MBC1414) about 250 metres to the east, it is possible that the mound is a medieval windmill site. Clearly visible on aerial photographs taken in 1944, recent remote sensing data shows that the mound and ditch has been somewhat plough-levelled but still visible (1-5).