Monument record MBC43723 - Medieval village shrinkage, London End

Probable medieval village shrinkage 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 a field in London End, just to the east of Newton Longville village and centred at SP 85046 31597, the site comprises a subrectangular boundary ditch up to 7 metres wide that encloses an area about 118 metres NW-SE and 66 metres SW-NE. It is surrounded on three sides by ridge and furrow cultivation earthworks, though none could be identified within the enclosure ditch. The ditch is bounded on the interior side by narrow earthwork banks. This ditch matches the boundary of an enclosure that was partly extant on the 1881 1st Edition OS map. The rectilinear ditch also extends to the north, west and east that suggests further enclosures that would have been contiguous, but whose boundaries were no longer extant by 1881. Within the larger subrectangular enclosure, linear banks further subdivide the internal area on the same NW-SE-SW-NE alignment. In the NW corner are three linear ditches aligned SW-NE that may have been ponds or fishponds. Also visible are a number of earthwork undulations and scarps that may be associated with settlement (1-4).