Monument record MBC44043 - Road and bridge between Mountmill Farm, Wicken and Mill Farm, Beachampton

A road probable medieval/post medieval date is visible on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data as levelled earthworks and earthworks and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located between Mountmill Farm, Wicken, and Mill Farm, Beachampton, and centred at SP 76953 37802. This road is shown on the 1814 map of Stony Stratford and crosses the canal over a swing bridge, shown on the Epoch 1 map; it may have been made obsolete by the construction of the latter hence it not being shown on later maps until it has crossed the first of the two river channels at Mill Farm. There is also a bridge shown on the 1814 map labelled Broken Bridge, it is sited between the two channels of the River Ouse where earthworks are visible on aerial photographs and lidar visualisations. This road is not shown on the Epoch 1 map, other than the area of the Broken Bridge, which shows only as a short length of road between river channels and a trackway continuing north towards Mill Farm. The levelled earthwork across the field from Mountmill Farm crosses two earthworks of former plough headlands/field boundaries. These boundaries appear to be on the 1814 map, but not all remain on the Epoch 1 map, and are also crossed by this road. The course of the road can be seen as a gap between two areas of ridge and furrow earthworks, present on Lidar visualisations, and continuing between the two river channels where the land use is pasture. The 1814 map also shows ‘Broken Bridge’ at this location, where there are very clear earthworks on the lidar visualisations and where the course of the road appears on the Epoch 1 map and is continued as a track/footpath on the east of the river south of Mill Farm. Whether there was a bridge here is not clear from the data available to this project; it could have been a causeway between fords across the river channels that have since been replaced by a bridge over the southern channel while the northern channel is wider, as shown of the Epoch 1 map where a ford is shown. A 1771 map of the estate of the Right Honourable Earl of Salisbury of Beachampton shows the road between the river channels as the road to Buckingham and the fields either side are Upper and Lower Bridge Mead.
North of Mountmill Farm the road is a continuation of a road from Wicken, which is shown on the 1814 map and Epoch 1 mapping as a track and fits in to the pattern of ridge and furrow earthworks remaining up until the 1940s. Unlike other old roads there is no public right of way along this route.
The road and the bridge are not shown on a plan of the proposed canal route from 1793, which looks to be a canalisation of the river rather than construction of a new channel which is what was ultimately what was constructed (Canal history website). (1-10)