Monument record MBC44896 - An alignment of three possible medieval charcoal burning platforms, Silverstone Golf Club

An alignment of three possible medieval charcoal burning platforms are visible on historic aerial photographs as cropmarks and were mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located on the course of Silverstone Golf Club and centred at SP 65518 40827, three dark slightly subcircular macula cropmarks are aligned NW-SE, spread over 195 metres. The NW macula is about 17 metres in diameter at is widest: centred some 75 metres to the SE, the second macula is about 20.5 metres in diameter at is widest: centred some 100 metres to the SE, the third macula is almost circular and about 20 metres in diameter. Although currently part of the golf course, the 1814 Ordnance Surveyors Drawing shows that the features would have been located within woodland that formed part of the medieval hunting forest of Whittlewood. This area was subsequently felled and cleared for agricultural fields by the publication of the 1st edition OS maps in the early 1880s, The cropmarks are visible on vertical aerial photographs taken in 1947 and also on specialist oblique aerial photographs taken in 1981, from which the features are mapped (1-4).