Monument record MBC44897 - Macula and ditches of uncertain date and function, Silverstone Golf Course

Macula and ditches of uncertain date and function is visible on historic aerial photographs and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located on Silverstone Golf Course and centred at SP 65920 40983, a subcircular very dark macula is about 34 metres in diameter at its widest. Possible sections of ditch or enclosure ditch up to 4 metres wide are visible as poorly defined cropmarks to the west, north and south of the macula. Although visible on aerial photograph taken in the 1940s, they were not visible in 1963 or 1973. Aerial photographs taken in 1991 show the beginning to the golf course’s construction, after which time none of the features are visible on any aerial photographs available to the project. Dating and function is uncertain. The fields in which these features were located prior to the golf course were still shown as woodland on the 1814 Ordnance Surveyor Drawing, being part of the former Whittlewood medieval hunting forest. The 1st edition OS map shows that some of these woodlands have been felled by 1881, creating agricultural fields, within which the cropmarks are visible. It is possible that the macula is the remains of a medieval charcoal burning platform, but the suggestion of a curvilinear ditched enclosure may represent more earlier activity dating from the late Iron Age through to the medieval periods (1-9).