Monument record MBC45196 - Subrectangular ditched enclosure of uncertain date, Sawpit Wood.

A subrectangular ditched enclosure of uncertain date is visible on remote sensing data as earthworks and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Located in the south of Sawpit Wood and centred at SP 67369 40235, a three-sided staple-shaped ditch about 2.7 metres wide has a west side about 96 metres long S-N, then turns E for 42 metres, before turning 40 metres SSE. The 1814 Ordnance Surveyor drawing shows that the woodland in which these earthworks are located was formerly part of a larger Great Wood, part of Stowe Park’s landscape parkland and the medieval hunting forest of Whittlewood. Much of this had been felled by 1881, creating Sawpit Wood, within which it now remains extant. The date of these earthworks is uncertain and may be prehistoric or Romano-British, a post-medieval parkland feature or possibly the site of an estate forester’s dwelling (1-3).