Monument record 0154401000 - BAPSEY FIELD, TAPLOW

Plan Form - LINEAR
LINEAR, DOUBLE LYNCHET-LIKE EARTHWORKS RUNNING W FROM BAPSEY POND (DESC) (B2,B4-7).
BRITISH CAMP-REMAINS OF (B1).
EARTHWORKS EXIST ONLY AS BREAK OF SLOPE. THIS CORRESPONDS WITH DIVISION OF FIELD SHOWN ON INCLOSURE MAP. NO POTTERY FOUND (B4).
RESISTIVITY & EARTHWORK SURVEY ANOMALOUS: LATE LANDSCAPING? (B6).
Further geophysical survey carried out in Easter and October 1996 was inconclusive. A number of amomalies were identified and interpreted as a pair of roughly parallel E-W aligned ditches, modern features including water pipes associated with a cattle trough and a number of anomalies which could not be identified (B8).
Plots of geophysical survey carried out by Marlow Archaeological Society in 2005 in an attempt to provide further evidence related to the earthworks (B9).
The geophysical survey in this area did not clearly reveal the presence of any features (B10).




NRHE description below - No sources recorded
(SU 90588204) British Camp (NR) (Remains of). (*)

In the meadow near Taplow Court called 'Bapsey' are entrenchments, considered by Rutland to be a British Camp. In digging out some portions of the old church foundations in 1856 it was noticed that each end of the church was built across an entrenchment, probably the E ditch of the camp, according to Rutland, which ran in a line to the pond at the SE angle of the 'camp'. About 1895, when digging a trench for drainpipes across the meadow, a quantity of 'British' and Roman pot sherds were found in the entrenchment south running west.

The site was deleted by OGS Crawford in 1938. (*)

The extant remains of the earthwork are rudimentary and consist of what now amounts to a double lynchet-like bank running from Bapsey pond westward to SU 90568202 (A) and a similar one to the N extending from SU 90608205 to SU 90558205 (B) where each is terminated by a ditch with double banks running transversely from SU 90548213 southward to SU 90578198.N and S of these points it disappears into woodland.
F M Underhill was unaware of this latter aspect and assumed it to be merely a double lynchet. (*)

R B sherds found at Taplow by Miles in 1959, (at SU 9064 8213). (*)

The more southerly "lynchet-like bank (A) is reduced to a single amorphous scarp, c 0.2m high and c 73.0m long, merging into a natural ground slope. There is no trace of bank B. The situation, on a S facing slope (c 1 in 15) with steep slopes to the W, is an unlikely one for defense and there is no evidence of a continuation to form an enclosure.

The most likely explanation for the banks is that they are lynchets or old field boundaries.

No further information regarding the finds of RB sherds. (*)