Monument record 14950 - Post Medieval Landscape Earthworks, Eccleston Hill

<1> Hanshall, J. H., 1817-1823, The History of the County Palatine of Chester, p.307 (Book). SCH1382.

J. J. Hanshall wrote about Eccleston Hill in 1817/1823: “There is little doubt but that the summit of the Hill was the site of a British or Roman fortification. The line of Watling-street through Eaton Park to Aldford directly crossed it”.

<2> Welsh, T, 2017, Landscape History Survey in Claverton and Eccleston, Chester (Unpublished Report). SCH8706.

In 2017 the earthworks on Eccleston Hill were partially mapped as part of a landscape survey focussing on the old Chester to Poulton road.

<3> Higham N J, 2017, Assessment of Suggested Fort Site, Eccleston Hill (Unpublished Report). SCH8707.

Further consideration of the curvilinear earthworks summises that although interpretation of these features as an early hilltop enclosure is not out of the question, the evidence is easier interpreted in terms of a group of different features which hinge on the well-defined sunken way, carrying the medieval/early modern road up the hill to the crossroads. Prior to the arrival of parkland features, the road ran through a landscape of enclosed fields with ridge and furrow. The road and surrounding fields are depicted on the Tithe Map of Eaton, dating from c. 1830. The old road, running southwards up the sunken way to the crossroads with Rake Lane, seems then to have still been in use, following a rather bowed path between irregular boundaries. Tree planting around the sunken way had by then already begun (starting probably in the eighteenth century), to enhance the view from carriages approaching Eaton Hall. The tree planting involved significant changes to the landscape. In some instances entire existing fields were planted, but most plantations were only parts of fields. The Tithe Apportionment provides only a snapshot of this process of landscape change. Soon after it had been completed, the old sunken way was abandoned, Rake Lane was dropped into a cutting through Eccleston Hill and the Chester Approach to Eaton Hall was constructed. The new carriageway was accompanied by further landscaping, as is evidenced by historic OS mapping. These successive changes involved multiple adjustments to field boundaries. Those separating fields from plantations had to be sufficiently robust to exclude cattle (in particular) from the woods, so were generally banks with hedges and slight ditches. There was no incentive to remove these when the woodland was extended further, leaving various banks and ditches on the woodland land-surface. Added to the changes to the route-ways, the result is a complex patterning of earthworks on Eccleston Hill.