Monument record 14948 - Medieval Sunken Road, West of Eaton Road

<1> Welsh, T, 2017, Landscape History Survey in Claverton and Eccleston, Chester (Unpublished Report). SCH8706.

A landscape study undertaken in 2017 mapped the course of a former, curving, sunken road, with side ditches and banks, together with surrounding earthworks, to the west of Eaton Road. It is described as running from Chester to Poulton. Other earthworks discussed as part of this study include those on Eccleston Hill which have been flagged as being a potential hillfort (see CHER 14590).

<2> Higham N J, 2017, Assessment of Suggested Fort Site, Eccleston Hill (Unpublished Report). SCH8707.

A further study in 2017 discusses the old (medieval) road and the earthworks on Eccleston Hill. It assesses that the earthworks hinge on the sunken way. 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.