Geograph - photograph every grid square

See NS4783 : Northern side of old enclosure for further comments.

As explained there, the enclosure is bounded on each side by a low ridge, in the form of an earthen bank. However, its eastern side is just part of a much longer ridge, a continuation of the one that is shown in NS4784 : Dry-stone wall. The enclosure simply projects from this ridge, and apparently dates from the same time period.

Note also the dry-stone dyke, which runs parallel to the ridge. Between the point shown in the present photograph, and the one shown at the link in the previous paragraph, a section of the dry-stone wall is offset by a few metres to the west (see the 1:25000 map), for a distance of about 360 metres.

That section of the dry-stone wall overlies the earthen ridge, which must therefore be older. The dry-stone wall is shown on the first-edition OS map (c.1865). The enclosure that is shown in the present photograph, and which is attached to the ridge, must likewise pre-date the dry-stone wall, despite not being included on OS maps before about 1922.

It is likely that the enclosure is, like the ridge to which it is attached, a part of the field system associated with a long-gone farmstead (for whose faint foundations, see the end-note). That farm is sufficiently old as not to be shown on any OS maps; its ruin (consisting only of grass-covered foundations) is not easy to spot today, and, even by the time of the first-edition OS map, it must already have been very indistinct.