Marks Warren Quarry, Whalebone Lane North, Romford, Essex Part I: Assessment and Updated Project Design

Archaeological remains were first detected on the 32 hectares of the Marks Warren Farm site, Romford, in the 1970s by the Passmore Edwards Museum, who identified
a significant cropmark landscape to the north and east of the farm from aerial photographs taken during the infamous summer drought of 1976. These revealed that Marks Warren Farm was one of the major surviving archaeological sites in
north-east London, with prehistoric evidence (Mesolithic, Neolithic and early Bronze Age features), an Iron Age ditched enclosure, a Roman rectangular enclosure, the
flint foundations of Roman buildings and a contemporary trackway leading eastwards. A late Iron Age/early Roman field system was also found. Amongst these archaeological remains, the Passmore Edwards Museum identified two areas of particular interest (interpreted as a possible late Bronze Age/early Iron Age hillfort and a possible Romano-British religious complex) and recommended that these areas should become Scheduled Monuments (SM).
Between 1988 and 2010 various archaeological contractors carried out a rolling Watching Brief (or Monitor and Record) operation in advance of the gravel extraction works which began at Marks Warren Farm outside the proposed scheduled areas. The results of this work supported the initial findings of the Passmore Edwards Museum and added further new information which together comprised: a prehistoric landscape with a barrow, field system, pits and a circular ?hillfort; Romano-British ditches associated with the large ?religious complex or rectangular enclosure; an early Saxon cremation cemetery and a sunken-featured building; a medieval field system, pits and a windmill; a post-medieval field system, pits and another windmill; and finally modern World War II (WWII) glider traps and gun emplacement features.
Taken as a whole, this project has revealed a landscape that has been in almost continual use and development from the Neolithic until the modern day. Its relative height to the surrounding topography has meant that it has been an ideal location to place monuments that were intended to be visible in the Bronze Age to Romano- British periods. Each of these features would no doubt have served as territorial markers and/or major landscape features in ancient society.
In medieval and post-medieval times, moreover, the relative height of the land was used to site numerous windmills: at least eight windmill mounds have now been recorded in the area of Marks Warren Farm, one of which has been excavated.
More recently the higher land was also exploited to place defensive features during WWII, since which time the land has returned to arable use.