A523 Poynton Relief Road, Cheshire East and Greater Manchester, Photographic and Analytical Earthwork Survey Report

In March 2020 Oxford Archaeology (OA) North was commissioned by Graham Construction to undertake an archaeological investigation of the site of the proposed Poynton Relief Road. The work was undertaken as a condition of planning permission (SMBC Condition 41, planning ref: DC/063174 and CEC Condition 39 planning ref: 16/4436M) acting on the advice of GMAAS and CAPAS respectively which determined that no development should take place until the applicant or their agents or their successors in title had secured the implementation of a programme of archaeological works.
The following report records the fieldwork results from stages 2A (photographic survey) and 2C (analytical earthwork survey) of these archaeological works, which included undertaking a photographic survey of several sites along the line of the proposed route and the completion of Level 3 landscape surveys at two sites where earthworks survived in situ. The works were completed over the course of three days between 15th and 17th of September 2020.
The Historic England level 1 photographic survey recorded a diverse range of structures spanning a period of 4500 years, including prehistoric funerary monuments, high status medieval sites, post-medieval farmsteads and several
sites associated with the improvements in transport infrastructure from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth.
Of the two assets (21 and 27) subject to landscape survey, Asset 27 was identified as an administrative boundary dividing the Townships of Woodford, Adlington and Poynton with Worth that may perhaps have been in use since
the late Saxon period. It is plausible its ditch was also associated with the management of the putative moat that appears to define the original extents of the medieval phase of Lostock Hall. The second, Asset 21, was identified as
a field boundary, probably belonging to an earlier medieval pattern of field enclosure that can still be identified from the wider area. The feature survived the reorganisation of the fields during the creation of Hope Green Farm in the
seventeenth century but fell out of use in the early twentieth century, perhaps due to an intensification of arable cultivation and modern farming techniques.