Standard DBA methodology as outlined in the relevant CIfA Standards and Guidance document. The site contains no Scheduled Monuments or listed buildings within its boundary, and it is not within a Conservation Area. The nearest listed buildings are well to the north of the site, in Brinkworth village itself, to the north of the railway line. The study site consisted of undeveloped agricultural enclosures until the post-war period, with the present houses probably of early 1950s date. Ridge and furrow survives immediately to both east and west of the study site, which therefore was itself probably part of a system of subdivided open arable fields in the medieval period. A trawl of the local authority historic environment record returned very few items of immediate significance or implications for the study site, the nearest being a World War Two pill box close by to its south. The present housing was constructed pre-PPG16 and so the site was not investigated prior to its construction. In terms of below ground heritage assets, it is probable that, as already noted, considerable damage has been done within the footprint of the buildings. It is, however, possible that the gardens of the present houses will have been subject to a lower level of disturbance, and may therefore present a rather higher potential for the survival of in situ archaeology. Nonetheless, the nature, extent, and state of preservation of the archaeological resource on and within the study site, is entirely untested and unknown. On the basis of the review which we have carried out for the purposes of this report, it is our opinion that the likely potential for archaeological preservation is, on balance, likely to be low.
Jocelyn Davis (Mon,) studied this question.