Monument record MDR2590 - Undated cropmark features, Parsons Hills, Repton

Cropmarks of parts of two enclosures and linear marks are visible on an aerial photograph taken in 1972. (1, 2) Nothing is visible on Ordnance Survey aerial photographs taken in 1967 (3). Although not necessarily anything to do with the cropmarks, Bigsby considered that early medieval Repton lay mainly to the west of the present village, on the higher ground of Parsons Hills. He wrote of the ‘repeated discoveries that have been made of the foundations of buildings occupying an extended space along the summit of the hill’ , some apparently not far from the edge of the old river cliff to the north, others ‘at no great distance from the road that leads from Repton to Newton Solney’, although he was aware that that the ground had been used for stone-digging at various periods. He also referred to ‘the mingled remains of men and horses’ supposedly found during the 18th century in the neighbouring fields. (4) A linear feature interpreted as an Iron Age/Romano-British field boundary and three sides of a rectilinear enclosure interpreted as being Iron Age/Romano-British in date have been identified on an aerial photograph of 1972. (5)