Placed because GeoArt - another cache that builds a heart shape around Epping. I had planned something here as part of a wander around these fields but had to wait for another missing cache to be archived and then a new cache to move. This is the point where the tracks from various points meet and at the moment it's very muddy.
The main track, a bridleway, so a right of way for bicycles, horses and pedestrians only, is named Bolt Cellar Lane and is the northern border of Swaines Green Local Nature Reserve. It runs between Lindsey Street and Bury Lane at Fortey Green. Why the name is unclear. From the evidence of field boundaries and other ancient tracks it is very old, part of a landscape full of evidence of prehistoric and Roman settlement; it possibly led to Ambresbury Banks in the south west (field boundary evidence). Until the 1960s, there were hedges on both sides of the track and and at some point it was surfaced, from a sample trench dug by West Essex Archaeology Group in 2005, which found a buried compacted gravel surface containing a worked flint. The countryside had many more rights of way across it when used by foot and ponies, but only a few were made up into roads with tarmac. The flint cannot date the track, but provides further evidence of local neolithic settlement of the area. The remaining hedgerow has been dated as 800 years old, from Saxon times, and the larger oaks in the hedgerow appeared to have be planted around 150-200 years ago - possible evidence of cropping. The track features on the 1777 Chapman Andre map of Essex and a 1634 estate map of Epping Bury. In addition, the oldest barn at Shaftesbury Farm, the farmhouse at the northern end, where the current farmhouse was built in 1896 replacing a wood framed house, contains a joint that dates back to the 13th century (although that is inconclusive as it could have been reused).
The other footpaths lead back into Epping, either through the fields or Swaines Green, and the footpath to Epping Bury following the stream (a tributary of Cobbins Brook) emerges near the remaining home farm of that estate. The only legal paths from there require far too much road walking on sadly busy roads.
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