Heritage Treasure Day: The most historic sites for you to visit in Milton Keynes

Today (Wednesday) is national Heritage Treasures Day and an ideal opportunity for people to explore the historic monuments in Milton Keynes.

The city boasts at least seven Scheduled Ancient Monuments and three sites of historic remains that are of national interest.

The oldest two are the fascinating remains of a Roman Villa and the remains of shrunken medieval village.

The Roman Villa site is at Bancroft, where archaeological digs have revealed almost continuous occupation from 800 BC. Settlers built a farmstead in the hilltop at Blue Bridge (the estate on the other side of H2 Miller’s Way).

The farmstead was centred on one of the largest round houses of this period discovered in the UK, measuring nearly 20 metres in diameter, but during the Middle Iron Age the large round house was replaced by 15 smaller ones.

The shrunken medieval village is a Scheduled Ancient Monument that can be seen on parkland at Woughton on the Green . It shows a linear spread with remains of small garden crofts, house platforms and back alleys.

Further up the Ouzel Valley at Woolstone, you can see evidence of a moated site and medieval fishponds farming system beside the river. These date from the 14th century.

More historic remains can been seen in Stanton Low Park, where the ruins of the Grade II listed St Peter’s Church still stand, along with remnants of a walled graveyard.

With parts dating back to the 12th century, St Peters Church served the parishioners of Stantonbury Village and was still in service until the end of the 19th/early 20th century.

A couple of miles away in Great Linford, you will find two historic Victorian brick kilns, along with the base of a third. Built in the late 1800s by George Osborn Price, a coal and lime merchant who lived in Newport Pagnell, they used the clay that much of MK was built on to make bricks for houses.

The kilns were situated right next to the canal to allow the bricks to be easily transported.

Scheduled Ancient monuments elsewhere in the city include a moated site at Loughton with medieval earthworks, complete with a dry fishpond, ridge and furrow field system.

In Tattenhoe there is another medieval fishpond in Water Spinney. Located along the Tattenhoe Valley, it was created to serve the deserted medieval village of Tattenhoe to the north-west of the Water Spinney.

Meanwhile, in the Shenleys, people can see moated sites and medieval earthworks. The ‘Shenely Toot’ at Shenley Church End includes the remains of a motte and bailey castle and remnants of an associated manorial complex. Evidence from the site, now used as grazing land, suggests it was in continuous use from 12th to the 18th centuries.

Other green spaces in Shenley Church End and Shenley Brook End have moated areas listed as scheduled ancient monuments.

In Simpson there are earthworks showing the buried remains of a medieval manor house.

Finally there is the Old Wolverton castle and medieval village. These earthworks and buried remains lie around the green areas of Manor Farm Court and Holy Trinity Church in the Ouse Valley.

All these treasures are carefully maintained by The Parks Trust.