The fields are on steeply sloping ground on Boulder Clay overlying Gault Clay and the slope includes a landslip.
The site is a rare survival of an area of medieval landscape with extensive ridge & furrow, a moated enclosure (possibly originally containing a manor house), and the later close boundaries.
Current management consists of cattle and horse grazing, extensive scrub clearance has been carried out, and a pond has been restored. The gappy nature of the hedges allows both stock and people to move easily from field to field, and numerous informal paths cross the site.
The site has been classified as a County Wildlife Site. Ridge and Furrow covers a large proportion of the site, including some of the steep slopes and low-lying wet ground. It is likely that it dates from the period of population pressure during the Middle Ages, in the 13th and early 14th centuries, when even the most difficult land was turned over to arable.
Boundaries corresponding roughly to those shown on the earliest maps can still be traced as earthworks and lines of former hedges.
Just on the northern boundary, within the public access area but outside the PC ownership, is the remains of a moat which could have been a magnate’s enclosure. This would have marked the headquarters of an early lord of the manor.