This two-year, Heritage Lottery Funded community project was run by the Archaeology Service of Shropshire Council in 2007-9. Community volunteers were given opportunities to take part in a range of archaeological and historical activities including surveying, field walking, excavation, historical research and interpretation. The aim was to explore major questions about the settlement and land use of the parish over the last 3000 years.
The remains of an Iron Age farmstead are known from aerial photography to lie in a field to the east of Acton Scott Historic Working Farm, and other enclosures are known from crop marks to exist west of the village, but little else is known of pre-Roman settlement and cultivation.
In 1817, a Roman villa was discovered during road works. This was later excavated by Mrs Frances Stackhouse-Acton in 1844. An aisled barn-type building was identified, complete with mosaic floor and a fragment of wall painting depicting a peacock’s head. The uncovered heated rooms are thought to have been a bath house. But it was not known whether the excavated building represented just part of a larger complex. Even the exact location of the 19th century discoveries was uncertain. The project aimed to answer these questions with geophysical survey and trial excavation.
Acton Scott is mentioned in the Domesday Book, but the exact whereabouts of the late Saxon/medieval nucleated settlement is unknown, although it was probably in the vicinity of St. Margaret’s Church. Earthworks which could represent building platforms for the original nucleated village offered scope for surveying or geophysical survey. The extent of the parish’s medieval ridge and furrow ploughing also needed to be mapped.
There is a chain of fishponds between the village and Hatton, known from the 18th Century. These may, however, have much earlier origins, and be related to Acton Scott’s mill documented in 1278. Nearby Alcaston also had a water mill, but its site is unknown.
Further areas considered for investigation included tracing the manner by which the parish boundary was marked over time, and the vestiges of improvements made to the Acton Estate in the early 19th Century. A tree and hedgerow survey proved worthwhile in this respect.