The site of this large secondary school (first depicted on the 1977 OS 1:10000 map), prior to the clearance of its field boundaries and levelling, was previously characterised by narrow strip fields. The 1851 OS shows a semi regular pattern of similar fields surrounding the nucleated settlement of Woodhouse on all sides. These fields are likely to have been created by the piecemeal enclosure of adjacent blocks of strips from an earlier open field system. The present polygon contains only fragmentary legibility of earlier landscapes in the shape of the disused track bed and embankment to the south, which was created to carry a mineral railway to Birley Collieries to the south west (closed before 1935), and an overgrown field boundary that now provides the western boundary to the present site.