Historic maps show this area made up of long thin fields which would have been part of the medieval open fields around Darton and Mapplewell. Darton is recorded in the Domesday Book but the earliest record of Mapplewell is from between 1190 to 1210 (Smith 1961, 317). There is fragmentary legibility of the former enclosures as some field boundaries remain. The north west edge of the polygon follows the route of the North Gawber mineral railway which opened between 1855 and 1893.