Strata Heritage's independent LiDAR assessment of a proposed 20-home development at Hodnet identified previously unrecorded earthworks, informing a Heritage and Archaeology Statement submitted to Shropshire Council.

The application site sits on the northern approach to Hodnet, within sight of a Scheduled motte and bailey castle, a Grade I listed church, and a cluster of 17th-century timber-framed cottages. The site itself had never been archaeologically investigated.

Strata Heritage processed 2023 DEFRA 1m LiDAR data for the site and its surroundings using multi-scale topographic position analysis, a technique suited to revealing subtle earthworks invisible in conventional aerial imagery or on the ground. The results identified two features with no equivalent in the historic map record: a sub-rectangular enclosure defined by a bank and ditch, and a rectilinear depression running along the proposed development's eastern boundary. Neither appeared anywhere in the applicant's heritage assessment.

Cross-referencing the LiDAR results against historic mapping, the Scheduled Monument record, and documentary sources built a fuller picture of the site's place within Hodnet's medieval landscape, including its relationship to the castle's recorded but incompletely mapped deer park boundary.