[1] The area used to be wooded valley with a brook running down from east to west and into the River Orwell.

The 1902 Ordnance Survey map shows an area known as Clapgate, which means a "gate on to a waste or common—which the animals going to the common can push open but which shuts automatically so that they cannot get out.

"[3] There is also a wooded area marked as Alder Carr, a kind of land form also featured on the same map in the nearby Holywells Estate.

The audit describes how up until the 1960s the site consisted of various mature trees set in woodland, alongside shrubland, and wetland features such as wet meadows, fen, streams and ponds.

[7][8] Nevertheless, the area was used by local children from the Gainsborough Estate as a play area, and the existence of the now buried rubbish is still indicated by the presence of tall cast iron methane vents[7] Part of the area has a 2-metre layer of Red Crag, i.e. fossilised seashells coloured red by iron, sitting on top of London Clay.