An Enclosure on Crickley Hill Gloucestershire

C-H-M recently acquired, from a second-hand bookseller, a copy of an abstract of Elsie Clifford's 1964 paper in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, inscribed on the cover "With love & many thanks from Elsie". It would be interesting to know to whom she sent it. The first part of the paper reads:

"An Enclosure on Crickley Hill Gloucestershire By E. M. Clifford, F.S.A.

From TRANSACTIONS OF THE BRISTOL AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, Volume 83, 1964

A SERIES of earthworks on Crickley Hill in the parish of Coberley Gloucestershire at an altitude of about 800 feet O.D. (Nat: Grid : Ref: ST935165) are not marked on the Ordnance Survey maps and no reference to them has hitherto been made. They originally formed part of the Ullenwood Estate. My attention was first drawn to them by the Misses Trafford in 1948 who then lived at Dryhill just below these earthworks and close to the site of the Dryhill Roman Villa, which was excavated in 1849 by W. H. Gomonde, the report on which was privately printed. (1) The Villa was described as a Villa Rustica, in contrast to the courtyard type Villa at nearby Witcombe, which had been excavated by Lysons in 1818. ( 2) Gomonde states that he opened a barrow nearby and that Lysons opened a long barrow, so called by Sir Richd Hoare, presumably the Crippets, but no account of either of these excavations was published. The Crippets, which lies less than half a mile to the north, is one of the largest long barrows in the Severn-Cotswold group. There are other round barrows in the vicinity, presumably of the Bronze Age.

The Early Iron Age camps on Leckhampton and perhaps on Birdlip are comparatively close, while the Crickley Hill camp almost adjoins the site under discussion. The coins from the excavation of the Dryhill Villa showed that there was occupation of the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.; a notable find being a tile, which, it has been suggested, was stamped R(es) P(ublica) G(levensis) (3) and was therefore a product of the colonia of Glevum and might serve as a clue to its territorium. All the objects from the Gomonde excavation, however, are lost. (4)

ln 1951 Mr G. T. Harding also drew my attention to these earthworks and in view of the fact that the ditch was inside the rampart, with nothing to indicate their date and that there was what appeared to be a much ruined Bronze Age round barrow on the line of the rampart and filled-in ditch, I decided an examination would be justified.

Work began in August 1951 for two weeks and continued intermittently whenever weather permitted, until it was completed in 1952. As the owner, Mr G. Hewinson, was abroad, permission to excavate was given by his solicitors.

The earthwork on the south-west side forms the boundary between The Scrubs and Short Wood (5), the dividing wall being actually built on the rampart. On the north-west side the dividing wall follows the line of the earthwork and only at one point is the wall built on the rampart.
On the south-east side the Birdlip-Cheltenham road follows its general line and the east corner governs the line of a trackway or bridlepath which, before reaching Shurdington, becomes a highway leading to Badgeworth and beyond. The general line of the earthwork appears as a broad dark strip on the air-photograph. On the north-west side another bridle-way passes close to the outer side of the earthworks and runs from Birdlip across the Crickley Hill road and joins the just trackway north of the earthworks.

The earthwork on the north-west side runs for half a mile almost without interruption and it is only for a short distance that it has been partially destroyed by agriculture, when, at some unknown date, a small clearing in the wood was made. It has now reverted to scrub. The earthwork on this side as well as on the south-west is quite impressive and it is probably because both are in a dense wood that they have never been recorded. On the north-east side the rampart can be traced, although it has been and still is, regularly ploughed. An air-photograph shows it very clearly. In the south-east corner, cultivation and a well-used cricket ground have practically destroyed it. There is an entrance near the north corner, as marked on the plan, from which a trackway runs down to a spring below. It is immediately above the site of the Dryhill Roman Villa.

The area possibly enclosed contains approximately 100 acres.

(1) W. H. Gomonde. Copy in Gloucestershire Collection Public Library, Gloucester.
(2) Archaeologia xix pp. 178 ff Trans. BGAS, Lxxiii, pp. I ff
(3) EE, iv, p. 700 ; EE, ix p. 650 JRS, xlv p. 72
(4) Gomonde also illustrates an E.I.A. terret.
(5) The National Trust own 36 1/2 acres of The Scrubs, and Short Wood is owned by Mr W. G. Carter.
(6) Information from Mr L. Richardson."

The 1991 season in brief ...

Thanks to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce this abstract from their Proceedings relating to the 1991 season: "Coberley, Crickley Hill, Work in 1991 concentrated on three areas: (a) The long mound, where the platform was removed to reveal the road and fences of the Neolithic settlement. (b) The northern side of the Neolithic defences, which proved to be a complex of fences and ditches, with a gap between the village and the banks. (c) The tail of the 1A rampart, which changed its nature on the steep northern side of the hill, and had been constructed as a simple drystone wall without a ditch."

The BGAS 1989 report

A further abstract from the transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, this time from the 1989 season as follows:

"COBERLEY/BADGEWORTH, Crickley Hill, SO927161. During the 20th season of excavations a straight line of burnt hearths was found below the long mound, surrounded by very large number of finds, pottery, flint and bone.  The area is interpreted as a communal kitchen, of the final phase of the Neolithic settlement.  To the south of the entrance it was found that the buildings of the round-house settlement were confined to a strip about 15 m broad behind the rampart.  To the west lay two rows of square structures, their post holes containing barley grains, which seemed to be an extension of the zone of granaries of the hillfort settlement.  Towards the south of the excavated area, two-face hearth was dated by remnant magnetism to 1 BC +/- 2 years.  Nearby a penannular brooch and smooth, black, late-looking pottery were found.  Within the ramparts a quarry hollow, used as a rubbish tip during the last occupation of the hillfort, produced quantities of pottery and animal bone.  The hollow had ultimately been utilised as the floor of a small hut, walled in stone.  The structure resembles the sub-Roman/Dark Age buildings found 80 m to the south in the lee of the rampart.  Several sherds of Roman greyware were uncovered immediately to the west of it."

The date seems curiously, nay perhaps even spuriously, precise...  one suspects a typographical error?

TBGAS about the 1987 season

Courtesy of the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society the note on the 1987 season which reads as follows: "COBERLEY/BADGEWORTH, Crickley Hill, SO 927161. Work in the 19th season of excavations concentrated on the slopes of the knoll (originally, wrongly, by CHM's inattention to proof-reading, novel) of the Neolithic settlement, and on the Long Mound.  The latter was found to be even more complex than previously realised, with an additional phase of slabs, and an earlier phase of underlying uprights or markers below the mound.  The slopes, too, proved complex and provided evidence from series of platforms beside a least three, and perhaps four, rows of small pits, some of which contained deposits of cremated human bones."

Professor Dixon observes: "I fear that CHM has bumped his head as well as his poorly shoulder, since even my old eyes detect the word as ‘knoll’ rather than ‘novel’; but perhaps all this swashbuckling romance has led him into contemplation of another Captain Lash, involving perhaps bondage in the New Stone Age……? Knollvelists with pens please step forward."

Cunliffe on Crickley Hill

I remember being taught to sing a ditty by David Southwood with the following lyrics: "When this bloody dig is over, no more trowelling for me: I will go and put my feet up and watch Barry Cunliffe on TV."  I'm afraid that I can't provide a TV clip of Professor Cunliffe on the blog but I am grateful to the Secretary of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce this extract from the presidential address that Barry Cunliffe gave the Society in 1984:

"Gloucestershire and the Iron Age of Southern Britain

By Barry Cunliffe

Presidential Address Delivered at the Council House, Bristol, 24 March 1984

But these hilltop enclosures, whatever their function, were not the only defended sites of the Earliest period.  The excavation of the strongly-fortified promontory fort of Budbury just over the border in Wiltshire has produced a mass of contemporary occupation material including highly-decorated pottery of All Cannings Cross type.  In Gloucestershire, Crickley Hill with its substantial stone-built and timber-laced rampart (Crickley period 2) must belong to this period, for it has produced three radio-carbon dates suggested of construction in the eighth century BC (Dixon 1972; 1976).  Philip Dixon's large-scale excavation here is an outstanding importance for the evidence it is providing of the Earliest and Early phases of the Iron Age in Gloucestershire. Inside the gate of the period 2 fort he has discovered a number of four-post buildings together with several long rectangular structures which are either houses (as the excavator prefers to see them) or rows of four-, five-, and six-post "granaries", some of them in fenced enclosures.  At any event the massiveness of the Crickley 2 defences and the density of buildings within, combined with a comparatively small area closed, serves to distinguish Crickley from the broadly contemporary hilltop enclosures, suggesting that the fort was occupied by a community of some status.  Thus we can begin to see a pattern emerged with a few very strongly-defended forts like Crickley and Budbury possibly representing the residences of the elite, while the larger hilltop enclosures may have been pastoral structures serving larger communities.  That the period was one of some stress is shown by the destruction of Crickley 2 by fire and its partial rebuilding in period 3a.

It was during the Early period in Wessex that hillforts seem suddenly to have proliferated.  This may well have been the case in Gloucestershire but the evidence is rather less clearly defined. At Crickley however, in period 3b, there is dramatic evidence for the massive rebuilding of the defences with complex outworks to protect the entrance.  A single radiocarbon assessment suggests the construction date may have been in the sixth or fifth century BC.  Excavations within the fort showed that the layout of the settlement had changed, the exclusively rectangular structures giving way to a new layout dominated by a very large roundhouse sited just inside the gate.  The nearby hillfort of Leckhampton, defended by a timber-laced rampart with stone fronting-wall, is thought to have been built at about the same time; it too could boast an entrance of monumental proportion."

The 1983 to 1985 entry in the Transactions of BGAS

Thank you to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce extracts from their Transactions.  Here is Richard Savage reporting on three seasons at once. 

"Badgeworth/Coberley, Crickley Hill, Excavations 1983-1985. Work, directed by Dr P.W. Dixon, was concentrated on the western end of the Long Mound, where it was possible tod efine in the neolithic:(phase 1a) three small subcircular buildings without traces of occupation; (phase 1b) the causewayed enclosure, with two successive entrances here, a fenced pathway running in from the second and postholes which may represent buildings; (phase 1d) within new defences, probably of the mid-third millenium BC a platform built of rubble, fenced and approached from the east through a gate. It seems to have had a ritual purpose and to have been destroyed at the time of the attack on the settlement.  In phase 1e a kerb circle was built on the same spot, also having a ritual purpose, perhaps in the second millenium.  In the post-Roman period, phase 4, the area was strongly defended, with buildings perhaps related to those found in 1982 at the south-eastern end of the site."

Excavations on Leckhampton Hill 1925

Thanks are due to the Secretary of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce extracts from the BGAS's Transactions.  Here a couple of intriguing items from 1925.

"Less than a mile away are three barrows, one a particularly fine long barrow of the Neolithic Age, at "the Crippets", two round barrows near the inn known as the "Air Balloon", and by the side of the road to Birdlip, was found a beautiful mirror enamelled in colours, at  a burial place of the Iron Age, one of the most striking specimens ever discovered of that period, now in Gloucester Museum.  Hence there was sufficient reason to welcome the opportunity of exploring and dating the tumulus and the adjoining camp.  

A particularly interesting feature of the core of Leckhampton Camp is the appearance of the action of fire or intense hear, which has reddened the yellow oolite rock in a remarkable way.  This peculiarity is not confined to Leckhampton Camp - for it is very noticeable at Crickley Camp - two miles away.  

Thomas Lloyd Baker, in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries, London in 1818, refers to this fact for which there is no adequate explanation."

The 1983 vignette from the Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society

My thanks to the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce extracts from their Transactions: here the 1983 comments on the Long Mound.

"During July and August 1983 work continued on the Long Mound (100m long by 3m broad). In previous seasons it was found that the mound was composed of sifted soil piled over a low core of small rubble.  The sides of the mound were edged by large slabs, and a squat wooden pole, perhaps an idol, stood at its eastern end.  It was found that the mound ended in a circle, 10m across, of slabs on end.  The interior of the circle was cobbled and in its centre lay a large flat slab, reddened by fire, and surrounded by small fragments of burnt bone.  It is certain that this is a place for ritual, involving burnt offerings, deposition of bones under slabs, and perhaps dancing within the ring, tucked away in fold in the hill.  The monument is stratified between the Neolithic settlements and the occupation of the Iron Age hillfort, and work will continue on it in 1984.  P.W.Dixon University of Nottingham"

A 19th century description of Crickley

My thanks to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce extracts from their transactions. Here from 1896-97:

"On their right a mile distant, was Crickley Hill Camp, formed by a mound and ditch running across the projecting height in a slightly curved line, with a second mound and ditch running parallel to it 100 yards off. The three other sides of the defence were formed by the natural slope of the hill, scarped artificially.  The defended area was about nine acres. The entrance remains in a perfect condition and is defended by a bank and ditch.  In the immediate neighbourhood there are six round barrows and one long barrow" (This description of the camp is drawn from Mr. Witts' Archaeological Handbook of Gloucestershire.)

Economy of expression ...

The 1979 season described in 7 lines in the summary section the of Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. It was only whilst delving around in the BGAS Transactions that I came across Badgeworth/Coberley as a name combination associated with the site.

On some ancient roads on the Cotswolds ...

My thanks again to the Secretary of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, John Loosley, for permission to reproduce this extract from the BGAS Transactions. Interesting comments from 1896-97 from John Sawyer on the road from Birdlip via Crickley and the Greenway to Leckhampton and Norbury. "Crickley Hill ... appears to have been a British village". Full paper is here.

A late 18th century reference to the Air Balloon

The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society has kindly granted permission for extracts from its Transactions to be posted on the Crickley blog: above, a reference to the Balloon Inn by Joshua Gilpin walking from Cheltenham to Birdlip in 1796-7. Gilpin was an American papermaker who toured Britain and the Continent between 1795 and 1801. The full article, from which the piece above is an extract, appears here. The searchable General Index of the Transactions of BGAS is here.