The Uffington White Horse is the largest ancient hill figure in Europe and the first scientifically dated example existing in Britain. It is a dynamic figure aligned with the rising Sun, galloping uphill on the shoulder of the eponymous Whitehorse Hill towards its summit immediately to the south. While long recognised as the somewhat abstract representation of a horse, the hill figure is also unnaturally elongated, closely paralleling the rising visible horizon of the hillside. The figure extends 110 metres by 33 metres across the scarp of the downs in an open and visually prominent setting. Its construction – as a carefully delineated, largely linear excavated profile, cut into the hillside and filled with imported and compacted chalk – has been dated by optically stimulated luminescence testing to between 1740 and 210 BC with 95 per cent confidence (Fig. 1).

The figure forms part of a cluster of archaeological and landscape elements south of the village of Woolstone: the White Horse itself, the Whitehorse Hill summit, the Long Mound and Round Barrow, Woolstone Wells and Dragon Hill. These are located between the Ridgeway and the Icknield Way, two ancient trackways which closely approach each other at this point. In addition, there are two nearby enclosures, Uffington Castle, a prominent late Bronze Age/ early Iron Age hill fort on Whitehorse Hill, actively used until the Romano-British period, and Hardwell Camp, further down the scarp to the west (Fig. 2).

Referred to in the twelfth century as fifth in a list of the Wonders of Britain, the White Horse was evidently then already recognised as being a well-established feature of the landscape.

In 2022 normal service resumed following the pandemic for the archaeology team based at the Museums Resource Centre, Standlake. Our priorities were to deliver community engagement projects, accession archaeological archives and treasure, respond to research enquires, and enhance access to the collections. The following are just a few examples of our activities during 2022.

SELECT ACTIVITIES

Archaeological Archives

During 2022 archaeological archives from excavations in fifteen Oxfordshire parishes were accessioned by the Oxfordshire Museums Service (OMS). Accessioning these archives resulted in 830 records which describe, track and care for the objects and documents deposited as part of the archive. Regarding fieldwork, we request that anyone carrying out fieldwork notifies us within a month of it starting so we can issue an accession number for the site. During 2022 we were notified of 110 instances of fieldwork taking place in the county. This compares to ninetyeight instances in 2021, ninety-five in 2020 and ninety-six in 2019. Fieldwork is increasing, but for the moment the deposition of archives with OMS is lagging behind.

Community Engagement Projects

The archaeology team delivered a community engagement project in Goring funded with NPO Arts Council funding. OMS collaborated with Goring Library, Friends of Goring Library, the University of Reading and Cranfield University to produce an exhibition featuring Roman objects from Lowbury Hill, the newly acquired painting of Lowbury Hill by Anna Dillon, and an aerial photograph of the site by Hedley Thorn. The exhibition was accompanied by activities for adults and children such as walking tours to the site, a Lowbury Hill Heritage Day, evening lectures, and Roman art and craft sessions. The exhibition was in place for a month and compared to the same month in 2021 the library had an additional 1,054 visitors, demonstrating the popularity of local archaeology.

The project was also designed to develop and increase the digital resources of the OMS collection. The objects from the site have all been photographed and are visible on the Heritage Search website. A sample of the objects have had digital 3D models created and are visible on the OMS Sketchfab account @OxonMRC.

Society for Museum Archaeology: Annual Awards for Excellence 2022

The OMS’s Developing Digital Access & Community Engagement Pilot Project 2021–22 won the Society for Museum Archaeology Annual Awards for Excellence 2022 in the Engagement and/or Collaboration Project category.

Among the tomb monuments to have come down to us from the Middle Ages an especially interesting series is that commemorating the professional lawyers, an élite group who came to the fore in the second half of the thirteenth century. Earlier, in the reigns of Henry II and his immediate successors, the king’s justices had been recruited principally from the baronage, the knightly administrators and the ranks of the senior clergy. These men were often amateurs who gained their know-how in the course of their everyday work. As the body of law increased, however, and as the nature of that law became more technical, so it became necessary for justices to be recruited who were specialists in their field: men who had received a training in the law, who had worked full-time in the law, and who kept up-to-date in their understanding of the law. It was as a result of this ever-gathering process of specialisation that part-time, largely amateur justices gave way in the thirteenth century to trained and qualified professionals. Among the earliest and most distinguished of these men were Gilbert de Thornton, who became chief justice of king’s bench in 1290, and William de Bereford, who was appointed to the equivalent position in common pleas in 1309. At the same time, by a parallel process, a class of professional pleaders was brought into existence by the need to have practitioners who could act as intermediaries between litigants and the justices, advising the former on legal procedures, representing them in court and arguing on their behalf.

In his New Atlantis (1626) Sir Francis Bacon argued that progress in natural philosophy required a group of people who shared an interest in scientific experimentation and a suitable meeting venue. Just over half a century later Robert Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire (1677), identified activity in the mid seventeenth century at Sir Anthony Cope’s homes in Oxfordshire (at Hanwell near Banbury and Tangley in west Oxfordshire) as realisations of Bacon’s vision. Plot’s account of Hanwell has also been the principal inspiration for an archaeological project recently pursued by Stephen Wass to explore the development of the gardens known at Hanwell from the sixteenth century onwards, with a particular focus on Sir Anthony’s contribution. Wass’s new book integrates his findings into a broader history of the Cope family.

After considering the geology, topography and early history of the Hanwell area (chapter 1), Wass examines work carried out at Hanwell after William Cope bought the estate in 1498 (chapter 2). He was responsible for the construction of the castle and presumably for establishing an adjacent garden. During the sixteenth century the design of water gardens in England advanced from relatively simple layouts associated with castles and monasteries to constructions with more elaborate aesthetic ambitions. These are contrasted with the more formal styles which emerged in Italy at that time.

In the sixteenth century the Cope family enjoyed success and acquired an additional house at Tangley; in 1611 Sir Anthony Cope, the second of that name at Hanwell, purchased a baronetcy. At the beginning of chapter 3 Wass introduces numerical annotation to distinguish the Anthony Copes. While it is a good idea – the frequent recurrence of the same family name can be confusing – the provision of a family tree might have been more useful. The rest of this chapter considers numerous examples – sometimes almost overwhelming – of water gardens from this period, which are related to ideas in Bacon’s New Atlantis. This leads to a detailed discussion of the ‘Enstone Marvels’, Thomas Bushell’s collection of water-powered special effects on his small estate at Enstone (12 miles/6 km south-west of Hanwell), which introduces the contribution of engineering. The final example of water gardens refers to Wadham College in Oxford, an institution which reappears in later chapters.

In the Middle Ages the small Buckinghamshire village of Brill developed close associations with neighbouring Oxfordshire, based in large part on a thriving pottery industry, its location at the centre of a royal forest, and on the appropriation of its parish church by an Oxfordshire monastery. From the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries potters at Brill produced a range of distinctive bowls, jars and jugs which found a ready market at Oxford, 12 miles (19 km) to the south-west. Brill was also an administrative centre for the surrounding forest of Bernwood, which extended into eastern Oxfordshire and was a source of timber, firewood and venison for Oxfordshire’s medieval landholders. Finally, St Frideswide’s priory at Oxford was patron of the Buckinghamshire church of Oakley, to which Brill was attached as a dependent chapelry.

These and other themes are explored in Michael Farley’s book-length study of the village, which combines documentary evidence with archaeological investigation and topographical survey, and is lavishly illustrated with colour photographs of sites, buildings, objects and maps. One of the book’s chief aims is to identify the location of the royal residence at Brill, which successive kings kept in repair from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Thereafter it fell out of royal ownership, and was either demolished or incorporated into a later building. The ‘King’s Field’ in the centre of the village is a plausible candidate for a royal enclosure, although a recent geophysical survey proved inconclusive, and Farley reaches only a tentative judgement as to its use based on evidence revealing the buried remains of one or several stone-footed buildings.

Another mystery surrounds a large mound called ‘Castle Hill’, which is shown on a late sixteenth-century map in the centre of the village where the main streets follow a pronounced curve to produce a well-preserved U-shaped enclosure encompassing the ‘King’s Field’. The mound no longer exists, and documentary evidence of a castle is lacking, though it is possible that the mound was associated with, or mistaken for, a surviving earthwork near-by. A substantial bank and ditch divided by a trackway survives on the edge of ‘King’s Field’, and is associated with Iron Age pottery and other Iron Age finds.

Oxford Archaeology (OA) and Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) undertook adjacent excavations on former agricultural land on the southern outskirts of Banbury in advance of separate housing developments. The MOLA site, known as East of Bloxham Road, was excavated between November 2014 and March 2015 and comprised a sub-rectangular arable field within the interstice formed by the junction of Bloxham Road and Salt Way, a historic route now used as a bridleway. The OA investigations were undertaken at Wykham Park Farm between November 2019 and May 2020 and encompassed six excavation areas situated across six fields to the south and east, as well as the footprint of a drainage outfall that extended to the south (Fig. 1).

In 1970 the British economy was on the cusp of radical change. The ‘golden age’ of capitalism that had started in the early 1950s, when economic growth was broadly stable and continuous, and inflation was benign, was coming to an end. It would be replaced by ‘stagflation’ (that ugly portmanteau which combines stagnating economic growth with inflation), civil unrest and political instability. Memories of that economic turmoil have been recently rekindled by surging inflation and sluggish economic growth fuelled by the disruptions of Covid, war in Ukraine and geopolitical instability. The state of British manufacturing in 1970 is startlingly illuminated in the Diary of a Master Printer (edited by Colin Ridler) which conveys the industrial disputes, management failings and disruptive impacts of technological change that beset the Printing House of Oxford University Press (OUP). The ‘Master Printer’ was Vivian Ridler (father of the editor) who was in charge of the Printing House from 1958 to 1978 and kept this diary between June 1970 and June 1971.

Vivian Ridler managed a strange business beast: his Printing House was part of the much larger OUP business which was (and is) owned by the University of Oxford; in 1970 it operated alongside two publishing houses (the Clarendon Press and the London Business) and a paper mill. A challenge for academic publishers, such as OUP, was the tension between scholarly and commercial activities. Scholarship required the publication of the latest research which was often not profitable, and which could conflict with commercial imperatives. A further tension is evident throughout the diary: Ridler and his colleagues wanted to craft and print beautiful books which were increasingly less competitive than books that were mass produced by the latest technologies.

The diary is eloquently written and includes aspects of Ridler’s business and social lives and their frequent intersections. As far as business is concerned, Ridler documents the challenges of book production, negotiating with the bank and dealing with unions. His business life permeates his social life as he effortlessly moves from book production and conversing with authors to attending trade association meetings, dining at high table, attending concerts and lunching at the Garrick Club. His approach to his workers was both paternalistic and condescending. He attends to the welfare of his workers, visits them in hospital and attends their funerals, but class divisions were very apparent.

Between April and July 2019, Cotswold Archaeology (CA) carried out an archaeological investigation on land at Swan School and Meadowbrook College, New Marston, Oxford (centred on NGR: 452526 208373; Fig. 1). The development site measured 5.6 ha in extent and was located to the north-east of the city of Oxford on the north-western edge of New Marston, a suburb of the city. The development site was situated on low-lying ground (60 m above Ordnance Datum) on the edge of the River Cherwell floodplain and immediately north of the Marston Brook. The site lies on an area of alluvium and Oxford Clay Formation and West Walton Formation mudstone, capped by seasonally wet, acidic but base-rich loamy and clayey soils that typically support areas of pasture and woodland.

The archaeological potential of the site was established by previous archaeological works within the development area (Fig. 1), comprising a Heritage Statement and two stages of trial-trench evaluation. The investigations identified remains pertaining to Iron Age, Roman, medieval and post-medieval activity in the south-western half of the development site and in light of these discoveries, four areas (A, B, C and F) were subject to archaeological excavation.

In 2015 James Mather fulfilled every metal-detectorist’s dream when he discovered an early medieval hoard not far from the small Oxfordshire town of Watlington – the exact location is not provided so as to deter other detectorists. When fully excavated and analysed the hoard was found to comprise 203 silver coins, mostly from the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex in the 870s, 15 silver ingots, 6 arm- and neck-rings (whole or in part), a fragmentary hooked tag and a small piece of cut gold. A conference to discuss the results was held at the Ashmolean Museum in 2018, and this book of essays stems from that event. Details are provided about the discovery and treatment of the finds, together with discussion and a catalogue of the coins (by Julian Baker and John Naylor) and of the non-numismatic finds (by Jane Kershaw and Eleanor Naylor). Readers of this journal may be particularly interested in the papers by John Naylor and Ryan Lavelle about the broader context for the finds in the archaeology and history of the upper Thames valley in the late ninth century when a complex jockeying for power brought together Mercian, West Saxon and Viking leaders in ways that can only be partly understood, but would seem to be directly responsible for the hoard’s interment.

By a strange coincidence a hoard very similar to the Watlington one was discovered near Leominster (Herefordshire) in 2015, but only some of that hoard is available for study because the finders disposed of part of it before it came to the notice of the relevant authorities (for which those unprincipled metal-detectorists have served prison sentences). Both hoards consist predominantly of joint issues of coins made by the Mercian king Ceolwulf II (874–9) and the West Saxon ruler Alfred (871–99) when they were in alliance against the Viking Great Army under the leadership of Guthrum. One of the issues known as the ‘Two Emperors’, after a Roman design on which it was based, seems a particularly apt testimony to the alliance between two royal houses which had so often been rivals, particularly over control of the upper Thames. In 878 King Alfred defeated Guthrum at the battle of Edington (Wiltshire) and a new accord was reached between them, perhaps involving a handing over of some of the very coins that were buried at Watlington.

A REACTION TO ALAN CROSSLEY’s SUGGESTIONS by JOHN BLAIR

The Oxford volume in the Historic Towns Atlas series has long been awaited, and its appearance in 2021 is a matter for celebration. Alongside the rich abundance of primary material that it assembles, it is a vehicle for the summation of past hypotheses and the development of new ones. It crowns the distinguished career of the editor, Alan Crossley, who ran the Oxfordshire Victoria County History for many years, and fought tirelessly for its survival through bleak and adverse circumstances.

The editor has a particular interest in west Oxford, about which he has recently written in other places. Several interesting points are made in the Atlas, not least with reference to St George’s chapel in the Castle, where the recent discovery of two burials dated to c.1000 supports the idea (proposed in 1976 by Janet Cooper) that the Norman chapel replaced a pre-Conquest church. Crossley builds on this argument to take it in an unexpected direction.

It should be said at the outset that an important Anglo-Saxon minster was not just a single church, but an ecclesiastical zone – often a substantial one – within which churches, chapels and other ritual foci were dispersed alongside accommodation, services and craft buildings. Arrangements of churches were often linear, on a west–east axis. In accordance with that model, I suggested in 1988 that the twelfth-century church of St Frideswide’s priory (now Oxford cathedral), the nucleus of the early minster complex, was the easternmost in a line of churches following the edge of the gravel terrace.

Thames Valley Archaeological Services (TVAS) is undertaking a long-running archaeological recording action in advance of mineral extraction at the c.19 ha Chinham Farm Extension of Bowling Green Farm Quarry, Faringdon (SU 3155 9475) (Fig. 1). The work overall extended from May 2007 to September 2020. The results of the first seven years of the project (Phases 1–3, covering around 7.7 ha) were published in advance of completion of the rest, as there was then an interval of several years, and this report presents the results from the most recent seasons of the archaeological work (Phases 4 to 6, 2017–2020), covering a further 3.35 ha.

The site is between the market town of Faringdon and the village of Stanford-in-the-Vale in the south-west of Oxfordshire, on the northern side of the A417 (Fig. 1). It is located on the Corallian Ridge, with the top of the ridge locally at a height of c.103 m above OD sloping gradually down from south to north to the Frogmore Brook at c.95 m above OD. The underlying geology at the high point in the south is Stanford (Jurassic) Limestone, with alluvial clay, sand, gravel and sandstone silts filling on the valley edges to the north.

Geoffrey Tyack’s entertaining book describes the economic and political imperatives that have formed our towns and cities over two millennia, and which have taken us from being a rural to an urban society. The author’s canvas extends from late Iron Age oppida to the garden centres and retail villages of modern towns, pausing briefly en route at the former Brakspear’s Brewery in Henley and in his own street in south Oxford, which are stitched elegantly into the fabric. He acknowledges debts to Celia Fiennes and to W.G. Hoskins – to the latter for the term ‘urban landscape’ (rather than ‘townscape’), and for his chronological approach. Tyack draws extensively on the three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Britain (2000) and on numerous recent studies of towns and cities in England, Wales and Scotland.

Tyack demonstrates in his first chapter, ‘Creating an Urban Landscape’, that modern urban centres are often unrecognisably the products of ancient influences and forces, such as river crossings, pre-existing ritual centres, patterns of trade and original burgage plots. As readers of Oxoniensia would expect, Tyack provides informative summaries of subsequent phases of urban history, neatly encapsulated as ‘Building the Late Medieval Town’, ‘Reformation and Rebuilding’, ‘Classicism and Commerce’ and ‘Improvement and Industry’. He provides vibrant descriptions of contrasts between gradual and cumulative processes of urban change and moments when State, landowners or civic interests, spurred on by cultural or economic momentum, invested in new urban forms. Within the book’s broad compass, the narrative becomes more detailed as time passes, though throughout the book there are also standalone ‘capsule’ summaries of places, and well-chosen illustrations, which exemplify particular aspects of urban development.

For this reviewer, the book really ‘takes wing’ in four more thematic chapters, entitled: ‘Worktown’, ‘Reshaping the Centre’, ‘The Suburban Landscape’ and ‘The Way We Live Now’. In chapter 6, ‘Worktown’, Tyack is blunt and direct about the brutal forces that made or broke industrial towns and the horrific conditions in which most workers lived.

This report presents a summary of archaeological investigations undertaken by Foundations Archaeology in 2013 to 2014 at Cross Keys public house, St Georges Road, Wallingford. The works consisted of an archaeological strip, map and sample excavation and subsequent watching brief, which were conducted in advance of, and during, the construction of two residential dwellings. The works complied with an approved Written Scheme of Investigation (WSI) and the relevant IfA Standard and Guidance. A summary of the results of the fieldwork is presented below; further detailed records are contained within Foundations Archaeology’s post-excavation assessment report. The project was commissioned by Brakspear.

The study area is located immediately south of St Georges Road car park and approximately 50 m north of the junction of St Georges Road, High Street, Croft Road and Station Road (Fig. 1). At the time of the fieldwork the site consisted of an area of hardstanding, which was associated with the Cross Keys public house to the south. The topography around the site is generally flat at a height of approximately 48 m above OD.

The county archaeological team have dealt with a considerable level of planning casework over the last year and were consulted on 1,805 planning applications in 2022/23, including 431 major schemes. We asked for archaeological work in association with 461 of these applications.

SELECTED PROJECTS

Ambrosden Manor, Ambrosden

An archaeological evaluation was carried out by CA on land where the HER recorded the possible location of Ambrosden Manor, which was also recently seen in aerial photographs. The Manor was built after 1673 and was pulled down in 1768. A geophysical survey recorded the remains of the Manor in more detail. Evaluation trenching on the site recorded a layer of demolition material overlying the remains of walls and a possible moat around the outside of the building. The trenching also recorded a possible outbuilding, which was not identified from aerial photography or in the geophysical survey but appeared to be of a similar date to the main building. The pottery recovered from the site was largely consistent with the date of the Manor house.

Symmetry Park, Ardley

CA undertook an archaeological evaluation on the proposed site of the new Symmetry Park development at Junction 10 of the M40. The site was known to have produced a large number of metal-detected finds, including a hoard, and aerial photographs had recorded a potential Roman settlement, banjo enclosure and ring ditch on the site. A geophysical survey confirmed that there was an area of dense, likely Roman, settlement with potential for buildings and agricultural activity on the site, as well as a possible banjo enclosure.

On the southern side of the site a potential sunken-featured building with other remains of Anglo-Saxon settlement were recorded, which is rare in the general area. Trenching over the area of the Roman activity revealed a well-made wall and demolition layers, but the function of this building is not clear. Below the demolition layers, Iron Age features have been recorded which suggests there could be a level of continuity of occupation on the site. Surrounding the potential building, the trenches have revealed dense activity with some very large ditches, the function of which is currently unclear. The trenching also revealed a number of cremations and an inhumation burial.

Berry Hill Road, Adderbury

OA carried out an excavation on Berry Hill Road in Adderbury, following on from an evaluation they carried out earlier in 2022.

Joseph Oliver of Stonesfield near Woodstock gave a first-hand account of life in a Victorian workhouse in the 1860s. Although Oliver was perfectly literate thanks, he said, to a good education at the village school as a boy, due to his failing eyesight his words were taken down by workhouse chaplain the Revd W. Saunders. Probably what brought Oliver to Saunders’ particular notice was his participation in the battle of Waterloo; in a precursor of the late twentieth-century realisation that the small group of survivors of the First World War was dwindling, there was an upturn in interest in veterans of the final battle against Napoleon. Saunders explains frankly in Charles Dickens’ periodical All Around the Year that, ‘The following memoir was not actually written down on paper with pen and ink by the narrator himself, but it is a transcript of notes made during the old man’s narration, and is in truth what it professes to be: the real uninterpolated history of a genuine soldier of 18 June 1815, given as nearly as possible in the veteran’s own vernacular.’ Oliver’s military memoir is published elsewhere with, it must be acknowledged, quite a few interpolations and, happily for Oxfordshire historians, his original narration of that story to Saunders also included the details of day-to-day life in the Woodstock Union workhouse which are reproduced here for the first time since 1866.

Joseph Oliver was born in Stonesfield in 1792. The Oliver men, like most of the menfolk in the village, worked in the local hillside quarries. Stonesfield slate was reputedly the best, lightest and least porous of roofing materials. The slates were created by the splitting action of frost on fissile rock, and they were in use by the seventeenth century at a time when there was rapid building development in the region. At nineteen, somewhat harassed by the family of the young woman he was courting, Oliver went into Oxford to sign up with the local militia and then transferred to the Rifles.