Modern archaeological archive reports can be quite dry to someone who responds to the more narrative form of history. So, my way in to understanding this site was historical. I looked for the ways Salmonsbury camp was written about in the past. This rabbit hole was deep – prehistoric sites have been understood in all sorts of ways by the generations that come after – the Anglo-Saxons looked at them in one way, medieval society in another, the antiquarians of the 18th and 19th century yet another. Each says more about that time than the time of the site’s creation.
Victorian antiquarian Dr John Moore of Bourton-on-the-Water left notebooks of his antiquarian observations and accounts from locals, now in the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society collection at the Gloucestershire Archive. His collection of objects formed the initial Salmonsbury collection originally held at The Wilson, Cheltenham, now at the Corinium Museum.
Notes copied from John Moore’s manuscript. by H.E. Donovan. June 1931.
In March 1864, Thomas Beale said that when a young man, he remembered a skeleton being found by the large tree by the Camp in a stone coffin, which contained nothing beyond the skeleton & a marble.
Stephen Arthurs occupied land outside the N.E boundary of the Camp: when he took to it Bury’s bank extended from its present termination to the Harp Lane the western boundary of his land & took up a deal of room; he levelled the embankment in the centre of which was a wall 4 ft thick composed of flat stones with which he built the existing wall they bear strong evidence of the action of fire.
George Gashier while hedging at the “furder ind [sic] of Burys Bank found a wall”. I accompanied him there at the NE angle extending southwards he showed me a wall with a good square face 4ft in thickness, of the same character + materials as the western end of existing N. embankment.
Here the S. E angle of Camp forming part of its S border some gravel has been dug + a wall 4ft in depth & composed of the same materials as those already described has been exposed.
In the Harp Lane forming the w. boundary of Camp in squaring down the bank, which is here about 9 ft deep, numerous human bones were found & the skull of a skeleton lying E-W fell into the lane; much pottery shards were found here Roman & Saxon principally the latter; also, a portion of a knife about 18 inches from the skull, a sword handle had been previously found there by G. Gashier.
When gravel digging about 10 yds from the north wall & about 100 yards from the N.W. angle of the Camp, Mr Aswins labourers dug up (1860?) 147 Saxon spears, they were made of good steel, much corroded. In this gravel pit at different times, human bones have been found & in 1880 Walter C Moore found a whetstone 15 inches by 6 close to the spot where the bones were exhumed.
Just within the NW. angle of the Camp are two patches of rough grass, the first circular & about 10ft in diameter the other is shaped like a half-moon of almost the same width; these surfaces present an entirely different aspect the neighbouring turf which is poor & mossy. Gashier states that cattle never eat the rank grass which grows on these patches: he states that George Wilkins dug at one of the spots but “gave up the job” after an hour’s work as he found nothing of any worth. Gashier dug for me at this spot about 4 feet & brought to light pottery of different kinds, similar in character to that found in the Harp Line, beyond this he found nothing besides rubble stones + rough pottery & soil.
In 1884 William Fowler found in Bury Bank Field in Bourton Camp an implement of iron of the shape here given and in 1888 a large perforated flint, the hole being much worn down at the edges as if it had been whirled round on a wire or string for a very long line, in the arable field near to the oak tree. Also found is the gravel close (within the Camp) under an ash tree (the ash tree is near the bottom of the field the end farthest from Harp Lane) at the lower corner some piles at 2 or 3 ft beneath the surface, nature of wood unknown but it was very dark, they were about six inches in diameter; he thinks that H. Humphries had them.
When “grubbing” myself in the Harp Lane Bank, I found near to a skeleton, many shards, a large carcher [sic] bead painted. black, the paint came off in cleaning. away the dirt which covered it & a knife with a bone handle.
William Fowler also found near the oak tree at the bottom of his field an egg-shaped price of dried clay.
