The largest portion of the Salmonsbury Archive that arrived in the Corinium in 2023 came from early twentieth century excavations.
During the Twenties, A.S.Owens of Keble college, Oxford had been bringing undergraduates to Bourton on the Water for quiet study and had wanted to excavate the earthwork which was usually referred to as a Roman Camp.
This encouraged a visit on the 1st May 1931, by a group including Gerald Dunning and Miss H E Donovan on 1 May 1931. Backed by Mortimer Wheeler, first television archaeologist and in consultation with OGS Crawford, the father of aerial archaeology.
This visit was “greatly enhanced by the find on this occasion of the jaw of a human skeleton, suspended on an ivy-spray under the hedgerow on the southern rampart of the camp.”
As a result, a local committee was formed to organise and finance.
1931 announcement – “A project is on foot under the direction of Mr. O. G. S. Crawford, Chief of the Archaeological Department of the Ordnance Survey to make an exploration of this Camp.
The Cotswold area is rich in remains of the Iron Age, and it is very likely that Salmonsbury was a Tribal Centre and permanently inhabited, rather than a defended site occupied only in time of War. The objects of the proposed excavation are to make an accurate survey of Salmonsbury, and to ascertain its date by excavation through the bank and ditch at selected places. It is also hoped to cut trenches inside the Camp, in order to locate Pit-dwellings, etc.”
They identified the old turf line was found underneath both banks, and under it were a number of pits about 6 feet in diameter, filled with a stiff red clay. A few sherds of pottery, some with finger-nail marks, were found on the old turf line, and flint flakes, only in the pits. A circular hut-site was found inside the camp, close against the inner slope of the rampart. The hut, 22 feet in diameter, consisted of a ring of eighteen post-holes. A large pit, 4 feet 9 inches in diameter and 2 feet deep, had been dug close to the south side of the hut, and seven more similar pits were found. The pits were neatly cut in the gravel, and averaged 4 feet in diameter and I foot deep. They appear to have been storage pits, later filled in with rubbish, which included a human skull and the skeletons of two infants.
The northwestern side of the camp, an area of 60 by 30 feet was cleared inside the rampart, on the site of a small gravel-pit in which a hoard of 147 iron currency-bars was found in 1860. Four more pits were found – one contained the skeleton of a woman.
