Helen O’Neil, born Helen Evangeline Donovan in 1893, lived with her family at Camp House which straddled the western entrance to Salmonsbury Camp. During the Thirties Helen Donovan married Bryan O’Neil, a British archaeologist who became Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments. They had met on site.

After the 1932-34 excavations, Helen continued with occasional excavations around Bourton-on-the-Water. Things obviously were on hold in the run up to the Second World War and during it as you might expect. Helen O’Neill could however briefly occupy herself with being Honorary Curator of the new Corinium Museum in Cirencester. However, this was short-lived as the museum was closed/requisitioned during the war itself.

Gerald Dunning joined the meteorological service of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve was stationed at stationed at Worthy Down nr. Winchester. He was still interested in Salmonsbury as shown by the correspondence with Derrik Riley late in 1943. Riley was a pioneer of aerial photography or archaeology.

In a letter from Derrick Riley to Gerald Dunning dated 18 Nov 1943, Riley is sending a negative strip and some details of time and height of flights. He hopes to do a better job of photographing after the War if he gets the chance. Riley must have been a flight instructor as he talks of trying to direct a pupil towards Bourton so that he gets a chance to try Salmonsbury again. In a later letter, Riley says he expects to be on ‘ops’ again soon and has an excellent posting lined up.

The Dunning Donovan excavation continued for three more seasons.

1932   

The digging season in 1932 was rich in finds, with the discovery of hut sites of three superimposed periods (Roman, late and early iron age) just within the western bank of the Camp. This area was described as site III. At least one had a rough stone pavement and two had evidence for hearths. This site also showed evidence for a possible warp weighted loom – the post holes were in a formation that implied a loom. This particular area of the camp was returned to for the following two seasons.

Above and below the rough stone paving, they found brooches, bracelets, iron knives, an iron bill hook, bone ornaments, spindle whorls, a saddle-back quern with its accompanying roller stone amongst many others; also potsherds of all three periods were unearthed. They uncovered at least 14 pits, one containing a crouch burial of a female, in addition the skeletons of babies were discovered buried in the floors of the houses.

1933

As well as returning to site III, they opened site IV, which was the paddock of Miss Donovan’s home, Camp House.

On site III two more circular huts were excavated, each with a set of rubbish pits. In one was the very well-preserved skeleton of a young woman, buried in a crouching position

‘Belgic’ hut-floor was examined, and yielded a large number of finds; pottery, brooches, objects of iron and bone, etc.

In one place a large two-handled cooking pot lay on the floor, and has now been restored. An interesting find is part of a beautifully finished bone ring, probably an ear-ring, identical in shape with large modern ear-rings

1934

The focus of digging fell again on Site III but also on Site V which lay over the northern entrance to the camp. They managed to define its dimensions and revealed the multiple phases of use and alteration. There was also evidence of wheeled traffic.

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 1^st 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.

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 18^th and 19^th 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.

they write things differently there

Salmonsbury Camp – recorded as `Sulmonnes Burg’ (Suhl monnes-burg = Ploughman’s burg) in a charter of Offa of Mercia dated AD 779.

The courts of the Liberty or Hundred of Salmonsbury traditionally assembled at the northern entrance to the enclosure throughout the medieval period. 

“It is so called from Burg or Burrough, and in ancient Grants it has been writ Burgtone, and may be presumed to have been anciently a large Burrough, because the Ruins of many Houses, after great Ruins, are often discovered. It joins also to the great Roman Foss Way, and the Marks of a Camp, of a large Extent, are yet to be seen”

The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire – Sir Robert Atkyns – 1712

“This village is situated about a quarter of a mile south-east from the Roman Foss, in a fertile vale, surrounded by hills at a pleasing distance, and is watered by a river which rises a little above it, and, as it enters the village, forms itself into an elegant serpentine canal about thirty feet wide, flowing, with an agreeable rapidity, about the depth of fourteen or fifteen inches….. Nature has been lavish with her favours to this place, and with a little more of the assistance of her younger sister, Art, it might vie in beauty and elegance with any Dutch village…… Adjoining to the village, and within the parish, is a large quadrangular Roman camp, inclosing about sixty acres, now divided into twenty fields. The vestiges of it are most perfect to the north- east, where, at a gap in the rampart, a court-leet is held twice a year, for the liberty of Salmonsbury, the ancient name of a hundred now included in that of Slaughter. After calling over the jury, they adjourn to come other place to finish the business. There can be no doubt of the camp being Roman, as many of the coins of that nation have been, and still are, frequently found about it; and a gold signet was lately found, weighing near an ounce….. Round part of the camp, a paved aqueduct was discovered not long since, by people who were sinking a well; and human bones have been often taken up in digging the foundations for walls.”

Samuel Rudder ‘History of Gloucestershire’ 1779

In the Seventies the redoubtable Helen O’Neill found a strange object on the Avilon site at #SalmonsburyCamp She called it a totem. It isn’t with the archive and after research I have concluded that it was returned to the landowner. It’s whereabouts now are, so far, a mystery. Based on the illustration in GC Dunning’s report, I’m trying to recreate it.

@coriniummuseum @greystonesfarm
@aceagrams
#DYCP

Experiments have begun for my #SalmonsburyCamp project.
Recreated the camp in cloth and wool, then I’ve buried it.
I’ll dig it up in a month or so.
I should have started this social media malarkey a while back after my first days on site but time and task ran away with me.

@coriniummuseum @gloswildlife @greystonesfarm
@aceagrams @tnluk @dcmsgovuk
#acesupported #DYCP