Salmonsbury Camp is a scheduled site in Bourton-on-the-Water. There is evidence for activity from the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The camp itself is Iron Age in date with activity continuing into the Roman occupation. Excavations have found Anglo Saxon burials and Medieval Ridge and Furrow. The site was used as the meeting place for the court leet of the Salmonsbury hundred. It is now a farm and nature reserve. The paper archive at the Corinium museum includes digs from the Thirties up to the 2000’s: also revealing some of the story of the Helen O’Neill, a redoubtable female archaeologist.
The Salmonsbury Moot project is a creative response to Salmonsbury Camp combining art and archaeology through the GWT Greystones Nature reserve and the archaeological archive held at the Corinium Museum. The aim of the project is to tell the story of the landscape across time, draw audiences into it with a renewed understanding and sense of its value.
It is enabled by a ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ from Arts Council England, which is funding research time and an artist residency at Greystones. The aim of the residency is to have the time/space/resource to develop and experiment with new work inspired by Salmonsbury camp and its archive, and to create a form of creative engagement practice on site and in the museum: bringing the archive into the community and the community into the archive.
The project will culminate in a moot at Greystones: a live engagement event at on site in August 2026. Followed by an exhibition at the Corinium Museum in September 2026 of art created in response to the site from the residency and other artists recruited during the project, alongside artefacts from the archive.
Fibre trials & experiments
I began to experiment with fibre and cord; with no particular outcome in mind. Teaching myself drop spinning with sheep’s wool. Spinning led to whorl making – from clay, chalk, wood and resin set charcoal and chalk. With spindles of hazel wood. There is no impulse for historical/archaeological accuracy, just exploring their materiality. To improve…
Archival Rabbit Hole 4
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…
Archival Rabbit Hole Three
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…
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