Woods hide secrets of our ancestry (From Stroud News and Journal)

Woods hide secrets of our ancestry

It does not take a genius to tell us the Five Valleys is blessed with some stunning countryside. But it does require the specialised skills of a local historian to explain how the landscape has been touched by our ancestors. Claire Forbes takes a walk with the News & Journal.

IT is cold. Very cold. Fingers turn to icicles as the gloves come off to snap a quick photo. I'm beginning to think this walk should have been held off until the spring.

But once you get used to the fact you can't feel your hands and have to guess where your feet are the beauty of the frosty scenery begins to sink in.

We're at Barton End, a kind of no-man's-land of woods and fields on the plateau between Horsley and Avening.

This area, Claire tells me, used to be the bread basket for Gloucestershire's Romans and is full of rich pickings for the observant archaeologist.

We set off along a straight, rutted track where the mud is frozen solid and the puddles have become sheets of ice.

It turns out to be a route first used by the Romans who cultivated barley to feed hungry mouths at the villa at Woodchester and the town in Kingscote.

Though there may have been a few more trees around in years gone by, the landscape of the area has changed little over the past 2,000 years.

"It was mostly cleared in the Bronze Age," said Claire. "The 'ley' in a lot of the places round here, like Horsley, Hartley and Worley, means a clearing in the woods."

Along the edges of the fields the plough has turned up stones which may have been buried for years and fragments of the past can sometimes be found among them.

Pieces of ancient pottery, scraps of iron, flint arrowheads from the Stone Age and even coins and tiny tiles from mosaics have been found along the footpath.

After walking along the exposed path for some distance, we came to a narrow, dipped 'holloway' leadind off the hill, down into a valley through some woods.

Pathways along ditches like this are commonplace in our ancient woodlands, and have been worn into shape by centuries of foot traffic, passing carts and animals.

The woody path eventually leads back into open fields, where old records show the village of Ledgemoor once stood.

Apparently all that now remains of the settlement are the yew trees that once stood around its chapel, though even these have now been swallowed up by the surrounding woods.

The 14th Century records clearly pinpoint the village's location but it is believed to have been abandoned in the early 15th Century as its inhabitants fled the spreading Black Death.

Without an in depth understanding of the area's background, no-one would not suspect it had ever been settled. A historical mystery sits on what would have been the outskirts of the village.

A moss-covered dam crosses a swollen stream just yards from a well-trodden, if muddy, crossing.

The dam looks like a well-made Cotswold stone wall topped with huge, hand carved slabs, each a slightly different shape.

Nobody knows where the stones came from - they clearly were not designed for their current job but are just too big to bother lugging very far.

Theories vary, with some suggesting they are the steps of a spiral staircase from some long-forgotten manor while others believe they are the remains of an older, arched bridge.

Quite what the wall across the stream is for nobody knows either. A bridge is unnecessary, as there is another which pre-dates it just yards away, and if it is a dam it is poorly designed, letting water flow past almost uninhibited.

"There is some speculation that it could be a medieval sheep dip," said Claire. "They have walled off a section of the stream so they can keep the animals in a confined area while they wash them."

After a few minutes of wondering about its purpose we follow a footpath back up the hill through frosty fields dotted with molehills.

As it turns out, molehills can be a treasure trove for the keen-eyed archaeologist.

The moles carry out their own earthworks, delving deeper than the plough and all sorts of interesting items can crop up in the dirt they excavate.

"We found a lot of Bronze Age pottery in a mole hill near Cheltenham," said Claire.

"You can find all the sorts of things you find in ploughed fields in molehills."

Sadly we don't find anything more interesting than small scraps of Cotswold stone in the mounds of red soil.

A haphazard row of burial mounds, tumuli and long barrows leads up the hill and across the fields.

The first mound has a sunken depression in the middle as if it has collapsed some time ago. "The Victorians looted all the tombs that had not already been emptied," said Claire.

"There are vague records of what happened but we don't know where they went." "And to confuse things the Anglo Saxons also liked to bury their dead in barrows that dated back to the Bronze Age.

"Presumably it was a tradition or they still considered them sacred sites." Our circular route then turns back towards the starting point, taking us past the site of an old Roman house where several interesting finds have been unearthed over the years.

Though there have been an unusually high concentration of Roman finds around Barton End, the whole Horsley area is awash with archaeological artefacts.

Altars to Roman gods have been found, along with coins, even an engraved tombstone of a high-ranking lady found in Horsley Wood.

The stone can now be found in the Museum in the Park and is inscribed to the memory of Julia Ingenilla, who died in 529ad aged 20.

But it is not just Horsley that is steeped in history. "The whole of Gloucestershire has had a high number of Roman finds, it was a very densely populated area," said Claire.

Good pasture and a plentiful supply of fullers earth made it a good region for herding sheep while shipping lanes along the River Severn provided an easy trade route and transport.

You do not have to be a historian to appreciate the impact our forefathers have had on the world around us. The signs of the past are there for all to see - we just have to look.