Summary
A Romano-British rural settlement, dating from the 1st to the 4th century AD, with evidence of possible Iron Age origins, consisting of the buried remains of rectilinear stone houses within walled enclosures with possible shrines, bathhouse and cemetery, served by trackways or roads, located to the east of Chipping Norton.
Reasons for Designation
The prehistoric and Romano-British rural settlement to the east of Chipping Norton is scheduling for the following principal reasons:
* Survival: despite being under cultivation, the below-ground archaeological remains, identified in the geophysical surveys survive well in that part of the site covered by the subsequent trial trenching with stone foundations and walling. They are likely to survive well in the remainder of the site;
* Potential: the site has potential to provide valuable archaeological and artefactual information relating to the development of the settlement and knowledge of Romano-British settlement patterns and local and national agrarian and economic history of the Roman province;
* Documentation: the recent (2021-2022) geophysical and archaeological evaluation reports provide a detailed initial appraisal of the otherwise largely undocumented site;
* Period: the site is an example of a nucleated Romano-British ‘village’ with a large number of potential masonry buildings and likely Iron Age origins;
* Rarity: such settlements are relatively rare nationally and very few have been fully investigated.
History
Later Iron Age and Romano-British occupation in Britain included a range of rural settlement types. The surviving remains comprise farmsteads, hamlets, villages and hillforts, which together demonstrate an important sequence of settlement. At a small-scale, Iron Age (800 BC-AD 43) farmsteads formed the dwelling places of individual families or kinship groups engaged in mixed farming, often at subsistence level. They typically consist of clusters of roundhouses and rectangular timber structures within curvilinear ditched enclosures, although not all farmsteads were enclosed. Farmsteads predominated as a settlement form throughout the Roman period.
Romano-British settlements began to emerge in the mid-first century AD. However, the majority of larger settlements appeared in the later first and second centuries, whilst the third and fourth centuries saw the growth and development of existing establishments, together with the emergence of a small number of new ones. Settlements vary enormously in site type and size. Romano-British farmsteads, typified by rectilinear or curvilinear enclosures, were the most numerous and existed prior to and throughout the Roman period. Other small-scale nucleated settlements include compact villages with more densely concentrated rectilinear compounds, with structures and open components linked by a series of streets and lanes; and linear villages settlements which developed as strings of farmsteads within rectilinear plots arranged along tracks, drove ways and Roman roads, frequently sited close to spring lines. Both the buildings and associated field systems also tended to be rectilinear in form, although the earlier tradition of round houses sometimes persisted. Additionally, there are sites that are perhaps best regarded as 'rural' but which display what may be termed 'urban' attributes. This is especially the case with the large number of roadside settlements, that focus on major and other Roman roads and display elements of planning that morphologically set them apart from most linear settlements. Not only did such settlements draw their existence from rural activities such as farming, but also acted as local foci for trade and, where possible, exploiting their location on the road; some also developed specialist functions, such as mining complexes and manufacturing.
Oxfordshire contains a wide variety of Romano-British settlement types ranging from substantial nucleated settlements such as Alchester and Dorchester, through villas, of which around 70 of greatly differing size are known, to minor farmsteads. A string of roadside settlements ran along Akeman Street (the main east-west axis between Verulamium and Cirencester), to the west of Alchester including Sansom’s Platt, Wilcote and Asthall and a number of other nucleated settlements, built on other roads, including Frilford, Wantage, Swalcliffe Lea and Middleton Stoney have been identified. Chipping Norton is one of several significant, but currently poorly understood, settlements situated away from major roads which also include Abingdon and Bowling Green Farm, Stanford in the Vale.
A Roman site at Chipping Norton was first indicated by a find of roman coins in the late-C19 and confirmed by finds of a considerable amount of Romano-British pottery fragments and the foundations of a wall in the late 1960s, noted in the 1970 edition of Oxoniensa. In 1971 a stone head, likely to date from the second half of the 2nd century AD, was found (Oxoniensia 1972). Additional evidence was provided a collection of 286 Roman coins and another of pottery fragments, mainly from fieldwalking on the site and found in the nearby allotments in the late C20 and now in the Chipping Norton Museum. Between May 2021 and March 2022, three magnetometer surveys of the site were carried out by Kerry Donaldson and David Sabin of Archaeological Surveys Ltd which indicated significant Iron Age and Romano-British remains over much of the area surveyed including a well-surviving Romano-British Settlement. These findings were largely confirmed by an archaeological evaluation, including trial trenches, for the middle section of the survey, carried out by Wessex Archaeology (November 2022). Finds indicated a rural settlement with likely craft activities undertaken alongside a mixed agricultural regime with possible religious or votive activity.
Details
PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: a Romano-British rural settlement, dating from the 1st to the 4th century AD, with evidence of possible Iron Age origins, consisting of the buried remains of rectilinear stone houses within walled enclosures with possible shrines, bathhouse and cemetery, served by trackways or roads, located to the east of Chipping Norton.
DESCRIPTION: the scheduled area is around 29 hectares (71.6 acres) in area (9.2 km north to south at its longest point and 0.62 km, at its widest east of the grounds of Chipping Norton School, east to west) and is located in agricultural land to the east of Chipping Norton between London Road (A44) to the north and the B4026 to the south. To the west the site is bounded by the grounds of Chipping Norton School and a wood and allotments in the southwest corner. To the east the site is bounded by stands of woodland. To the north the boundary follows the boundary between two fields with a northward extension in the north-east corner. In the south the site is bounded by the B4026. An east-west track to Glyme Farm crosses the middle of the site. The land slopes gently down from the north-west to the south-east with a shallow valley to the south of the site which contains a spring.
The principal feature of the site, identified by the magnetometer surveys and evaluation trenches, is a buried Romano-British settlement with stone rectilinear buildings contained within stone-walled enclosures, centred around the junction between a trackway which runs broadly north-south with another running north-westward. The junction is located at NGR SP3208626456, immediately to the north of the track to Glyme Farm, approximately 100m east of the north-east corner of the wooded area east of the allotments. The trackway possibly extended eastward along the line of the track to Glyme Farm to create a crossroads.
Around 26 buildings have been identified, covering an area of about 5.8ha within an overall settlement area of around at least 16ha. The buildings are associated with, and frequently front onto, the trackways and are square or rectangular in plan, formed by a single cell or small number of cells, generally 11m-19m in length and 7m-10m wide. The buildings in the southern part of the site appearing to be larger, 20m-35m in length and 10m-15m wide, possibly indicating a higher status with evidence of burning possibly indicative of hypocausts. One building appears to have curvilinear elements associated with apsidal walling and possibly relates to a bath house. The evaluation trenches undertaken north of the track to Glyme Farm found that the typical survival of the stone buildings was of one upstanding course over the foundation level, although at least one wall was of three courses. There was little evidence of intact floor surfaces but it is possible these exist in the buildings in the southern part of the site. The lack of ceramic tiles found in the trial trenches suggests that stone or thatch was the dominant roofing material. Two oven type features were revealed by the evaluation trenches with flues, fuel ash waste and slag recorded but their low number suggests crafts typical of a rural settlement rather than industrial scale activity.
In addition to the rectilinear buildings, three circular structures were identified, one of 9.5m and two of 8m external diameter. There is also an octagonal structure with an external diameter of 8.3m with a possible curved extension on the north-east side and a central oval stone structure. These may relate to shrines or mausolea. An evaluation trench excavated across the octagonal structure confirmed the stone central structure and a late Iron Age or early Romano-British votive miniature axe and fragments of a small sealed vessel were found adding weight to the suggestion that the structure was a temple with an interior altar.
To the east of the settlement just north of the track to Glyme Farm, centred on NGR SP3230126442, the magnetometer survey revealed a group of around 200 pit-like anomalies. These could relate to human burials and indicate a cemetery outside the Romano-British settlement.
A number of enclosure ditches, both rectilinear and curvilinear, likely to relate to small fields or paddocks are evident surrounding the settlement. Other features include rubbish pits, and potential ovens or kilns. In the north-west corner of the site is a quarry likely to have been the source of the stone building material.
Evidence for a possible Iron Age origin to the settlement consists of several large ring ditches of around 17m outer diameter, consistent with Iron Age round houses, and located on the edges of the Romano-British Settlement. One, truncated by a later, probably Roman, enclosure ditch, is located south of the Glyme Farm Track at NGR SP3214626300. Nearby are at least two other truncated ring ditches. A further two ring ditches are evident on the west side of the settlement, just north of the farm track at around NGR SP3194226832. Other potential pre-Roman features include an oval ring ditch with dimensions of 19m by 16m on the eastern edge of the site at NGR SP3238326897, previously identified by aerial photographs, possibly relating to a Bronze Age barrow. Immediately to the south-east and south-west are two potential similar features.
EXCLUSIONS: the monument excludes the surface of the track to Glyme Farm, upstanding remains and footings of the ruined farm building south of the farm track at NGR SP3216026430, dry stone walls, modern fences and fence posts, gates and gate posts, telegraph poles, animal feed troughs and concrete footings. However, the ground beneath all these features is included.
