Salmonsbury Camp

Salmonsbury Camp is an Iron Age fortified enclosure in the fields immediately east of Bourton-on-the-Water, on a gravel terrace between the Rivers Dikler and Windrush. It covers about 23 hectares inside a double bank and ditch that still stand up to 2m high on three sides. It is a scheduled monument, on Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust's Greystones Farm reserve.

History

Large Iron Age forts with more than one line of defence are rare, with around 50 recorded nationally, and the scheduling says Salmonsbury survives well, with evidence of settlement from the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age to the end of the Roman period.

Before the camp

People were here long before the banks went up. Excavation turned up a Palaeolithic axe, flint flakes and arrowheads, and Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age pottery, and the Wildlife Trust describes the site as a Neolithic as well as an Iron Age meeting place.

The Iron Age enclosure

G. C. Dunning excavated the camp between 1931 and 1934 and found two Iron Age phases: an open settlement of the later first century BC, and then the defended enclosure, built in the first half of the first century AD. Inside were round houses, rubbish pits, pottery and metalwork, and in 1860 a hoard of 147 iron currency bars, an early form of money, was found here. The scheduling notes the suggestion that the camp was a market centre for the area, and the Roman small town at Bourton Bridge lies just over 1km to the west.

Romans, Saxons and the hundred court

People went on living inside the defences in Roman times, from the later first century to the early fourth, when the eastern banks may have been cut down for farming. No Anglo-Saxon settlement has been found inside, but burials were dug into the ramparts and two small cemeteries lie outside. A charter of Offa, king of Mercia, of AD 779 names the place Sulmonnes Burg, and through the Middle Ages the court of Salmonsbury hundred met at its north entrance.

What to look for

The defences are the thing to see. The enclosure is rectangular, with two banks, each with a ditch outside it. On the north, east and south they survive as earthworks up to about 2m high; on the west, towards the village, building has hidden them. An annexe of about 6 hectares runs east from the north-east and south-east corners towards the Dikler, round a marshy hollow.

Of the two original gateways, the one in the middle of the north side can still be seen; the other, in the middle of the west side, is built over. Look along the banks in low winter or evening light, when their line shows best. The replica Iron Age roundhouse on the reserve gives an idea of the houses that stood inside.

Visiting

The camp is on the Greystones Farm reserve, which the Trust describes as access land, free and open all year; keep to the marked paths, and remember that houses, Greystones Farm's buildings and the modern cemetery inside the old line are private or excluded. Dogs go on a lead, and on a short lead from 1 March to 31 July. The path from the farmyard to the roundhouse suits wheelchairs and pushchairs; the paths over the banks are grassy and can be wet, and the Trust closes the meadows walk in autumn and winter.

Getting there

There is no car park at the reserve, so park in Bourton, at Station Road (GL54 2AA) or the council's Rissington Road car park (GL54 2BN), and walk along Greystones Lane. The Pulhams 801 bus stops in the village.

On foot, Bourton, Salmonsbury and the lakes, a flat 2-mile loop from the High Street, crosses the camp on paths through the reserve, and Bourton-on-the-Water and Wyck Rissington goes through the reserve beside it in its first mile. The Oxfordshire Way long-distance path also crosses the reserve.

Nearby

The rest of Greystones Farm, with its meadows and rivers, is all around. Back in the village, the war memorial is about 800m west, and the Old New Inn, the Croft and the Willow are the nearest places to eat. For another earthwork near by, the castle mound at Upper Slaughter is a medieval one.