'The Shire Stones' are marked on John Speed's 1610 map of Gloucestershire and three stones are clearly marked. They appear to be a little to the north by the junction with the Fosse and the road to Cold Ashton, and widely spaced, separated by the roads, although this might be artistic licence on the part of Speed. Nevertheless, there were certainly three marker stones there over a century before 1736. Either those engraved with 1736 are the stones that were there in 1610, or they replaced those stones.
Digital copy of the map here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/John_Speed_-_Map_of_Gloucestershire_-_1610_-_001.jpg
|
Jubilee Field is a recent name for the field, which is named on the 1839 Tithe Map as 'First Piece'. The origins of the name are recorded by McMurtrie in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society vol. 30 in 1907 (p238):
'Standing on the summit of a bold promontory, between the Charlton and Kilmersdon valleys, there is an ancient tumulus, where some British chief may perchance lie buried; but his bones must have been severely roasted by the Jubilee bonfire erected on its summit in 1887, unless, indeed, they had been appropriated by Mr Skinner or some other antiquary, at an earlier date, of whose researches there are some traces.'
McMurtrie also includes a map of the field as it was in 1907, including the locations of earthworks at the bottom of the hill.
|
Grinsell 1971 (Somerset Archaeology & Natural History vol. 115) designates this as Norton Radstock 3 - Jubilee Field.
Grinsell's dimensions are 30 feet diameter and height 10 feet from NE and 5 feet from SW, visited on 15/8/1964.
'Opened by JS [John Skinner] 1821; primary cremation with charcoal in central oval stone cist just over 2ft. long and just under 2ft. wide. Quantities of charcoal on original turf-line of barrow, which had a peristalith. The barrow now has a man-hole cover connected with a water-works.'
|
|
Pottering about in the Westcountry landscape
|
|
Log in |
Register
Top of page