The field Ashley ploughed three days ago

I visited the farm shop near Bisley this morning, where I replaced their stock of my cards, some of which feature the farm and its activities. I had been there two days ago and met Ashley, who is one of the owners. During our chat he mentioned he’d just finished ploughing which I was surprised about as it seems quite early in the year to take tractors onto the land.

After leaving the farmyard I drove on the lane around one of their fields and saw the lovely rich brown earth, that his ploughing has revealed, which is formed of a mix of limestone brash with a layer of clay, possibly a type of Fuller’s Earth. I stopped at the entrance to Wittantree Farm, which is important locally being named after the place where the moot, or meeting place, of the Bisley Hundred was held. The Hundreds were the ancient administrative units which all had their central moot place where the jurisdiction of the hundred was held once a month and attended by all adult men of free status. All hundreds are called by their moot place where the 'witangemot' convened. The name of this farm outside the village with the place name ‘Wittantree’, that looks like ‘Tree of the Wittan’, suggests that this was the meeting place. Significant trees were often sites of Anglo Saxon moots. 

I stood on the side of the road looking back to Stancombe Beech Farm shop which is behind the trees on the far side of the field. They generally grow vegetable crops on this field, as well as swathes of sunflowers these days. Ashley is a keen archaeologist and in their fields has found Roman coins, brooches, as well as small neolithic stone axe heads and arrows. Bisley is well known as being a small Roman settlement close to the old road from Corinium (now called Cirencester) to Glevum, (now called Gloucester), which was the lowest bridging point on the River Severn (which the Romans called Sabrina).

The Cotswold limestone wall is a typical feature of the area, but as is so common now they are falling into disrepair. Only the richest farmers can afford to keep them maintained. This section is a nearly all that is left of the field’s boundary on this side of the road.