A Romano-British and Medieval Settlement Site at Stoke Road, Bishop's Cleeve, Gloucestershire: Excavations in 1997

Excavations at Stoke Road, Bishop’s Cleeve uncovered Romano-British agricultural enclosures, small-scale ironworking and a burial plot dating to the third and fourth centuries AD. Dawn Enright and Martin Watts place these discoveries beside evidence of Saxon and medieval activity to trace how one part of the Gloucestershire countryside was used across many centuries.

The Saxon evidence is slight: a small post-built structure, possibly a temporary shelter, dated by a single pottery sherd. Medieval occupation left clearer marks in garden plots, toft boundaries and a building with a cobbled surface and stone-lined drain. Several waterlogged pits preserved biological remains rarely recovered from comparable rural sites in Gloucestershire, offering an unusually close view of the material traces of everyday life.