Neil's geo-fizzing in the Heavens valley

Yesterday, my blip subject told me that her husband Neil has had found a lot of old pottery in the Heavens valley on his rambles with their dog Lily. He is an archaeologist and has been exploring the history of the Horns and Heavens valleys which lie right behind our house. The story so far is of discovering previously unknown medieval mills on the Lime Brook behind our house, identification of old walls and unusual land-use on and under the meadows and a big range of old pottery and other artefacts.

He has been able to take the pottery for identification by experts who say he has found not only the expected 16th and 17th century building remains and pottery, but also 12th century pottery and now sizeable amounts of Roman pottery from throughout the period of their occupation of Britain.

He emailed me this morning to say he would be trying geo-physical mapping of some of the Heavens valley near the stream which has formed it as it cuts down from the head of the coombe. Neil's work is very exciting to me as it confirms what i have always felt, that the valley has been an important local centre of activity for thousands of years. Now he has also found some Iron Age remains which takes the story even further back. This shouldn't be surprising as there is an Iron Age hill fort on the hill opposite, and on the other side of that hill there is Woodchester where one of the finest Roman mosaics in the whole of Britain was discovered several centuries ago. But any new discovery is important, so I am fully supportive of all that Neil does and feel privileged to hear his stories at first hand and in great detail.

I don;t want to say too much of the details but it gets better and better. This year will be fascinating as he can start to dig pits again with the improved weather to hopefully verify his theories. Before he does that the geo-fizz must come first and he was helped today by his friend Wendy who also lives locally. You can see them both in the background of my picture as they mark out the grid lines where they would be using the geo-fizz equipment that Neil has borrowed for a few weeks.

I have added some other pictures here to my Flickr gallery, of various scenes around the valley, and its stream running down the hillside with the views down the valley towards Stroud. This scene is about three hundred yards from the back of our house, which is the last white one on the right beside the trees in the distance.

On the far distant hilltop is another Iron Age hill fort at Haresfield Beacon. I expect I will visit the ancient woods close by to there soon, when the bluebell season begins as they are famous for the splendour and masses of blue flowers found there. My flickr gallery also has pictures from up on the Cotswold escarpment in that area.