BACAS has published two new reports, on Lilliput Farm, Cold Ashton, and the Coffin Field, Saltford.
The southern slopes of Lilliput Farm, Cold Ashton, South Gloucestershire were surveyed between 2013 and 2018, and an area of approximately 30 hectares was covered. The area was associated with personalities of the Bath cultural elite during the eighteenth century, who had an effect on the landscape, and prior to that had been on the periphery of the Battle of Lansdown during the English Civil War. Its boundaries in the south correspond with county and Saxon charter boundaries, and there were barrows taking the landscape back to prehistory. The new report describes the geophysical surveys of each of the fields (magnetometry, twin-probe resistance and in some cases, resistivity profiling) in turn and then considers the whole landscape. There are two annexes: PowerPoint walkthroughs of the resistivity profiles at the Lilliput barrows and the Hermitage.
Saltford Environment Group (SEG) have been researching and recording the history of the village. As part of this research a field to the south of the village has been of particular archaeological interest. It is known locally as the Coffin Field. In 1948 a Roman stone coffin complete with a skeleton of a young man was found. Trial trenches unearthed pottery fragments, coins, nails, and utensils together with ‘oyster shells too numerous to record’. In recent years metal detectorists have discovered Roman pottery, glass. etc. In 2018 BACAS and SEG carried out an excavation. This report constitutes the findings from the excavation and post analysis/assessment of the finds recovered. The excavation was carried out between the 13th to 15th August 2018.
Photo, © Rick Buettner