The tract of land which ultimately became the parish of Nibley is inseparable at this time from its future neighbouring parishes. No evidence has yet been found for any early boundaries
Clear evidence for the earliest settlement in Nibley parish comes from an arable field within Ashen Plains Wood at 195m OD. Here, winter fieldwalking in 1978-81 produced a quantity of worked flints, waste flakes and cores. The assemblage included some burnt flakes, several scrapers one of which may be Mesolithic, and a petit tranchet derivative arrowhead broken at the tip, assigned to the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. This quantity and type of material is believed to be acceptable as denoting a Neolithic settlement. Finds of 6 flint cores and a cowrie shell in the same field have been published1. Elsewhere in Nibley’s ploughed fields fieldwork in the 1980s produced a few unworked flints in random locations. During the 1880s two polished flint axe fragments were found and recorded, one from Westridge Wood and one from the lower slopes of Stinchcombe Hill.
The middle and late Bronze Ages left no mark on Nibley regarding field monuments or dateable material, but this period and the ensuing Iron Age saw great land clearance and very probably the inauguration of systems of so-called Celtic fields. Vestiges of these have been observed, especially above the level of cultivation in Nibley’s eastern valley.
Nibley’s only field monument of note is the Iron Age hill-fort known as Brackenbury Ditches.
It is not easy to attempt any reconstruction of territorial dependence devolving on the Brackenbury Ditches site when the neighbouring sites are so dissimilar and at such distances away. It may however be noted that extensive areas of surviving Celtic fields, already mentioned in the eastern part of Nibley parish, are present along the slopes of many hills nearby. These include vestiges below the hill-fort itself at Stumpwell Lane (ST741946), at Stancombe near the villa site (ST743974), and at Waterley Bottom (ST772964). It is of interest that in each case and also at Clingre in Stinchcombe parish where the surviving field system is most clearly to be seen, the fields occupy land lying at c. 95-105m OD. Also in most of these relict systems, the small roughly square fields are overlain by strip lynchets, indicating later use of the same, easily worked soils.
Evidence for the Roman presence in Nibley itself is limited to a handful of abraded coarse pottery sherds picked up in 1980 after ploughing in Churchfield (ST736949). A bronze coin is reported from c. ST743953 found after a delivery of a load of manure, and a possible Roman brooch found by a treasure hunter at an unknown spot complete the dismal list.
The paucity of Roman evidence is the more surprising in view of the quantity of material and number of sites known in the immediate neighbourhood. The former detached part of Nibley parish, field name In Chestley, is no more than 50m E of the Stancombe Park villa site, preserved down the centuries as an enclave. After its excavation in 18452 the arbitrary placing of the OS symbol for ‘villa’ on an extensive site could have been misplaced in the pre-grid reference days. Lacking modern methods and standards it yet appears to have been a very large and sophisticated building, having ‘an atrium, the roof supported by a double row of columns, a heated suite of rooms, tessellated pavement similar in design to one at Woodchester’. Purnell built a museum in his park at Stancombe to house the finds. In 1833 his daughter gave some or all of what then remained to Gloucester City Museum. Walls in and around Stancombe Park included Roman masonry, some of it said to show signs of burning.
The assumed site of the villa, to the west of the detached portion of North Nibley parish, named Chestley. Stancombe Park appears at the top of the map.
A minor road, generally accepted as Roman, runs along the crest of Breakheart Hill, forming the parish boundary for some 4 km and it is thought that it headed towards a Severn crossing at Arlingham. A service road to the villa may have branched off, so linking it with the Roman Cotswold road network and with the major sites at Uley and Kingscote.
During the M5 motorway construction a Roman kiln site and probable settlement turned up at Michaelwood Farm, Lower Wick (ST711959). Pottery here was early, from the C2, as was the second site investigated at Crossways (ST720972).
A third site at Upper Wick (ST718968) was a probable settlement of late C4. These sites, and Hogsdown, are all in Alkington parish next to Nibley.
It will be seen that within a half kilometre radius and some 3km from Stancombe the names Upper, Lower and Middle Wick occur, as well as Wick Green and Goldwick. The OE element ‘wic’ may denote a salt-producing centre, inapplicable here, or a secondary settlement, particularly a dependent dairy farm. The Vale of Berkeley abounds with these and it would be strange for just this group of ‘wicks’ to be so named, although Goldwick probably was. An alternative derivation is from Latin ‘vicus’, a small administrative unit in late Roman times. Taking into account the considerable archaeological evidence and proximity to an important villa, the Latin-derived name seems acceptable here.
To the south of the parish is a group of fields named Wickley and Weekley. This was an open field which so continued until at least 1598. The suffix ‘leah’ – a clearing in woodland. If ‘vicus’ is again involved, the farm nearby significantly named ‘Bury Hill’, a meeting place for 5 footpaths today, may be expected to produce some archaeological support for this hypothesis.
Lynchets already noted to the north of the Stancombe villa site are considered to be part of its estate. This must have been but a fragment of it, and probably sequel to earlier hill-fort domination from Brackenbury Ditches would be the assumption of the territory by the Roman or Romano-British owner of the villa. No firm evidence for such continuity of land-use has yet been demonstrated here, as it has been elsewhere in Gloucestershire, but the possibility may be born in mind.
Notes
This section has been taken, with minor alterations, from North Nibley, a Study of Settlement and Land Use in a South Gloucestershire Parish, by Joyce M Popplewell (1982).
1 K Oakley Cowrie Shell and Flint Cores from Ashen Plains, Dursley. TBGAS vol 64 (1943)
2 PB Purnell (Communication) Journal of British Archaeological Association vols II and IV
North Nibley One-Place-Study 