Stonesfield
| Stonesfield | |
| Oxfordshire | |
|---|---|
 Stonesfield | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP393170 |
| Location: | 51°51’4"N, 1°25’50"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 1,527 (2011) |
| Post town: | Witney |
| Postcode: | OX29 |
| Dialling code: | 01993 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | West Oxfordshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Witney |
| Website: | stonesfield.info |
Stonesfield is a village about five miles north of Witney, in Oxfordshire, about ten miles north-west of Oxford, on the crest of an escarpment.
The parish runs down to the River Glyme at Glympton and Wootton about three miles to the north-east. South of Stonesfield, below the escarpment, is the River Evenlode which touches the southern edge of the parish.
At the centre of Stonesfield stands the 13th-century church of St James the Great[1] as well as a Wesleyan chapel, Stonesfield Methodist Church, slightly further west.[2]
The village is known for Stonesfield slate, a form of Cotswold stone mined particularly as a roofing stone and also a rich source of fossils. The architecture in Stonesfield features many old Cotswold stone properties roofed with locally mined slate along with some late 20th-century buildings and several properties under construction.[3] The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,527.
Name
The Domesday Book of 1086 records Stonesfield as Stunsfeld, meaning "fool's field". It was still spelt "Stunsfield" as late as 1712[4] and Stuntesfield in 1854[5] before mutating to its present place name under the influence of the fame of the Roman mosaic discovered in one of its fields,[6] its slate quarries, and the dinosaur fossils discovered there.
Geology
Stonesfield is on the Taynton Limestone Formation, a type of Cotswold stone that until the 20th century was mined as a roofing stone called Stonesfield slate. It is common on roofs of older buildings in the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire. Many of the older buildings of the University of Oxford have Stonesfield slate roofs. The quarries were also one of Britain's richest sources of Middle Jurassic vertebrate fossils.
History
Under Roman rule, a road was constructed from Watling Street just north of the former Catuvellauni capital Verlamion (Roman Verulamium and modern St Albans) to the Dobunni capital Corinium (modern Cirencester), probably incorporating older British trails.[7] Because Fosse Way continued to Aquae Sulis (Bath), known as 'Aquamannia' in the early Middle Ages, this major thoroughfare became known as Akeman Street. The portion of the road passing just south-east of Stonesfield is now preserved as part of the Oxfordshire Way. Due east of the modern village, a major Roman villa was built just north of the road, probably in the 3rd or 4th century although coins as early as the 1st-century reign of Vespasian were possibly discovered nearby.[8] It has been variously identified as the home of a wealth Romanized Briton,[9] the estate of an officer of the Romano-British rebel Allectus,[10] and the estate of an officer of Count Theodosius and his imperial dynasty.[11] About one mile south of Stonesfield, on the other side of the River Evenlode and in the next parish, the remains of the North Leigh Roman Villa survive in the care of English Heritage.
Stonesfield's slate quarries produced the first fossils to be formally identified as those of a non-avian dinosaur.[12] A partial femur found in 1676 was published by Robert Plot as belonging to a Roman war elephant and then to a Biblical giant; the specimen was lost but later identified from Plot's illustration and description as belonging to a megalosaur.[13][12] The fossils used by Buckland are now displayed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
On 25 January 1712, a tenant farmer named George Handes or Hannes rediscovered the old Roman villa while ploughing the Chesthill Acre fields.[4] He tricked his landlord, Richard Fowler of Great Barrington, Gloucestershire, into allowing him to dig around his fields before revealing what he had found, leading to a prolonged dispute over ownership and the rights to income from the many visitors who came from Oxford and abroad.[14] Ultimately, three large mosaics were uncovered,[8] the largest of which featured the Roman god Bacchus holding a thyrsus and riding a panther.[15] Oxford academics and their guests destroyed these, removing fragments piecemeal as souvenirs,[16] although Thomas Hearne, Bernard Gardiner, and others created illustrations and descriptions while it was still largely whole[17] and the Ashmolean Museum was able to acquire some hypocaust flue-tiles and the base of a pillar.[5] The antiquaries William Stukeley[14] and Richard Gough blamed the destruction on the tenant's maliciousness and "the mob, who refused to pay for seeing it";[8] the owners were also accused of salting the site with additional coins from other sources once they saw the profit from their original discoveries.[11] The site was neglected after the initial interest waned, however, and as late as 1780 the antiquarian Daines Barrington reported that the mosaic found in 1712 survived "in tolerable preservation".[14] Around that time, a second excavation took place, revealing a smaller room and parts of the villa's baths.[14] The careless enclosure of Stonefield's common lands in 1801 caused the site of the Roman villa to be divided among 3 different owners, who seem to have quickly removed the last of the known ruins.[8] By 1806, Gough's new edition of William Camden's Britannia reported it "destroyed, except some of the borders... and part of the corners"; James Brewer's 1813 Beauties of England and Wales noted that even the relics on the Duke of Marlborough's new land had not been preserved;[8] and John Yonge Akerman found it "totally destroyed" by 1858.[5] Despite George Allen's interest in aerial archaeology around Oxfordshire, he never bothered to photograph the site.[15]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Stonesfield) |
- Stonesfield Village (Parish Council)
References
- ↑ "History of the Church". http://www.stonesfieldparishchurch.org/about-us/history-of-the-church.
- ↑ Stonesfield Methodist Church
- ↑ Stonesfield Village
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Taylor 1941, p. 1.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Taylor 1941, p. 8.
- ↑ Taylor 1941, pp. 2 & 5.
- ↑ Salzman 1939, pp. 271–281.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Taylor 1941, p. 7.
- ↑ Taylor 1941, p. 2.
- ↑ Taylor 1941, p. 5.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Taylor 1941, p. 4.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Sarjeant 1997.
- ↑ Plot 1677, p. 142.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Taylor 1941, p. 6.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Taylor 1941, p. 9.
- ↑ Taylor 1941, pp. 1, 3, 5–7.
- ↑ Taylor 1941, pp. 1–3.
- A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 11 pp 181-194: Parishes: Stonesfield (Victoria County History)
- Beeson, C. F. C. (1989). Simcock, A.V.. ed. Clockmaking in Oxfordshire 1400–1850 (3rd ed.). Oxford: Museum of the History of Science, Oxford. p. 67. ISBN 0-903364-06-9.
- William Buckland (1824). "Notice on the Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield". Transactions of the Geological Society of London. 2 1 (2): 390–396. doi:10.1144/transgslb.1.2.390. https://zenodo.org/record/1448577.
- Gray, Howard L (1959). The English Field Systems. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; Merlin Press. pp. 84, 510.
- Gunther, R. T. (1925). "Early Science in Oxford". Isis 8 (2). doi:10.1086/358409.
- Robert Plot (1677), The Natural History of Oxford-Shire, Being an Essay toward the Natural History of England, Oxford: Sheldonian Theater, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/23488.
- A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 1 pp 271-281: Romano-British remains: Roads (Victoria County History)
- Sarjeant, William A. S. (1997). "The Earliest Discoveries". in Farlow, James O.; Brett-Surman, Michael K.. The Complete Dinosaur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 3–11. ISBN 978-0-253-33349-0. https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780253333490/page/3.
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2
- Taylor, M. V. (1941). "The Roman Tessellated Pavement at Stonesfield, Oxon.". Oxoniensia (Oxford Architectural and Historical Society) VI: 1–8. http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1941/taylor.pdf.