Living Near the Edge: the Wormington to Sapperton Gas Pipeline

Archaeological investigations were carried out between 2006 and 2010 in advance of the construction of a gas pipeline between Wormington and Sapperton in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. Early Neolithic and Beaker/Early Bronze Age pits found in the southern part of the route, near Winstone, suggest transitory occupation. Early Bronze Age cremation graves on lower ground, near Stanway, were associated with two slightly later ring-ditches, and another Bronze Age ring-ditch was excavated at Foxcote Hill. An Iron Age settlement on Salter’s Hill, Winchcombe, included an Early Iron Age roundhouse, while Middle Iron Age grain storage pits here and elsewhere indicated other farming settlements. Late Iron Age and Roman occupation was identified in the High Wolds. A fragmentary sequence of Anglo-Saxon ‘boundary’ burials was found at the southern end of the route near Sapperton. In the same area, two 12th to 13th-century buildings near Overley Wood may have been part of the medieval settlement of Pinbury.