National Trust

71104*0

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Description:  The Short Wood earthwork is comprised of a low bank and internal ditch which formerly enclosed a substantial area within the eastern half of the Country Park. The north and north-west sides of the enclosure lie outside the Country Park and do not survive as a surface monument. Its course is, however, recorded on the Coberley Tithe map of 1838 (Glos RO MF 1126\62) when Short Wood covered 61 acres (c.25 hectares). The northern boundary shown on the Tithe map appears as a crop mark visible on aerial photographs (eg, Clifford 1964, plate III), and this is plotted on Fig 12. The earthwork appears to have gone largely unnoticed by archaeologists until the site was investigated by E.M. Clifford in 1951, when the slight bank and internal ditch proved to measure less than 0.5m high\deep (Clifford 1964). Although the latest finds within the construction of the bank dated to the Roman period, it is generally accepted on morphological grounds that the earthwork represents an enclosure of post-Roman, probably medieval, construction. Further excavation on the earthwork, and in the enclosure itself, was prompted by construction of the access road into the Country Park in 1978 (Darvill 1979; 1981a), during which the agricultural character of the earthwork was confirmed.
The precise function of the enclosure is not known. The place- name Short Wood was first documented in 1601 (Jurica 1981, 175), and there can be no certainty that the earthwork was originally constructed to contain woodland: Clifford (1964, 44) noted that the earthwork was large enough to control stock.
The location of the site archive and finds from Clifford's excavation of 1951 are unknown; Darvill's records and finds, which included material of prehistoric, Roman, and post- medieval date, were deposited with Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery (Accession no.s 1978:428; 603; 787-89).

Country:  England

County:  Gloucestershire

District:  Tewkesbury

Parish:  Coberley

Grid Reference:   SO932166

Map Reference:  [EPSG:27700] 393209, 216638

Period:  1066 - 1539

Subject:  ENCLOSURE, EARTHWORK

Identifiers: 
[ADS] Depositor Id: 71104*0
[ADS] Associated Id: HBSMR Id: MNA137646
[ADS] Import RCN: NTSMR-MNA137646

People Involved: 
[Publisher] National Trust