Extensive Urban Survey - Gloucestershire
Matthew Tilley, Tim Grubb, 2008. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000287. How to cite using this DOI
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- ADS Collection: 806
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000287
- How to cite using this DOI
Extensive Urban Survey
Matthew Tilley & Tim Grubb,
2008
Introduction
The Gloucestershire Historic Towns Survey was undertaken between 1995 and 1998 by Antonia Douthwaite and Vince Devine of the Gloucestershire County Council Archaeology Service and was funded by English Heritage as part of a national programme of county-based extensive urban surveys of small towns in England. All of the 37 settlements included in the survey once had, or have now, some urban characteristics, and range in date and type from the Roman towns of the Cotswolds through to the Post-medieval industrial settlements of the Forest of Dean and Stroud valleys. Not all the settlements are urban at the end of the twentieth century: some are now greenfield sites and others are small villages, although a few have survived as urban foci for modern communities. Both Gloucester and Cirencester were omitted from the project since they were identified by English Heritage as major historic towns, with a considerable history of archaeological investigation meriting individual and detailed study.
The extensive urban surveys were designed as tripartite projects to include: the enhancement of the county Sites and Monuments Record (SMR), in order to provide a comprehensive database for each settlement, the preparation of assessment reports which would summarise the state of archaeological knowledge for each settlement and the design of a strategy for the management of the archaeology of each town to be implemented mainly through the planning system. The database is now held as part of the Gloucestershire SMR, while the assessment and strategy reports each take the form of separate volumes covering the administrative districts of Cheltenham, Cotswold, Forest of Dean, Stroud and Tewkesbury. All three phases of the projects were based on the use of secondary, published sources, involved no fieldwork and were tightly constrained by the available resources.
