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You're listening to Digging for meaning? Research from the Oxford School of Archaeology.

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Hello and welcome to the Digging for Meaning podcast. My name is Daniel ERBs Tulo.

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I'm a lecturer in archaeological science at Cranfield University and a research associate at the School of Archaeology at Oxford.

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My day job, I study ancient technology and innovation, especially in the ancient Near East and the Caucasus region.

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Today, though, I want to talk about something a little bit different. Cycling to archaeological sites around Oxford.

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Now, as you can probably tell from my accent, I'm an American transplant and I've been living in Oxford for the past three years.

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And that time I've developed a love for exploring the countryside around the city.

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One of the great things about Oxford is that it's relatively compact, so it's fairly easy to get out and explore in this podcast.

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I'm untuk a little bit about these hidden archaeological gems that are just a short cycle right away.

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So maybe you're a student to just move to Oxford,

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or maybe you've been here for a couple of years and the pandemic has narrowed your travel opportunities and you know,

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you just want to get out of town for the day, but you don't want to take public transportation because, you know, there's a pandemic.

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Or maybe you're a longtime resident of Oxford interested in archaeology and you've been to many of the sites I'm going to talk about.

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But maybe you haven't tried cycling there, or maybe you're just a visitor passing through and want to explore what's outside in the city's hinterland.

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So if any of those categories apply to you, then this podcast is for you.

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Now, first, I'll talk a little bit about what I pack on these longer cycle rides.

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You talk a little bit about what there is to see along the route and of course, talk about the archaeology as well.

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So in terms of what I bring on these cycle trips, I often bring two to three litres of water, especially if it's a hot day,

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bring some sunscreen and my camera phone for navigating directions and also emergencies if I need to give a call.

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I'm also especially for these longer rides, especially doing a pandemic when trying to avoid public transportation.

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I was bringing a few basic tools that would allow me to fix something like a broken chain or flat tire or just adjust my brakes or sea tight.

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I'd have actually gotten a flat tire on a ride outside of Oxford.

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Fortunate I wasn't very far away, but I didn't have anything with me. So from that point on, I started bringing some tools along with me.

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Also, most importantly, I always wear a helmet when I ride it.

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That's really good, good practise to bring a helmet and wear a helmet on these rides in terms of what my bike is.

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It's a fairly basic used Trek hybrid that I purchased on Gumtree last year.

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Roughly like 28 to 30 millimetre tires. So it's not a road bike, but it's not also a kind of fall off roading on mountain bike.

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So I think that should give you a sense of what kind of terrain I'm going over.

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Most of the routes that I'm talking about are almost entirely on paved roads, sometimes of varying quality,

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occasionally short sections on trails, which I sometimes might end up walking just to the last little bit to the site.

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So for each of these different routes, I'll make sure to add the some links that show the exact routes that I mentioned.

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So you can see exactly where to go. These routes tend to avoid the really heavily trafficked roads around the city.

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So the different routes that I am going to talk about are going to somewhat move from closer to more distant sites.

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And just because of the way things work, they move generally from more recent archaeological sites to more ancient ones.

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The first one I want to talk about is God Stone Nunnery. This is a relatively short ride.

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I recommend going up Woodstock Road, cutting across through overcoat.

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And just when you pass the TEMS on your left, you will see a ruined nunnery.

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This is a 12th century nunnery that was most commonly associated with a mistress of King Henry.

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The second, the so-called Fair Rosamond,

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who either was educated at the monastery or ultimately spent her final days there after the affair with the king was over.

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And eventually I think she was buried there as well. And the monastery is mostly ruined now.

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I think there's one kind of chapel still partially standing about without its roof.

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And definitely worth checking out for its TEMS side location and the nearby Trought pub.

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Now, I recommend in order to kind of get a little bit of a different perspective

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to continue instead of going back the way you came to continue through YTN,

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which also has a nice pub, and then swing south and come back in Oxford through Botley Road.

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All told, it's about a little bit less than eight miles. So it's a nice relatively short ride just to get you started.

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Another great short ride. I want to talk about. May not actually qualify as an archaeological site since it's still working church,

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but is a really fantastic site that I think is really worth taking a look at.

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And this is St. Mary's at Iffley. It's a small church. You can get to just by taking the temas path.

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S out of the city and then going up the hill from if we lock.

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And this is a Norman area church, so built in the 12th century and has some absolutely fantastic carvings,

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both on the main doorway in the main entrance to the church and also inside and also on a doorway that is on, I think, the south side of the church.

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And if you've never seen Norman carvings before, they're absolutely spectacular.

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The kind of main facade the front of the church is covered with these really kind of toothy looking crow's beak spurs.

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Anyway, it looks like kind of a star black mouth. Scary looking thing that you go into to the church, but absolutely spectacular.

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And if you look again over to the side on the right exterior door, a smaller door on the south side of the church,

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you'll see a number of really spectacular carvings, including a green man,

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one of these common motifs in ecclesiastical architecture of either a person emerging from

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leaves a person made of leaves or a person having leaves and fully growing out of their mouth.

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It's a really interesting and much, much discussed piece of symbolism.

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But there's a kind of little one there and there are all sorts of other carvings of knights and maybe Dragon as well.

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So definitely worth checking that out. Inside the church, I recommend going inside as well, you can see additional carvings, really spectacular stuff.

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I will say that in recent years they've a lime wash the church to help preserve it.

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And so this strikes me as a little bit too bright at the moment.

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Hopefully it will kind of weather and fade because right now it's kind of really it sort of yellowish white colour.

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But nonetheless, still a definitely a site worth visiting.

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All told, this route. If you take my suggested route, this is about five miles, so another really short one that can be done in an hour to.

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OK, so moving both back in time and significantly farther away is North Lee Roman Villa.

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Now this route takes about twenty nine miles if you loop through Stones Field.

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But if you just want to go out and back, it's kind of a minimum of about 26 miles.

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This is a Roman era villa site. It supposedly has Iron Age origins.

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But the Roman villa at the site was founded and built in the late first or early second century A.D.

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Much of the foundations are exposed. You can see some bits of underfloor heating.

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And there is a mosaic and believe of the kind of early fourth or third century.

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The villa was abandoned in the 5th century A.D. The setting here is really quite nice.

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It's kind of cradled on the hill slope and you have to descend on a path from the main road.

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This is cyclical, but it's pretty steep and it's not paved.

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There is a mosaic there, but it's in a kind of enclosed building with rather low quality plexiglass window.

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So it was hard to see if it wasn't actually open.

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Now, as I said, I recommend incorporating this new leupen and kind of heading north into the village

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of Stones Fieldman coming back along a slightly different route through Combe.

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This is a kind of really the edge of the Cotswolds now.

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So it's starting to get a bit hilly. But there are some really nice kind of views of rolling hills along this route.

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Also in the sort of middle distance range about 20 miles away round that's round trip is a site called The Devil's Quoits.

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That's q u. Oh I. T. S. And this is a henge monument with a stone circle that dates to about the third millennium B.C. And

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the henge part of the monument consists of a bank and ditch encircling the interior stone circle.

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Now, this site is particularly interesting because when I come there, I definitely thought I was going the wrong way.

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It's actually located adjacent to or even partially within a gravel quarry.

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So you're kind of going down this road and you'll constantly be thinking that you might be heading the wrong direction.

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So the charm of this site, I think, is really the hidden discovery aspect that it's really tucked away and not many people know about it.

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The other kind of cool thing about this site is that the stone circle, the stones that make up the stone circle of this conglomerate t putting stone,

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that looks kind of like concrete, but actually it is a natural sedimentary rock.

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And if you're like me, you may wonder what what our quoits. Why is it called the devil's quits?

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How did you get this name?

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Well, the legend goes and many of these stone monuments around Oxfordshire have kind of legends associated with quoits are a game of some kind.

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And the legend goes that the devil was playing this game on a Sunday and God chastised him for, you know, doing frivolous things on the Lord's day.

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And the devil got angry and he tossed his things he was playing the game with.

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And they fell in this area.

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So you'll notice on the route that I will upload to the show notes that this route is an out and back route going through Swinford and Ensham.

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And one of the reasons for this is, in fact, the bridge over the TEMS at Swinford is one of the few bridges over the Thames in this area.

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And I think there's actually a royal decree that forbid any other bridge being built

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over the Thames more than several miles upstream or downstream of this point.

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And it's actually a toll bridge. Believe it or not, which can sometimes backup with cars.

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But when you're cycling, at least I've never had to pay the toll.

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So devils. It's definitely worth checking out. Again, the distance is about 20 miles round trip.

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If you go straight there and straight back. The next site I want to talk about is the site of Chir Brewery Camp located to the southeast of Oxford.

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And this is our fortified Iron Age site.

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It's similar to a hill forward, but in fact, it's a fortification, but not on a hill.

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And this is kind of characteristic fortification that we often see in the first millennium B.C., the Iron Age in Britain.

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This site, because of its so-called moult high Valette, which means it has multiple banks and ditches.

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And it's located near the village of Chani Bassett.

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And so the route that I'm recommending takes you to a village.

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And then you either have to you have to walk about a mile north of the village.

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But it's really worth checking out. I was totally alone when I visited Ideal for the pandemic.

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And a lot of these hill forts seem to potentially used for a variety of different purposes,

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some of them seem to have enclosed settlements, some seemingly did not.

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In this case, a geophysical survey, a way of understanding what is buried beneath the soil without having to excavate.

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A geophysical survey of the site done about 10,

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15 years ago was actually able to identify a number of Iron Age round houses in the signature of the geophysical survey.

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So when you go to the site, the interior will be entirely flat.

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There won't be any kind of mounds within the entire. But when you go there,

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just kind of imagine that there would have been a series of houses and some kind of settlement within the walls of this fortress.

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Well, you're visiting the site to keep an eye out for one. Several hairs that I saw when I visited.

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I'm also hoping to see some red kites there, a bird of prey that you see commonly flying around the Oxfordshire countryside.

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OK. The last two rides I'm going to talk about are for those of you that are really looking to go on a long trek.

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Both of these are about 50 to 55 miles round trip, really a kind of full day adventure.

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But as you'll see in a minute, they're really worth checking out because there's some really spectacular sights.

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So the first set of sights that I want to talk about, the roll right stones.

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These are a series of stone monuments just to the north and a little bit to the west of Chipping Norton.

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And this is, again, in the direction of the Cotswold hills.

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So cycling out there, once you hit the Cotswolds, you're going to get a lot of kind of rolling hills.

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It is beautiful countryside, but just get ready for some climbs, especially once you get out beyond Chipping Norton, those last few miles.

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So because it's hilly, the royal right stones are a set of three separate but probably related monuments that are perched

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on the top of a really nice hill has a nice kind of use of the rolling countryside around.

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And the Rawhide stones consist of three separate but interrelated monuments, the so-called Whispering Knights, the king's men,

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which are a stone circle, and then the King's Stone, a single monolithic stone located across the road from the other two monuments.

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This is important not to miss any one of these.

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You may be able to tell from the names that there is some kind of local legends associated with these monuments.

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The legend goes that King was travelling with his men and which turned to the king,

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to Stone and King's men along with him and the three whispering knights war lagging behind a little bit.

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And the witch met them as she was coming down the hill.

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Legend has it that they were conspiring against the king, and the stones are kind of tilted towards one another.

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So you can kind of get that sense from looking at them. And so the witch turned them to stone as well.

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So local legends aside, actually, these monuments date from very different periods,

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although undoubtedly they would have been eventually considered a kind of unitary whole.

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Once they had been built. So the Whispering Knights is the oldest of the monuments,

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dates to about thirty eight hundred thirty five hundred B.C. belongs to the early Neolithic, whereas the king's men.

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That stone circle dates to the later Neolithic about twenty five hundred B.C.

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Why is the Kingstone is even later, somewhere in the early middle Bronze Age, somewhere about 15 hundred B.C.

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There are a number of other associated myths and stories about these stones.

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For instance, the legend has it that you cannot count the number of King's men.

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But if you somehow manage to and you get the same number three times over, you will allegedly get whatever your heart desires.

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And in fact, the site is still significant to the present day pagan community.

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And you may see if you visit their evidence of their activities.

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For instance, when I was visiting, there were a number of things hung in the trees around the king's men,

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including, interestingly enough, a covered facemask. Undoubtedly some kind of protective ritual going on there.

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Finally, I want to talk about another really long ride this out to, I think in Whitehorse, Huffington Castle and Whalen's Smithee.

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This route is again about between 50 and 55 miles.

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So it's a real long day ride, but certainly doable within within a single day.

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The route to this set of monuments runs through what is called the veil of the white horse.

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And the path is actually mostly flat until the very end.

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When you go up a very steep hill that leads onto a very ancient route of travel known as the Ridgeway,

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along which these different monuments are located. The route that I took went not the direct way that most cars will travel to these monuments,

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but actually went did the climb up that ridge a little bit to the east and then travelled again along this ridge way trail.

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It's a bit rough, but it avoids going up very steep hills where there might be a lot of cars.

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The set of three monuments consists of a chalk figger, the so-called white horse of Buffington,

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although it's a little bit unclear whether it's a horse or some other type of quadruped animal.

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And this is a monument that is about three thousand years old.

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Archaeological excavations have demonstrated dates to the late bronze or early Iron Age,

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and it had to be continuously scoured to maintain the finger because otherwise grass will grow over in,

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the chalk will degrade and it won't be as visible. Until recently, there were village tradition of kind of scouring the right horse.

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Think about this kind of three thousand year old tradition and continuity in this region.

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Directly adjacent to the White Horse is a phantom castle, which is an Iron Age hill fort.

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Dating to the first millennium B.C. and actually this hill for this position and the high point, the highest elevation in all of Oxfordshire.

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So if the weather is nice and the visibility is good, you should get some spectacular views across the landscape.

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Now, a short distance, maybe half mile a mile to the west of Buffington Castle, and you can reach it by travelling again along the Ridgeway route.

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It's a kind of gravel path cycle, but not going to go very fast on.

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It is Whalen's Smithey, which is a much older Neolithic long barrow dating to maybe the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.

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There are actually two burials, one a little bit earlier than the other, and the second larger one than covered the original earlier burial.

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The second barrow has been partially reconstructed.

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And so there are some really nice standing stones, really impressively large stones.

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Tolkien fans will be interested to hear that.

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The site of Whalan Smithey actually served as inspiration for the encounter with the Barrow whites on the Barrier Downs in the Fellowship of the Ring.

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So this trio of sites, Whalen's Smithey,

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I think in Whitehorse and nothing can Castle are certainly amongst the farthest tracks that I've described in this podcast.

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But they're also collectively probably the most well-known sites that I've described.

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So definitely worth taking a ride, but definitely make sure to bring lots of water and bring lots of food.

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And with that, I will wrap up my recommendations of cool archaeological sites to cycle to in Oxfordshire.

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So I hope one or more of these routes has intrigued you and you get out while the weather stays warm and explore some archaeology.

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Thanks for listening and happy riding. Thank you for listening.

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Digging for meaning for more information about this topic, offer any of our other episodes.

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Please go to our Web site at a r c h dot o x dot, ac dot.

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U.K. forward slash podcasts. Thank you.