Sherston Walks A guide to the village including 10 circular walks with maps in the surrounding countryside About this guide The Wiltshire Parish of Sherston lies within This guide has been produced by the Sherston the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Footpath Group set up by the Parish Council Beauty and this guide is aimed at helping in 2008. Its remit is ‘to promote the use by local residents and visitors alike to enjoy its all of the rights of way in the parish, ensuring countryside through a series of 10 circular walks. they are in good condition and free from It also includes a fascinating introduction to the obstruction‘. Its first project has been the Parish, particularly its geology and early history, publication of this guide which has involved together with a trail around the village with its hundreds of hours of work all undertaken on a many fine and interesting buildings. voluntary basis. We hope you find it useful and the walks themselves as delightful as we do. Cirencester Sherston: an introduction Minety Tetbury herston is situated in the southern a marble – it is named Swindon Cotswold Hills in the north west corner after Charnwood S of Wiltshire. Some of the character Forest in Oxfordshire, Malmesbury of the area, like the rest of the Cotswolds, where it was once Westonbirt derives from the underlying Jurassic limestone, used for making Easton Grey and the long history of the ground under the ornamental fireplaces. feet of residents and visitors to the village The name was given SHERSTON M4 still has an influence today. The rocks of in 1799 by William Badminton Wootton Bassett Sherston Parish were laid down in a shallow Smith, who made sea between 165 and 160 million years ago. the first national At this time, ‘Sherston’ was about 30°N – geological map and Chippenham roughly the latitude the Canary Islands are who started his today – part way through a long journey researches in the Bath area. ‘Forest Marble’ is north from the southern hemisphere, borne thus one of the earliest geological names. by moving tectonic plates. The seas were The seas in which the Forest Marble was warm with strong currents – similar to the deposited were inhabited by a variety of modern Bahamas. This environment gives creatures, largely shellfish, and you can see rise to ooliths, which are tiny egg-shaped some of these preserved as fossils. The most bodies formed by precipitation of lime common fossil remains are shell debris, the (calcium carbonate) on a minute nucleus of remains of long-ago beaches and sandbanks. sand. Deposition of these in the sea, and There were larger creatures in the seas of compression by sediments deposited on top, the time, but they stayed further out to sea has given rise to the rock (oolitic limestone), where there was more to eat – hence their which underlies Sherston. remains are not found here. On Oolitic limestone is a good the adjacent land masses the building stone, used extensively dinosaurs held sway, including in Bath and the Oxford colleges Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur as well as Cotswold villages like to be named, whose remains have Sherston. The old houses in the been found in rocks of the same village are largely built of, and on, age near Oxford. The first birds a hard oolitic limestone called the (now the only surviving relatives Forest Marble. This rock underlies of the dinosaurs) were beginning the whole Parish and can be seen to take to the air. The vegetation in small disused quarries and road would have looked odd to our cuttings. It is not strictly speaking eyes – there were no flowering plants then, but there were swampy forests certainly they date from the end of the last benefits the predominantly a written document (recorded of such plants as conifers, cycads and the ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The last ice arable agriculture, though as ‘Scorranston’) was in 896AD, maidenhair fern tree Ginkgo. A specimen age lasted about 100,000 years, and a large there are wetter patches with but the settlement had clearly of this ‘living fossil’ species, apparently icecap accumulated over most of Britain. more clay as you may discover then been in existence for some unchanged since the Jurassic, is planted near Though the main icecap did not quite reach on your walks. time. Sherston later re-appears Sherston Post Office – a living link to the Sherston, the landscape would have been As soon as the ice began in records describing the Battle time when its ancestral relatives grew on tundra-like, with accumulations of ice and to melt at the end of the last of Sherston in 1016. This was the islands round about the present site of snow on higher ground. We now know that ice age, hunters are likely part of the struggle for the Sherston. at the end of the ice age the temperature to have moved in, followed throne of England between the After the Forest Marble had been rose remarkably quickly and this would have by pastoralists. Adjacent Saxon Edmund Ironside and deposited, the sea level began to rise, and a areas had significant human the Danish King Cnut (Canute). succession of other rocks was deposited on populations in the Bronze and The battle was inconclusive, top, culminating in a thick layer of chalk in Iron Ages. However, no local but Edmund settled the matter the succeeding Cretaceous Period. All this prehistoric remains have been found, though by dying later that year, leaving Cnut to has gone – eroded away in the succeeding the area may well have been cultivated become a great early mediaeval king. Local 60 million years of the Tertiary Period when in places given the relatively well-drained interest centres around a Saxon warrior Britain once again rose above the sea. One fertile soils. It was the Romans who first left called John, who was nicknamed Rattlebone legacy of the Tertiary Period is the 3° NW-SE significant traces on the landscape, most because of the lusty blows he gave with his slope of the Parish, reflecting the slope of the notably with the Fosse Way (the Roman sword. Edmund promised Rattlebone lands in underlying rocks, which were horizontal when Road from Exeter to Lincoln) which forms the Sherston if he won, and though Rattlebone laid down. The rocks may have been tilted by generated large volumes of meltwater, roaring southern boundary of the Parish. In 1987 the was mortally wounded he fought on, the uplift of the Alps far to the south. down the existing valleys and excavating them remains of a small Romano-British farm house clutching a tile to his wound to staunch the A striking feature of the area is the close to their present depth. The excavated were discovered to the north of the village. blood. This image lives on in the Rattlebone trench-like valleys which hold the River Avon material was deposited on the plains beyond The farm apparently grew and prospered Inn (see below) and also the logo of the and its tributaries. The modern river is not Malmesbury, or swept out to sea. until it was attacked and destroyed, possibly local primary school. For more history about large enough to have cut them – almost Another legacy of the ice age is the large in the early 5th century. This may have been Sherston take the village walk! amount of broken stone (brash) in the soils the result of a Saxon raid, or a local dispute which you will see if you cross a ploughed following the breakdown of law and order field. This was mostly produced by weathering after Roman troops were recalled from Britain. of the exposed surface rock by frost, freeze- The remains of the last owners of the farm thaw and other similar processes. The soils of were found under the fallen buildings, and the area have benefited, however, by being a subsequent archaeological investigation south of the main icecap. Most areas of suggested that they were murdered. Britain are covered in a layer of sticky boulder At some stage after this a Saxon clay derived from the moving ice – in Sherston settlement grew up on the flat top of a spur Parish the soils are free of this, and thus are of land formed by tributaries of the River relatively well-drained and easy to work. This Avon. The first known mention of Sherston in 10 A village walk 8 9 he walk starts in the High Street at the town planning. before. The purpose was Foresters Arms. Post Office. Stand with the Post Office Sherston seems to raise funds for the 4 The narrow road joining the High Street 6 T on your left and look down the High to have been 4 2 Parish Church. After the is Swan Barton, the word ‘Barton’ indicating Street. The houses were built wide apart to a moderately 7 religious reforms of the a farmstead. The ‘Swan’ element derives from accommodate the weekly market established successful small 5 3 1 1 11 16th century it may have The Swan, the largest when Sherston was given Borough status town for a while, but been sold and used as a of Sherston’s old pubs, sometime between 1170 and 1241. Borough the market died out 12 poorhouse, housing the which occupied the status was granted by the King to a local by the 16th century poor and needy. One way corner of Swan Barton landowner who hoped to make a profit from probably because in which funds were raised and the High Street.