Wednesday 19 February  – Lilyhorn Roman Villa and Local Pre-history, Pete Moore

 

Another full house for us to learn about our unique local (but totally hidden) Roman Villa. Sited at the top of the hill above Bournes Green in ‘Church Piece’ field (wrongly indicated on O.S. maps incidentally), the site is protected by Historic England. Pete took us through the development of Roman villas in Britain, explaining that the Lilyhorn villa seems to have been the second largest in the Cotswolds (after Woodchester), and in the top 10 in GB, comprising over 25 rooms and numerous outbuildings.

Initially identified in 1700, the first (and only significant) excavation was conducted by Thomas Baker in 1841 and 1845. The site already largely decimated, over the years much of the stonework and mosaics have been scattered. Small finds include pottery fragments and metal fastenings (in Stroud Museum), a significant hoard of coins (what was not traded is in Corinium Museum), glass fragments, tiles, oyster shells, and.. skeletons (possibly of slaves).

Clearly a villa of some opulence there are questions as to why it was sited there. The situation overlooking the valley is certainly key, and its possible extensive sphere of influence over local farmland. It followed on from local prehistoric and Iron Age sites such as Money Tump and Bagendon. Pete’s comprehensive overview was fascinating, highlighting many of the answered and unanswered questions about the site.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 15 January – Slide Show – Mike Mills and Beyond

A full house in the France Lynch Church Rooms to hear four members of the Committe present a selection of “slides” both from the Stan Gardiner / Lionel Padin / Mike Mills collection and from a series of more recent (1960s/70s/80s) negatives from the Stroud News and Journal (SNJ).

Peter Dover, started off the presentation with a selection entitled “Then and Now”.  Using a selection of old photos from the Mike Mills collection, Pete had tracked down the locations and taken a modern photo as close as possible to the viewpoint of the original.  The selection included street and canal towpath views, pubs, schools and a view of the Victoria Steam Joinery Works, where it proved challenging to get to the same viewpoint today.  The picture left shows Victoria Works, with the archive picture on the left and Pete’s modern version on the right. The wooden shed in the old picture is long gone, but the building shapes remain the same.

 

Roger Carnt then continued with a selection entitled “Old and Sporty”. This included several pictures from the SNJ archives of sports teams (some now in our new gallery see next section for details), a few of local “personalities” and some views in and around Chalford, including the one on the right which very clearly shows the area known as Randall’s Green.

 

 

 

 

Camilla Boon followed with a section entitled “Mainly People”.  Photos in this section were exclusively from the 1960s onwards and resulted in a great many comments as people in the audience recognised themselves or others.  As a result of this response and hoping to capture some of the information, we’ve put a few of these photos on a new gallery page here and also on our Group Facebook page here (Private group so you need to join to view and participate) and we’d like to encourage you to look and comment if you think you might recognise anyone. Any information we receive will be recorded in our database along with the photo, so your contributions will be saved for posterity!  The photo on the left shows the interior of the roof of the former Company’s Arms.

 

 

 

Heather Collins concluded the show with a section entited “Miscellaneous”. This had everything from 1970s school photos to older views in and around Chalford, and again one or two of these photos will be in our new gallery and on our Facebook Group page for people to comment on. The photo on the right is an aerial picture of France Lynch (note no Sports and Social Club!) and we’d love to be able to date it more accurately, so if anyone can see any feature missing from or present in the photo which gives more of a clue to the date please contact us here