Bremhill sat towards the fringes of Chippenham’s great Anglo-Saxon royal estate, yet by Domesday in 1086 it belonged to Malmesbury Abbey. The parish church of St Martin has Anglo-Saxon origins and appears to be set within an oval enclosure adjoining the rest of the village. The speaker has noticed such enclosures elsewhere in England, and much of this talk will focus on their origins and likely significance for understanding the Anglo-Saxon landscape.

Dr Simon Draper is assistant editor for the Oxfordshire Victoria County History (VCH), having previously worked for the VCH in Gloucestershire, where he now lives. He is a landscape archaeologist by training with a keen interest in place-names and the Anglo-Saxon period. His doctoral thesis on his native Wiltshire was revised and published as Landscape, Settlement and Society in Roman and Early Medieval Wiltshire (2006).

Recorded on 12th September 2020