© Somerford Keynes Parish Council and Contributors 2011-2 Welcome to Somerford Keynes, a parish on the Gloucestershire border five miles south of Cirencester. There has been a Christian settlement here since at least 685, the year the building of Gloucester Cathedral started. We also know the Romans were here, and archaeological digs before gravelling have shown evidence of much earlier occupation. Until 1897 we were in Wiltshire. On the formation of the civil parishes and proper County Councils in that year the locals chose to be in Gloucestershire (by 3 votes to 2!!). In those far-off days we had a pub, a vicar to ourselves, a school and probably several shops. We still have the pub, but now share our vicar with many other parishes. The last shop was on the site of the building now called “The Old Post Office”, which closed some 20 years ago. There was clearly a shop on the site of “The Old Tallet” on Mill Lane corner- shop signs were in evidence on the original building in the 1990s. The school, on the corner of Church Lane, closed in 1968. If you attended it, the current owner and our History Group would like to hear your stories. The current resident population, about 400, is not much different from the censuses of a hundred years ago, but these days there are far more houses. The non-resident population has swelled with the creation of the holiday village to the south, among the old gravelpits. This new village will have many more houses than Somerford Keynes when fully built in some years time, though they cannot be lived in full time. The area is called Lower Mill Estate and has its own website. Shorncote is a small hamlet around the redundant church of All Saints.  The name is said to mean “cottage in a muddy puddle”. The parish is completed by a few isolated farm buildings, and, oddly, a couple of properties on the edge of Ewen. The parish includes the greater part of Keynes Country Park, now privately operated, and has the infant river Thames flowing through it. The river is crossed by Neigh Bridge, probably the site of an ancient ford from which we get our name, which means “ford that can only be crossed in summer”. The river does usually dry up in the summer months, and thus is not good for fish and aquatic species. Across the bridge, in Poole Keynes parish, lies the small Neigh Bridge Country Park, very popular in summer, as there is no charge for using it, and ample parking. The civil parish today comprises the village of Somerford Keynes, the hamlet of Shorncote and, to the south of the Spine Road, a large new development of second homes around worked out gravel pits known as Lower Mill Estate. The River Thames forms approximately our western boundary, the Swill Brook, a tributary, the southern boundary, The County Ditch the eastern boundary, and the South Cerney to Ewen Road our northern boundary. The boundary is not of course quite as simple as that, as it also runs through a lake and other obstacles. We beat the bounds at Rogationtide in 2000, just to be sure! A large scale map of the parish can be found in the village hall. The plan above shows that Cirencester sewage works is just outside our boundary ( top right corner cut off). As a result we think we might be the largest village in the country not connected to public sewers, unless you know differently. This is the entry for Somerford in the Domesday Book, written about 1086. You can see that shorthand is not a modern invention. The translation (expanded) reads: LAND OF THE BISHOP OF  LISIEUX The Bishop also holds SOMERFORD. Alfwald held it before 1066; it paid tax for 10 hides. Land for 7 ploughs, of which 5 hides in lordship; 3 ploughs there; 5 slaves; 14 villagers and 8 smallholders with 4 ploughs. A mill which pays 10s; meadow, 100 acres; woodland 3 furlongs long and 2 furlongs wide. Value £7 So where do we get our knowledge of Somerford in AD 685? From the Charters of Malmesbury Abbey, now online with translation! And Earlier? How about 3000 years earlier, the Bronze Age. Archaeologists in 1999 found evidence that there was a boundary line between Somerford and Ashton just where the boundary is today, while exploring before gravel digging on the Hill’s site. This item appeared in British Archaeology in November 1999.