StrataHistory underfoot

The library of ground

Every place Strata has dug, assembled from its sources and filed by locality and era. A place is reviewed again whenever the ground beneath it is dug afresh.

528 places · 215 localities · last reviewed 27 October 2026
United Kingdom AshfordThis record gathers Swan Lane in the Kent village of Pluckley, part of Ashford's wider parish history. Held by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Domesday in 1086, Pluckley grew around its 13th-century parish church and the Surrenden Dering estate, later becoming known for its ghost stories. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom ChillinghamChillingham, in Northumberland, grew up around a border fortress that began as a monastery and became, by 1344, a licensed quadrangular castle with walls up to 12 feet thick. Kings, an earldom, wartime barracks and a film crew have all passed through it since. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom Wotton-under-EdgeWotton-under-Edge is a market town whose surviving record here centres on one building: the Ancient Ram Inn at Potters Pond, a house and wool-trade workshop raised around 1495-96, later a pub for nearly 150 years, and since the 1960s a guesthouse kept from demolition and known for its haunted reputation. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom High WycombeHigh Wycombe's record here centres on West Wycombe Hill, where an Iron Age camp and Roman-era activity gave way, in the 1740s, to Sir Francis Dashwood's chalk mine and the secretive Hellfire Club, before the tunnels reopened as a show cave in 1951. 1 dig
15 records United Kingdom LincolnLincoln Castle on Drury Lane began in 1068, when William the Conqueror ordered it raised over an earlier Roman legionary fortress. Across nearly a thousand years it has held sieges, a county prison, and a working courthouse, and now keeps one of four surviving originals of the 1215 Magna Carta. 1 dig
16 records United Kingdom Berry PomeroyBerry Pomeroy, in South Devon, grew from a manor named 'Berri' in the Domesday Book of 1086 into a castle raised by the Pomeroy family in the late fifteenth century, then an Elizabethan mansion built by the Seymours within its walls, left to ruin after 1688. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom AltarnunAltarnun gathers its history on Bodmin Moor around Jamaica Inn, a stone coaching inn built in 1750 on ground where an inn had stood since 1547. It served Cornish smuggling routes, sheltered Daphne du Maurier in 1930, and now keeps a museum of smuggling and her work. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom BodminBodmin's recorded ground centres on Bodiniel Road, where a Georgian jail built in 1779 from granite quarried by prisoners of war held more than 35,000 inmates over nearly a century and a half, before closing in 1927 and reopening in 2021 as a hotel and museum. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom InvernessInverness holds Culloden Battlefield, the open moor where the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was defeated by government troops under the Duke of Cumberland on 16 April 1746, a day that ended Highland clan life as it had existed for centuries. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom Fort WilliamFort William's record here gathers around a single point on the A82, beside Glencoe's Episcopal Church of St Mary. Built in 1880 for a divided glen, the church has stood through changing congregations and memorials, while the road beside it became one of Scotland's most dangerous stretches. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom EdinburghEdinburgh's Old Town holds a buried close, a Reformation kirkyard and a market square beneath the castle, each layered with centuries of use. From Mary King's sealed-off street to the gallows and markets of the Grassmarket and the graves of Greyfriars, the ground records plague, covenant, trade and violence in close succession. 3 digs
44 records
A 600-year-old market square Zeppelin Airship L14 Bomb Crater Memorial · 600–2025 A 17th-century graveyard around a Reformation church Anne and Robert Potter · 600–1919 An underground street, now a tourist attraction High Street · 1034–2003
United Kingdom YorkAt Tower Street, beneath Clifford's Tower, York Castle has stood since William the Conqueror raised a timber mound in 1068. Rebuilt in stone for Henry III, besieged, exploded, and turned to a prison, the site carries memory from Roman road to Viking hoard to modern street. 1 dig
15 records United Kingdom Barley-with-Wheatley BoothBarley-with-Wheatley Booth sits beneath Pendle Hill in Lancashire, a sandstone summit worked by named tenants from 1323, shaken by the 1612 witch trials, and later marked by George Fox's 1652 vision that founded the Quakers. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom LancasterLancaster's story gathers on the hill above the River Lune, where a Roman fort gave way to a castle raised by Roger the Poitevin around 1093. Held by the Duchy of Lancaster, it served as prison and court for centuries, closing as a jail only in 2011. 1 dig
15 records United Kingdom LondonLondon is a city of layered ground: a Roman bathhouse beneath a Shadwell monument, a cholera pump traced by John Snow in Soho, a Norman fortress begun by William the Conqueror, and a square of Saxon knights. Plague pits, prisons, markets and cemeteries sit beneath its pavements still. 18 digs
263 records
A prison turned museum in Southwark Clink Street · 99 BC–1989 A Victorian burial ground, still open for burials Colonnade · 2200 BC–2021 A 1960s market hall with the largest concrete dome in Europe West Poultry Avenue · 2800 BC–2000 Central Criminal Court of England and Wales Old Bailey · 170–2024 London's execution ground Hyde Park Place Bayswater Road · 1100–1978 A Victorian school beside a murder site Mitre Square · 73–2020 A Norman castle turned museum St John the Evangelist · 41 BC–2014 A lock between two basins · 1042–1990 A red phone box, Grade II listed K6 Telephone Kiosk In Central Markets · 900–2001 A pedestrian square in London's West End Statue of William Shakespeare · 708–2001 A public square built around a naval victory Trafalgar Square · 708–2020 London's first planned square Covent Garden · 566–1974 A dying Edinburgh preacher's church became Europe's first Coptic church Prince of Teck · 1610 BC–now The garrison that fired on London and paid for it Waterloo Block · 41 BC–1974 The garrison that shelled its own city White Tower · 1080–1974 The knights who fought for a strip of mud outside the wall Aldgate House · 1108–1876 The Father who walked into the cholera ward Roman Bath House · 1508 BC–1983 The doctor who pulled the handle off a killer Poland Street · 1606–now
United Kingdom ArnoldArnold, Nottinghamshire, grew around its parish life and quiet residential streets. Slalom Run sits near St Cyprian's Church, built in 1935 by C. E. Howitt and blessed that May by the Bishop of Southwell, a building that gave this corner of Arnold its settled, modern shape. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom South LuffenhamSouth Luffenham grew around its church and its railway cutting, a village marked by refusal as much as record: Rose Boswell, a Romani teenager, was denied a churchyard grave in 1794 and buried instead within the church, near the corner where a well was later disputed and where the Syston and Peterborough line ran from 1848 to 1966. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom PortsmouthPortsmouth's dockyard ground has carried the weight of empire and its punishments: a parish recorded from 979, the Mary Rose lost offshore in 1545, and, on a single quarterdeck at № 10 Storehouse, an admiral shot in 1757 for failing to do his utmost. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom North LeighNorth Leigh carries an Iron Age fort, a sixty-room Roman villa, a vanished medieval village at Tilgarsley, and a Georgian hunting lodge rebuilt as Eynsham Hall. Saxon burials, a chantry chapel endowed by a grieving widow, and a wartime maternity ward all mark ground later turned hotel and private club. 5 digs
71 records
A house built to keep out the world Eynsham Hall · 800 BC–1981 A mansion that became a maternity ward Estelle Manor · 4000 BC–2025 A widow who buried two sons built a chapel to save them Eynsham Hall · 800 BC–now The mansion built to replace itself Eynsham Hall · 800 BC–1981 A mosaic survived fifteen centuries, then a week Eynsham Hall · 800 BC–1981
United Kingdom SilverstoneSilverstone, Northamptonshire, carries ground that passed from an Iron Age hillfort and a medieval moated farm to an RAF bomber station, and then, from 1948, to a motor racing circuit that staged the first world championship Grand Prix and has held the British Grand Prix in most years since. 3 digs
43 records
A crowd swallowed the racetrack to reach one man 2007 British Grand Prix · 800 BC–2009 The day the crowd wouldn't let him leave 2007 British Grand Prix · 800 BC–now The championship that crashed itself 2007 British Grand Prix · 800 BC–now
United Kingdom OxfordOxford grew up around the crossroads at Carfax, where the city's medieval walls, its castle and its town hall now stand close together. Students and townsmen, judges and monarchs all passed through this ground, and a single tavern quarrel in 1355 reshaped who held power in the city for five hundred years. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield AbbeyLillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey gathers ground that passed from Iron Age hillfort and Benedictine priory to a medieval village cleared away in 1493, then to a wartime bomber station whose runways became Silverstone Circuit, birthplace of motor racing's world championship. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom Stoke-on-TrentStoke-on-Trent's record here centres on Hanley, where a Methodist congregation expelled in 1779 built its own chapel, rebuilt it larger in 1819, and watched it rise as the so-called Cathedral of the Potteries before closing for worship in December 1985 and passing to the Historic Chapels Trust in 2002. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom WoodstockWoodstock grew around a royal manor and a coaching inn, holding a future queen as prisoner, an earl's death, a poet-rake's end, and the rise of Blenheim Palace nearby. Bear Close itself began as the Bear inn's hay meadow before houses replaced it in the 1930s. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom BicesterBicester grew up around an early Christian cemetery, a Saxon church tower, and a medieval priory that drew pilgrims to a saint's relics and held a countess among its dead. Nearby, Roman Alchester and Akeman Street marked older passage, and a highwayman's ambush on the Bicester road in 1818 left its own grim record. 1 dig
12 records
A record of ground, not a magazine.

Nothing here was commissioned. Each place is assembled from its own sources, published at the resolution of the ground rather than the point, and reviewed again when the record changes. No page reports a person.