Faringdon in the 1950's, for those of us growing up then, provided a rich, natural adventure playground on all sides. Coles Pits, an area on the brow of the densely wooded hill, to the right of Wicklesham Farm, above the railway line and overlooking Fernham and Shellingford was as well loved as Badbury Hill is now.

The long treks for summer outings and picnics began as soon as the bluebells started flowering and continuing until school holidays finished.

It was a special place, a magic land of deep pits filled with brambles, bracken and even bushes and trees, surrounded by high hillocks and banks crisscrossed by grassy paths, and covered with a profusion of willow-herbs, ferns and foxgloves - all the beneath the canopy of tall firs.

While it was a perfect place for hide and seek and chasing butterflies and grasshoppers it was even more special because we knew it to be the remains of an ancient stone age pits village and that once, the pits had been roofed over with bracken and branches to provide dwellings for the hunter - gathering people who had lived there.

Even then, it was identified as a particularly important paleolithic / neolithic site one of only a few in existence.

Some years on - the date is lost to my memory - in the shortest space of days, the trees were raised to the ground and smoke rose from the brush bonfires and the earth movers levelled the land for planting.

There was no time for protest; it was cleared and the pit village was lost. These days it could surely not happen and we can only hope that some of the 10 -20,000 year old archaeology remains beneath the cultivated land, so that one day it can be properly evaluated.

Robin Britton, Cornwall


This extract was taken from an old Faringdon guide
Coles Pits is a neighbourhood specially interesting to geologists, having a curious variation of the Lower Greensand strata known as sponge gravels, which may have something to do with the pits which used to be scattered hereabouts.

Were they the pit dwellings of early settlers?
Local legend insists that the name derives from Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme, and the Colespitt is the site of the one time merriment and fiddling.