Standing at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, the village of Broadway has long been celebrated as one of England’s most picturesque settlements. Often described as the ‘Jewel of the Cotswolds’, its High Street is lined with honey-coloured limestone buildings, historic coaching inns, and galleries that attract visitors from across the world. Few of these visitors would imagine, though, that beneath the quiet fields on the village’s eastern edge lies one of the most complex archaeological landscapes yet discovered in Worcestershire.
Between the summers of 2024 and 2025, Worcestershire Archaeology’s excavations at Milestone Ground revealed a remarkable sequence of human activity stretching back c.8,000 years. From the earliest hunter-gatherers who moved through the landscape after the end of the last Ice Age, to Roman farmers and Saxon craftspeople, generations returned to this place again and again. The discoveries have transformed our understanding of Broadway’s past, revealing a landscape shaped by human lives for millennia. The story of this discovery, however, did not begin with the modern excavation. Instead, its rediscovery began almost a century earlier.
Rediscovering the landscape
In the 1930s, gravel extraction began in the fields between Childswickham Road and Station Road – and, as quarrying progressed, workers began to uncover unexpected remains. Human skeletons appeared in the gravel, along with fragments of pottery and other artefacts, while the discovery of large ditches cut into the natural geology hinted at ancient occupation of the landscape. News of these finds soon reached local archaeologists, who realised that important evidence was being uncovered – and potentially destroyed – by the ongoing extraction. Among those who responded was Catherine Nancy Smith (1901-1953; she was usually known by her middle name). At a time when archaeology was still largely dominated by men and women were often discouraged from its more ‘hands-on’ aspects, Smith took an active role in investigating the exposed remains, leading excavations and working on a voluntary basis to carefully uncover and record graves and associated features before they were lost to further quarrying. Her observations confirmed that the site was home to a Roman cemetery, as well as showing evidence of nearby settlement activity, and these discoveries were published in 1946 through the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, ensuring that this aspect of Broadway’s history was preserved for posterity.
