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The Field of Gold
by Robert Burton
What Secrets are Held Beneath the Soil?
A Tale of War and Treasures
A field, an area of land that has not changed over the centuries, but what stories can it tell? In this story, we look at one field in Warwickshire in five different historical periods. From being a runway in World War II to being a homestead and villa in the second century of Roman times, the field doesn’t change. It is a campsite in the English Civil War in 1642, a site for hiding Templar treasure in 1307, and where a Viking warrior settles down having rampaged through the country from the Orwell River.
Geoff Knight is a tenant farmer in the present time and wonders why some parts of his field are barren, his best man is an archaeologist and wants to do a survey. He is interested, and the more he surveys, the more the history comes to the fore.
The village of Oxhill that is central to these stories is an actual village situated in South Warwickshire, between Banbury and Stratford Upon Avon, just off the Fosse Way, and in sight of the ridge that Edgehill is on. In its history, it has had a second-century Roman villa in a field on its outskirts, it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book, has a twelve-century church, and land was given to Bordesley Abby, a Cistercian institution.
This is a work of fiction, none of this happened, but maybe it could have.
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Robert Burton
I live in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but spent my formative years living in Oxhill, working on a couple of farms during school holidays and also in The Peacock. I have come late to writing having spent many years working in the Motor Trade and latterly working for the American Insurance Rating Agency, A.M. Best, in their City of London office.
I started writing when our son left home to go to university in Liverpool and I had spare time but an active brain. I have always been interested in history and looking at the history of the village I grew up in inspired me to think of a field I had worked in, a field that as a teenager I had carted bales of hay in, driven a tractor through, worked in and after work gone to The Peacock. Brooklands Farm as described in the Second World War story was where I lived, a much-changed house now than described, but we did have an apple orchard of about twenty trees and the Oxhill Torrent ran at the bottom of the garden, sometimes flooding the tennis court.
When not writing I now spend time walking our dog along the Lagan Valley and when the Northern Irish weather is playing ball messing around in our garden, trying to grow vegetables, but not always successfully. A keen sportsman, playing cricket and golf to a reasonable standard, I can often be found surfing the sports channels to watch live sport.
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