Adstock

A Roman road is thought to pass through this parish, though it has not been found in excavation. The earliest surviving remains appear to be the ridge-and-furrow, remains of the medieval farming system. Near to Corner Cottage some digging for house foundations uncovered a ditch of unknown date and some sherds of medieval pottery. The church is the earliest surviving standing building. St Cecilia’s was originally a twelfth century build but the chancel was rebuilt in the fourteenth century. The nave walls are twelfth century in the lower courses and fifteenth century higher up. The roof is sixteenth century in date. There is a fourteenth century record of a windmill also being in the parish.

Many of the buildings in Adstock are listed. They tend to be of seventeenth to eighteenth century date and several of them are timber-framed, such as Adstock Cottage, Fig Tree Cottage, Rose Cottage and the Dairy and the Old Power House. 3-5 Main Street was once one house when it was first built in the seventeenth century but was later divided into two, extended and refaced in the nineteenth century. Adstock Priory is an early twentieth century house but incorporates seventeenth century timbers. The nineteenth and early twentieth century was the time when builders were looking to the past for inspiration and, of course, building materials.