Focus on The Tibblestone, Gloucestershire

By Nigel Swift.

You might be forgiven for thinking nothing much happens in the tiny village of Teddington on the borders of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. Mostly you’d be right (apart from the fact that during the war there was a US army base there and Joe Louis staged a demonstration bout in one of the fields and Glen Miller gave a performance there just one day before his plane disappeared!).

But it does have The Tibblestone…

It can hardly be claimed that its modern setting is attractive. But we shouldn’t complain as ironically it was thanks to the digging of foundations for the garage in 1948 that it was rediscovered and re-erected, having previously been lost (no archaeological navel gazing about leaving it buried in those days!).

It has certainly been of great significance for very many centuries, being listed in the Domesday Survey and having formed the meeting point of the Teddington Hundred, but it is thought it may be far older still and to date from prehistoric times. One strong piece of circumstantial evidence is that despite its apparently highly inappropriate placement it is actually almost exactly at the original intersection of six ancient routes (including known prehistoric ones) as this famous seventeenth century finger post directly opposite illustrates.

But maybe it is the very inappropriateness of its setting that is the most significant aspect of the Tibblestone, for when the world has burned the last litre of oil, the roads have emptied and the filling station has fallen down perhaps the only thing that will endure in Teddington will be the Tibblestone and the hills that were its original setting.