The library of ground
Every place Strata has dug, assembled from its sources and filed by locality and era. A place is reviewed again whenever the ground beneath it is dug afresh.
230 places · 98 localities · last reviewed 21 September 2026
United Kingdom
PortsmouthPortsmouth's dockyard ground has carried the weight of empire and its punishments: a parish recorded from 979, the Mary Rose lost offshore in 1545, and, on a single quarterdeck at № 10 Storehouse, an admiral shot in 1757 for failing to do his utmost.
1 dig
12 records United Kingdom North LeighNorth Leigh holds a Roman villa uncovered and stripped within a week in 1813, a Saxon burial ground, a vanished medieval village, and Eynsham Hall — a 1770s house rebuilt as an Edwardian mansion that sheltered wartime mothers and airmen before becoming a hotel. 5 digs
71 records
43 records
14 records United Kingdom Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield AbbeyLillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey carries a Benedictine priory cleared in the fifteenth century, a deserted village, an Iron Age hillfort, and a wartime airfield reborn as Silverstone Circuit, birthplace of the World Championship of Drivers. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom Stoke-on-TrentStoke-on-Trent grew around Hanley's streets, chapels and pottery works, from a Methodist congregation's expulsion in 1779 to the grand chapel they built twice and finally lost, and to the bottle ovens, halls and theatres that still mark its trade and worship. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom WoodstockWoodstock, Oxfordshire, grew around a royal hunting seat where Henry II kept Fair Rosamund and Elizabeth I was later held under guard. That old manor gave way to Blenheim Palace, built in the early 1700s and, in 1874, the birthplace of Winston Churchill. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom LondonLondon's ground holds a workhouse on Poland Street, a Roman bathhouse beneath Shadwell's docks, a Saxon knights' grant at Aldgate, and the Tower of London's siege, executions and plague burials — each site changed by outbreak, riot or rebuilding across nearly two thousand years. 5 digs
70 records
12 records
12 records United Kingdom North LeighNorth Leigh holds a Roman villa uncovered and stripped within a week in 1813, a Saxon burial ground, a vanished medieval village, and Eynsham Hall — a 1770s house rebuilt as an Edwardian mansion that sheltered wartime mothers and airmen before becoming a hotel. 5 digs
71 records
A house built to keep out the world
Eynsham Hall · 800 BC–1981
A mansion that became a maternity ward
Estelle Manor · 4000 BC–2025
A widow who buried two sons built a chapel to save them
Eynsham Hall, Terrace Walls To Rear · 800 BC–now
The mansion built to replace itself
Eynsham Hall, Terrace Walls To Rear · 800 BC–1981
A mosaic survived fifteen centuries, then a week
Eynsham Hall, Terrace Walls To Rear · 800 BC–1981
United Kingdom
SilverstoneSilverstone, Northamptonshire, has held an Iron Age hillfort, a medieval moated farm and a Roman cremation cemetery, before a wartime bomber airfield gave way in 1948 to the racing circuit that has staged the British Grand Prix, and its share of triumph and death, ever since.
3 digs43 records
A crowd swallowed the racetrack to reach one man
2007 British Grand Prix · 800 BC–2009
The day the crowd wouldn't let him leave
2007 British Grand Prix · 800 BC–now
The championship that crashed itself
2007 British Grand Prix · 800 BC–now
United Kingdom
OxfordOxford grew around Carfax crossroads, its fortunes bound to town and university alike. A tavern quarrel over wine there in 1355 became a massacre that shaped five centuries of governance, while sieges, executions and a killing rate that made it medieval England's murder capital marked the city's turbulent centuries.
1 dig14 records United Kingdom Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield AbbeyLillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey carries a Benedictine priory cleared in the fifteenth century, a deserted village, an Iron Age hillfort, and a wartime airfield reborn as Silverstone Circuit, birthplace of the World Championship of Drivers. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom Stoke-on-TrentStoke-on-Trent grew around Hanley's streets, chapels and pottery works, from a Methodist congregation's expulsion in 1779 to the grand chapel they built twice and finally lost, and to the bottle ovens, halls and theatres that still mark its trade and worship. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom WoodstockWoodstock, Oxfordshire, grew around a royal hunting seat where Henry II kept Fair Rosamund and Elizabeth I was later held under guard. That old manor gave way to Blenheim Palace, built in the early 1700s and, in 1874, the birthplace of Winston Churchill. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom LondonLondon's ground holds a workhouse on Poland Street, a Roman bathhouse beneath Shadwell's docks, a Saxon knights' grant at Aldgate, and the Tower of London's siege, executions and plague burials — each site changed by outbreak, riot or rebuilding across nearly two thousand years. 5 digs
70 records
The garrison that fired on London and paid for it
Waterloo Block · 41 BC–1974
The garrison that shelled its own city
White Tower · 1080–1974
The knights who fought for a strip of mud outside the wall
Aldgate House · 1108–1876
The Father who walked into the cholera ward
Roman Bath House, Shadwell · 1508 BC–1983
The doctor who pulled the handle off a killer
7, Poland Street · 1606–now
United Kingdom
BicesterBicester grew around a saint's relics and a Norman priory, on ground already old with Roman roads and early Christian burial. A highwayman's ambush in 1818 and a designer outlet opened in 1995 mark how the same streets kept changing hands and purpose.
1 dig12 records
A record of ground, not a magazine.
Nothing here was commissioned. Each place is assembled from its own sources, published at the resolution of the ground rather than the point, and reviewed again when the record changes. No page reports a person.