Querns area, Cirencester

The Querns is an area of

Cirencester Cirencester (, ; see below for more variations) is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of ...

, an ancient

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...

in the

Cotswold The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jura ...

hills of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Its principal feature is Cirencester Amphitheatre, an impressive ancient monument that is surrounded by many other archaeological features, most notably the extensive Roman quarries and a huge Roman cemetery, now largely buried beneath the Cirencester ring road. The name 'Querns' is a direct descendant of the Anglo-Saxon word ''crundles'', meaning a

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envir ...

, albeit a very distorted version. The evolution of this name can be traced through various historical documents, evolving from Crundles, to Crondles, Cronnes, and Cornes, with the modern name 'Querns' emerging in the 17th century. Thus the linguistic memory of the one-time use of the area has been preserved over more than 1,500 years since quarrying last took place in the area. The Roman quarries cover the side of what was once a shallow hill descending into town, and run for over half a mile, their extent still recognisable by steep, rugged ground and pleasant, wooded terrain that has been spared the modern development that has taken place in fields surrounding the Querns. {{DEFAULTSORT:Querns Area, Cirencester Villages in Gloucestershire