The skeleton of an ancient animal found in Swindon could inform us of the town's past.

It would not be any surprise at all to see cattle on the fields near Berkeley Farm Dairy in Wroughton.

But an archaeological dig as part of the conditions of planning permission for the creation of a solar farm on fields there suggests that such animals may have been roaming  Wroughton for a lot longer than we may have imagined.

As part of the approval for the proposal to install nearly 1500 ground-mounted solar panels and associated cabling and infrastructure on a field on Swindon Road just south of Waytes Close and Lower Close, Bristol-based Aviation Archaeology made an investigation into the site.

The company’s report, which has now been accepted by Swindon Borough Council planners as discharging the planning condition, found very little to suggest the development should not go ahead.

Indeed, it found very little at all – but one small find might give a glimpse of an intriguing past.

The report says there is a Quaternary drift deposit, which are soil deposits formed within the last 2.5 million years and “cut into it was an amorphous pit containing a nearly complete but poorly preserved, cattle skeleton.

“The cattle skeleton was sealed by a layer of grey-brown clay silt with occasional charcoal flecks

“The bone was in poor condition and highly fragmentary, however, the teeth have survived in good condition from which it is possible to determine, from the presence of teeth, that the individual was an adult over the age of 2.5 years, and from the pattern of wear, probably an older adult.

It adds: “No dating evidence was recovered from the pit; however, it can be speculated, based on the size of the skeleton, which is very small by comparison with present-day cattle, that it is not modern.”

 In response to whether this meant that ancient cattle might have once roamed wild around Wroughton possibly being hunted by early humans, one of the authors Kevin Potter told the Local Democracy Reporter: “It’s impossible to say.

“The pit was cut into late glacial soil, but there was no other useful dating material there so that cattle skeleton could  have been there any time between prehistory and 200 years ago.”

Mr Potter referred to an earlier dig carried out on another farm of the farm site in  2014 by Cotswold Archaeology.

It said: “A small assemblage of Bronze Age worked flint, including two scrapers were recorded from topsoil, subsoil and colluvial deposits in four trenches.

“The assemblage probably represents the remains of transient and episodic occupation throughout prehistory, but particularly for the Bronze Age.”

Perhaps it is possible that those Bronze Age residents of what is now Wroughton were drawn to the area by the presence of ancient cattle.

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