Stone is a village in the parish of

Ham and Stone Ham and Stone is a civil parish in the Stroud district, in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It includes the settlements of Bevington, Ham, Hystfield and Stone In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or a ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, England. It stands on the

A38 road The A38, parts of which are known as Devon Expressway, Bristol Road and Gloucester Road, Bristol, Gloucester Road, is a major A-class trunk road in England. The road runs from Bodmin in Cornwall to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. It is long, mak ...

, just south-west of its crossing of the

Little Avon River The Little Avon River is a small river partly in southern Gloucestershire and partly in South Gloucestershire. For much of its length it forms the boundary between the county of Gloucestershire and the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire. ...

, halfway between Bristol and Gloucester, adjacent to the county boundary with South Gloucestershire. Woodford, immediately northeast in the Alkington parish, is part of the shared community.

Geography

Stone lies mostly to the west of the Little Avon River and to the east of one of its tributaries; Woodford lies to the east of the river. The bedrock under most dwellings in Stone is

mudstone Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from ''shale'' by its lack of fissility.Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology.'' New York, New York, ...

of the Tortworth beds,

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock (geology), rock formed by the cementation (geology), cementation of sediments—i.e. particles made of minerals (geological detritus) or organic matter (biological detritus)—that have been accumulated or de ...

formed between 438.5 and 433.4 million years ago in the

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...

period. In the majority of other places, the mudstone is interbedded with

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

, from the same Tortworth beds and period. Woodford lies mostly on the mudstone/sandstone interbedding with but with two long, thin areas of igneous rock running roughly northwest to southeast, specifically "Upper Trap" basalt from the same time in the Silurian (see illustration). To the southwest and west there are thin arcs of limestone and calcareous mudstone. Along the river, the superficial deposit is sedimentary

alluvium Alluvium (, ) is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluvium is also sometimes called alluvial deposit. Alluvium is ...

of clay, silt, sand and gravel formed between 11.8 thousand years ago and the present in the

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

period. Elevations are between 11 metres by the river to 30 metres just east of the

History

Stone has long existed as a village linked to

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California *George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to ...

, to the north; historically it was part of the parish of Berkeley, in the rural deanery of

Dursley Dursley is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Stroud District of Gloucestershire, England. It lies between the cities of Bristol and Gloucester. It is under the northeast flank of Stinchcombe#Stinchcombe Hill, St ...

and the archdeaconry of

Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city, non-metropolitan district and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West England, South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean ...

. The areas with housing in this rural area broadly match those of the early 19th century; the population at the 2021 Census was slightly smaller to that at the end of the 19th century. In 1897, in the old tithing area of Ham and Stone, there were 830 residents recorded; Alkington had 818. In 2021, the figures were was 801 and 742 respectively. There are 30 scheduled monuments in and around Stone from Lower Stone in the east to Damery Lane in the west, including All Saints' Church, founded in the 13th century, the old Stone Mill dating from the late 18th century, and Middle Mill and Hall Farmhouses from the early 17th century; these appear on

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

maps from the early 1800s onwards.

Modern villages

The villages of Stone and Woodford have All Saints' Church, a village green, Stone with Woodford Church of England Primary School and a village hall. The Berkeley Vale Hotel - formerly the Berkeley Vale Inn in the 19th century - closed in 2002 and was later redeveloped as housing after falling into ruin.

Local Government and Parliament

Stone and Woodford are in the very south of the Berkeley Vale Ward of the

Stroud Stroud is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District. The town's population was 13,500 in 2021. Sited below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, at the meeting point of the ...

District. Stone is in the civil parish of Ham and Stone, Woodford is in Alkington. The villages are represented by the MP for Stroud (since the 2024 general election), Dr. Simon Opher.

References

External links

HamAndStone.com
– Village web site {{authority control Villages in Gloucestershire Stroud District