Warwick's campus covers 290 hectares of land, and lies in the valley of Canley Brook draining red, heavy clay soils. We know that it has been occupied since Neolithic times, and that pottery was made using local clay and charcoal from Tocil Woods. In the Middle Ages it formed part of the royal hunting estate at Stoneleigh, and some of the land was granted by Henry II to Cistercian monks in 1155. After the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, the land was enclosed and took on many of the features evident to this day. The area covers four medieval farmsteads, whose names are still preserved in our modern campus: Tocil, Cryfield, Cryfield Grange and Gibbet Hill.

This Archaeological Tour highlights twelve sites of particular archaeological interest, including a Mesolithic landscape, a Bronze Age Barrow and Roundhouse, two substantial Iron Age settlements, a Roman site, and a significant amount of activity in the Medieval period, including a deserted village, a monastery, and extensive waterworks supplying a pottery and watermills.

The Archaeological Tour website and the Warwick 4000 Web-log (now closed) were both created as part of a project funded by the Warwick 40 Committee, Campus Archaeology, E-Lab, and the 3D Visualisation Centre to mark the University's 40th anniversary. The Project was launched, with a guided tour, on Saturday 7th May 2005.

The guided Archaeology Tour, 7 May 2005