Painswick Beacon and Kimsbury Hillfort

Painswick Beacon was the home of the first inhabitants of Painswick of whom we know anything - tall blonde haired Celts.
Goaded by fear,  they built enormous ramparts rounnd the Beacon summit to keep out hostile neighbours and the dreaded wolf pack that howled through the forest, which then covered the entire parish - and all England - except for a few open hilltops. Trails led through the forest from the mud, wattle and timber huts inside the ramprts of the Beacon to the neighbouring settlements at Crickley by Birdlip and on the spur of Haresfield Beacon.
With eyes and ears constantly alert for wolves, Our Painswick Celts would by day drive their flocks out of the camp through the two gateways in its ramparts - one above Pope's Wood and the other above Paradise.

 Ifold Roman Villa

A Romano-British potenate built a fine villa on the spur at Ifold (where today stands the splendid Cotswold farm house of that name). He fortified himself against our Cotswold winters with central heating and hot baths - heated by a most effiecient furnace. He bought red floor tiles which were stamped as baked in Gloucester, and he roofed it with six-sided red sandstone tiles from Dean Forest. One room had a fine mosaic floor. Fragments of the window glass anda splendid double-handed decanter have been found there. Unfortunately there is nothing to be seen at the site now.
This Roman family with the Celtic servants cleared off forest and farmed the land at Ifold and towards Spoonbed.

 Saxon Painswick

A grim fate awaited the Romanised Celts of Painswick when around 400 A.D. the eruption of barbarian hordes from Central Europe into Italy forced the Roman Emperors to withdraw from Britain the protecting Legions. Softend by 350 years fo Roman peace the Celts were no match for the Saxon Pirates who poured across the North Sea from Germany and swarmed westward through England.
Ifold's looted villa was left silent and deserted. A band of Saxons, who had brought with them their Saxon women, cleared the forest from the area around what is now St Mary's Churchyard, Painswick,  and built a small "Wicke" - the Saxon word for village.
With the coming of Christianity, they built a church on the site of our present parish church. Our Wicke's last Saxon thegn was a notoriously loose and riotous liver call Ernisi, who in old age turned monk. His chieftan was the great Earl Godwin of Wessex, whose son Harold, was to be the last King of England.