English Place-name Society

Survey of English Place-Names

A county-by-county guide to the linguistic origins of England’s place-names – a project of the English Place-Name Society, founded 1923.

Four Shire Stone

Early-attested site in the Parish of Wolford

Historical Forms

  • Shire Stones 1576 S

Etymology

Four Shire Stone is Shire Stones 1576 S. It is at the meeting- place of the shires of Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick and Worcester. In BCS 1238, a 12th-century copy of a charter of 969, we find that the bounds of Evenlode, at one point of their circuit, run from one stone to another stone and then to a third and then to a fourth, so that in those days there must actually have been four stones at this point.

Places in the same Parish