Aspects of Kentish Local History

Home
News & Events
  Publications Archaeological
Fieldwork
Local & Family
History
Information
by Parish


Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Romano-British Kent - Towns - Page 77

an Upchurch saucer, a red bottle-shaped vessel and a white one, a bow fibula enamelled in red and yellow with a ring at the top (Cant. Olden Time, 38, pl. ix, 4), a brooch of a type intermediate between the bow and the plate, enamelled in red and green (ibid. p1. ix, 6), a bronze chatelaine, 3½ in. long, enamelled in yellow and blue or purple, Consisting of six pendent implements attached to a disk-fibula (ibid. ix, i), and, lastly, some debris from a rather smaller wooden box than that noticed above—six or eight bronze knobs, a bronze bolt, a bronze ‘key-hole scutcheon’ enamelled in red and yellow and with a little ornamental hasp (Proc. Soc. Antiq. vi, 375, with woodcut; Cant. Olden Time, bc. cit.; hence C. R. Smith, Coll. Ant. vii, 202, p1. xx I have seen the chatelaine and brooches in Cant. Mus.). Finally, in January 1873, a grave yielded Samian and other potsherds and a noteworthy vessel of yellow glass, some 12 in. high, with a long, narrow neck, an elaborate handle, and a saucer or stand attached to its foot (Brent in Proc. Soc. Antiq. vi, 153, 375, and Cant. Olden Time, 39; the vessel is now destroyed). Canterbury Museum also contains some large buff urns, grey saucers, etc., from this cemetery.
   3. South-eastern quarter, St. Sepulchre’s, on the Old Dover Road. This cremation cemetery lay about a quarter of a mile outside Riding Gate. The spot most definitely connected with it is the junction of Oaten Hill with the Old Dover Road, near the presumed line of the Roman road to Dover. Here its remains have been found 5 ft. or 6 ft. beneath the present surface and below the medieval graveyard of St. Sepulchre’s Nunnery. But it apparently extended beyond this, though our authorities give no precise indications of its area and merely call it ‘extensive.’ It has long been. known. Hasted records urns from the ground east of the Nunnery and also from an orchard near it (Hist. of Kent (1799), iv, 451, 452; see also his Canterbury (1801), i, 181). In 1844 an urn was found near here, 20 ft. from the Old Dover Road and 4½ ft. below the surface (Brit. Arch. Assoc. Canterbury Meeting, 1845, p. 330; Arch. Journ. i, 279). In November i 86o the builders of a house for Miss Wilks found, below some skeletons of nuns, many urns and among them Samian, Upchurch with incised pattern, a brown or black vase with a pattern painted in white, and a red jug (Brent in Arch. Cant. iv, 29, pl. i, figs. 10, 11 ; Cant. Olden Time, 33, pl. iv. 4, and Museum Catal. no. 117). In the following April excavations were undertaken here by the Kent Archaeological Society, and a trench 7 ft. deep was dug across ground undisturbed by medieval burials, parallel to the Old Dover Road. The results have been recorded, somewhat meagrely, by Mr. J. Brent. One grave, the only one described at all fully, comprised a ‘mortuary urn,’ holding burnt bones; a Samian saucer, 7 in. in diameter bearing the Central Gaulish stamp RHOGENI (now in the Kent Archaeological Society’s Museum at Maidstone; Brent misread it RHOGENI); a narrow-necked jug of light-coloured clay; a black saucer and vase, and some corroded pieces of iron with decayed wood and bronze studs adhering to them evidence of a chest to contain the various vessels making up the grave furniture. Of the other burials we know little in detail. ‘Mortuary urns,’ it seems, averaged l0 in, to 12 in. in height and 24 in. to 28 in. in circumference; instead of them, amphora were found two or three times, and once a square glass jug with bones inside. Samian was fairly common, including embossed bowls—one stamped outside CINNA (Cinnamus)—plain saucers stamped ALBINVS and OF LVCCE, an ivy-leaf saucer, a baby’s feeding-bottle with a nipple-spout. Upchurch and ruder wares, one or two small glass vessels, bronze styli and tweezers, a few coins of unrecorded dates, and many nails complete the list. At a point described as ‘the north-western corner of the cemetery close to the road,’ the excavators met with a wall of burnt clay, 12 in. thick, partly inclosing a rectangular floor marked by burnt ashes, which they took to be the ustrinum or burning-place. Some unburnt bones were noticed below the Roman incinerations, but they were too carelessly observed to justify guessing about a pre-Roman graveyard. For these finds see J. Brent in Arch. Cant. iv, 28-33, and plates iv, vi; the baby’s bottle is also noted in Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xxvi, iii. Some common pottery from this site is or was in Canterbury Museum, Catalogue, pp. 24, 26. Many of the things found in i86i are in the Kent Archaeological Society’s Museum at Maidstone, including the Pottery stamps.
   4. Southern quarter, the Castle, Wincheap and Martyrs’ Field. The largest cemetery of Romano-British Canterbury lay to the south of the town. It covered some 35 acres, stretching from the Castle and the gasworks near it, across the line of the medieval walls and the railway to the newer gasworks, east of Wincheap Street, and including also much of Martyrs’ Field. We may divide it into two halves—a northern area of mound- and urn-burials round the Castle and Wincheap Green, lying partially within the medieval walls, and a southern area of inhumation lying generally Outside the walls and round the railway station.
   (a) Mound- and urn- burials Reference has already been made (p. 62) to a group of mounds lying close within and without the south-eastern part of the medieval defences, in or near the district of Wincheap. The most famous of them, the Dane John, still towers above the southernmost angle of the defences Another (that which contained the bronze axe) was destroyed during the making of the railway immediately east of Canterbury East station in 1860. A third lay apparently about 100 yds. south east of the Dane John and is, perhaps, represented to-day by the rising ground beneath

Previous Page       Page 77       Next Page       

Back to Towns page listings         Contents Page

This website is constructed by enthusiastic amateurs. Any errors noticed by other researchers will be gratefully received so 
that we can amend our pages to give as accurate a record as possible. Please send details to localhistory@tedconnell.org.uk