|
front of No. 2 Love Lane, it seems to have
contained only incineration burials. They have been found at
various times, either in lowering the hill or in filling up
the castle ditch, or even in building excavations. Fisher
notes that at the beginning of the 18th century many urns and
lachrymatories were found, and Thorpe at a later date gives
details of several Roman urns found in enlarging a cellar. No
coins are recorded from the cemetery.49
(2) The second cemetery
occurred at Borstal, about a mile south of Rochester on the
river bank. It appears to have contained inhumation burials. A
skeleton with decorated Samian was dug up at the Manor Farm
cement works, 1895. A little later in the same year three
burials in cists cut out of the chalk, 2 ft. 10 in. to 4 ft. 8
in. below the surface, were observed between the south wall of
the convict prison and the Fort Railway. -They measured
roughly 7 ¼ ft. by 3 ¼ ft., and lay with their heads to the
west, north-east, and south-west respectively. With the first
was a small brown urn and a black patera, with the second two
iron nails at the feet and with the third a small brown urn.
Twelve coins (a denarius of Claudius II, a small brass of
Carausius, a second brass of Constantine II, and three small
brass of the Constantine family and six illegible) found in a
field west of the prison also probably belonged to this
cemetery and suggest that it was of a later date than the
Boley Hill one. An urn had been ploughed up here in 1736 and
may be part of the furniture of a grave.50
(3) Two cemeteries, one a very
large one, have been found on the opposite bank of the river
at Strood. Pottery from the latter, preserved in the Rochester
and Maidstone Museums, dates from c. 50-200 A.D. and
later, and includes Samian form 18 stamped CRESTI. M. and form
31 stamped CASMVS. F.. f. [See below, Topographical Index, p.
169.]
4. Dartford
Although the evidence for Roman occupation
here is vague and unsatisfactory, there is sufficient to
indicate a small Roman settlement in the vicinity of the
Watling Street. Structural remains have been recorded on three
or four sites.
(1) A 'strong pavement of plain red tesserae' is
noted to have been found ' under the corner shop nearest to
the pump at the entrance to Lowfield Street.'51
(2) In 1866 foundations were exposed in the
High Street, near the church, and Roman relics were found
here.
(3) About 1886 ' numerous tiles and some
extensive foundations showing wide rooms and narrow passages,
with coins all of Roman date,' were seen about 150 yds.
south-east of the Orange Tree Inn.'52
49
Fisher, Hist, of Rochester (1771), p. 28 n; Thorpe, Cust.
Roff. (1788), p. 148, pi. xxx, iii, figs. 1—15, from
Fisher, Hasted, ii, 2, note 3 (1782), and with a wrong
reference; Bayley and Britton, viii, 612, also quoting Thorpe;
S. W. Wheatley, Arch. Cant, xxxix; Phippen, Descr.
Sketches of Rochester (1862), p. 65. The skeletons he
mentions on p. 257, as found in 1861, between High Street and
St. Margaret's, probably belong to St. Nicholas' Churchyard or
to the graveyard of the Saxon cathedral, rather than to a
Roman burial ground. The urns, burnt bones, pieces of charcoal
and other ' Roman exuviae' mentioned by Thorpe as found
sticking in the river bank between ' Bridge Stairs and Scagg's
Quay ' were possibly part of this cemetery, though the exact
site is not now known. Cust. Roff. (1788), p. 147.
50 Payne, Arch. Cant, xxi, p.
lii, xxii, p. xlix, lii; Proc. Soc. Antiq. xv, 42 ; for
coins see Ibid. 2nd ser. xiv, 31; Thos. Austen, MS. Nat. Hist,
of Kent (B.M. Add. MSS. no. 24269), i, 40, for the urn found
in 1735. Sec Topog. Index s.v. Borstal.
61 Arch. Cant, xviii,
12. 52 Ibid. |