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Its area includes the modern
London road, the garden of Roper House on the north-east of
St. Dunstan’s Street, Church Street, Orchard Street, the
Southern Railway line, arid the Recreation Ground. Over all
this ground numerous urns, lamps and pottery have been found,
generally 4 ft. to 6 ft. deep, principally in 1844,
when the railway was constructed (in 1850), during
house-building near the London Road, and in the drainage works
of 1860-1 and 1867-8, but also on various chance occasions in
trenching gardens or in digging foundations. Further
discoveries of Samian and other pottery were made in the
Recreation Ground in March 1906, in a patch of black earth 8
ft. square, which, however, bore no sign of bones or
ashes. More graves were found and better recorded—in 1925
and 1926 during the erection of a Telephone Repeater Station
near the western angle of St. Dunstan’s Terrace and the
London road, and about 100 yds. from the latter. Upwards of
half-a-dozen cremation burials were found at a depth of about
3½ ft., with pottery ranging in date from about 90 to 150
A.D. (Arch. Cant. xxxix, 46). The pottery is now in the
Canterbury Museum. Of the previous finds no proper account
exists. Samian found in 1850, 1862, and later bore the stamps ASIATICIM
(Asiaticus; a 2nd-Century potter of Lezoux); VIDVC.FE
(Viduclus, an early 2nd-century potter of East Gaul); MACCIVS
(a 2nd-Century potter of Lezoux); and MVXTVLL.M
(Muxtullus, a 2nd-century potter of Lezoux). A white clay
figurine of a Gaulish type—a woman with her hair gathered
into a knot on the top of her head, seated in a wicker chair
and suckling two babies—is said to have been found in an urn
4 ft. below the surface during the construction of the railway
in 1844. Glass, including lachrymatories, is mentioned as
occurring sometimes, but apparently only in small quantities.
The bronze top of a ‘manicure’ chatelaine, enamelled in
white and green chevrons, found in 1868, is more noteworthy.
Another chatelaine, enamelled in blue, with four or five
pendent implements enamelled in yellow, came from either this
cemetery or the next. One coin only is mentioned—found in
Church Road in 1867-8— and its date is unrecorded. The
remains suggest that the cemetery was in use during the late
first and second century, but our records are altogether too
meagre to define its duration more exactly.
General accounts are given by J. Brent in Proc.
Soc. Antiq. Ser. I, iii, 192; Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ.
xii, 73, and briefly Cant. Olden Time, 32;
Dunkin, Brit. Arch. Assoc. Canterbury Meeting, 330; Arch.
Journ. i, 279. For single finds see Pillbrow, Arch. xliii,
159, coin; J. Brent, Cant. Museum Catalogue (1875), 24,
25, pottery; C. Brent in Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xviii,
396, stamp Asiatici (misread), and xi, 255, stamp Vidul.fe;
J. Brent, Mus. Catal. no. 107, stamp Maccius, and
Arch. Cant. xvii, 157, for it and Muxtuii.m;
Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xii, 73, and Proc. Soc. Antiq.
Ser. I, iii, 192, ivy-leaf saucer; J. Brent in Arch.
Cant. iv, 33; Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser. i, iii, p.
192;
Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xii, 73; Cant. Olden Time,
40; Gent. Mag. 1860, ii, 605, the figurine; Gent.
Mag. 1863 (i), 355; Cant. Olden Time, 36, plate iv,
3; Museum Catal. no. 103, plate iii, red vase; Proc.
Soc. Antiq. vi, 152, 377; Cant. Olden Time, plates
x, 4, xvi, 2 (pp. 36, 47, ‘77), the chatelaines; hence C. R.
Smith, Coll. Antiq. vii, 202, pl. xxi, 4. The stamps Asiatici.m
and (?) ntusiani and the chatelaine with pendants
are now in the Museum.
2. North-eastern quarter, Ramsgate Road. A
cremation cemetery lay on both sides of the modern road to
Ramsgate, which represents generally the Roman road to
Reculver for the first three miles out of Canterbury. The
burials have been traced along an intermittent line which runs
north and south from the Artillery Barracks to the Vauxhall
brickfields for a distance of about half a mile. The first
recorded find, made in 1861, comprised ‘mortuary urns with
other fictile vessels,’ lying just within the Cavalry
Barracks ‘parallel to the Ramsgate Road ‘—whatever
exactly ‘parallel’ may here mean (Arch. Cant. iv,
37). Two more graves were observed during drainage works in
May 1862, 10 ft. apart and 4 ft. below the surface,
near the messroom of the Artillery Barracks, about 60 ft. east
of the Ramsgate Road. In one of them a large urn contained
burnt bones, Samian ware, a red clay vessel and an iron object
taken to be a lamp. In the other, in which no ‘mortuary
urn’ was noted, there lay together many little Samian
‘vessels’ and saucers, a small Castor urn with the usual
hunting-scene in relief (Cant. Olden Time, pl. i, i),
two or three Upchurch ‘ollae,’ a round glass bottle 4 in.
high, a twisted yellow glass rod, estimated to have been
originally 10 (or 16) in. long, adorned with a cock at one end
and a ‘stamp’ at the other (J. Brent, Gent. Mag. 1863,
i, 354, and Cant. Olden Time, pl. vi, 9); hence Cochet,
Seine lnf pp. 236, 7, who cites parallels from Gaul:
compare Kisa, Das Glas in Altertume, p. 353) and some
bronze objects—eight bronze studs or ‘engraved bosses,’
some handles and rings, a bolt) a hasp about 4 in. long, all
thought to have belonged to a perished wooden box (Cant.
Olden Time, 39; Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser. II, ii,
200). Other notable burials were found in digging for
brick-earth at Vauxhall, at intervals between 1870 and 1873.
In March 1870 a very large globular jar, stamped SFE
on the handle, was found and is now in the Museum (Cant.
Olden Time, 39, ignoring the stamp). A year later there
emerged an Upchurch urn, 13 in. high, with a raised ‘scroll
pattern’ round the shoulder, now also in the Museum (Brent
in Proc. Soc. Antiq. v, 129). May 1871 brought a better
recorded and really remarkable find. This was a sepulchre 3
ft. below the surface and occupying a circular space about 3
ft. in diameter, which contained a small ‘mortuary’ urn,
two or three Samian saucers, |