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a school at that point. A fourth, known as
the Little Dunhill, is said to have stood in the 18th century
near the Terrace and Gravel Walk on the boundary line of the
parishes of St. George and St. Mary Bredin, i.e. about 300 yds.
north-east of the Dane John and, like it, just within the City
walls. Apart from the bronze axe, all the discoveries
associated with these mounds seem to have been of Roman or
later date. Thus Leland records that ‘many years sins men
soute for treasor at a place cauled the Dungen, thar
Barnhailes House is now, and thar yn digging thei fownd a
Corse closed yn leade.’ Since the whole group appears to
have been known as the Dungeon Hills, it is not clear to which
of the mounds Leland refers. Somewhat more precise is a
reference to the accidental uncovering of a Roman cremation
burial in 1783 in ‘an eminence on which is an orchard to the
south-east of the Dane or Don John‘—presumably the third
of the mounds noted above. The observer records that ‘on
inspection of the mound raised over the place of interment, I
found it to contain many fragments of brick, pottery,
oyster-shells and animal bones’ (Soc. Antiq. MS. Minutes,
xxxiii, 15 Jan. 1789). These discoveries suggest that the
whole group of mounds may have belonged to the well-known
series of mound-burials, characteristic of certain parts of
northern France and Belgium and south-eastern Britain in the
1st and 2nd centuries A.D., and best represented in this
country by the Bartlow Hills on the Essex-Cambridgeshire
border (Roy. Corn. Hist. Mon. Hunts, p. xxxiii; Ann.
Soc. Archeol. Namur, xxiv (1900). p. 45; Cumont, Comment
la Belgique fut romanisée, p. 88; below p. 146). If this
suggestion is correct, however, it is evident that the Dane
John itself has been altered at more than one subsequent
period. The uppermost 16 ft. of it are a modern
addition, little more than a century old, whilst a ditch,
which is said at one time to have girdled the mound, may be
thought to indicate adaptation by Norman castle-builders (see
W. Gostling, A Walk in and about the City of Canterbury, 1825,
p. 9). Be that as it may, it is a fair assumption from the
evidence that this group of mounds formed, in origin, a
Romano-British—perhaps one might say
Romano-Gaulish-—cemetery. Faussett came to a somewhat
similar conclusion on less evidence (Arch. Journ. xxxii,
370-1).
(b) Other cremation-burials in Wincheap, etc. Brent
(Cant. Olden Time, 14) states in general terms that
many cinerary urns have come to light beneath the gasworks, a
malthouse in Castle Street, Wincheap Street, and Wincheap
Green, scattered here and there in no distinguishable order.
Of individual discoveries scarcely any record survives. An
Upchurch urn filled with burnt bones, black earth and rubbish
was found in 1849, 12 ft. deep under the Castle
Gasworks. About 1856. and later, the construction of a
gasometer east of Castle Street revealed ‘many urns lying
sideways on clay, surrounded with flints.’ One of these
urns, held the bones of a small animal and a bronze utensil;
another was a Samian straight-sided cup (Dragendorif type 3 i),
stamped inside QVINTI M.
The only ornaments noted were two flat-headed bone pins. For
these finds see Good, Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xii,
73; J. Brent, Cant. Olden Time, 14, and Arch. Cant. iv,
28—all rather brief. Good mentions a bronze object which he
took to be a sword-hilt, found near a skeleton, but this may
be post-Roman. In July 1861 an unsatisfactorily described find
was made a few feet inside the south wall of the Castle and no
more than 12 in. deep—an urn containing burnt bones and bits
of white concrete, with bones of sheep, swine and fish lying
close round it (Brent, ibid.: his two accounts do not quite
agree). In 1861, also, the construction of a new Railway Inn
at the corner of Wincheap Street and Green revealed, 6 ft.
deep, in a steep-sided pit or trench of (presumably) Roman
origin, several mortuary urns, a black patera, an Upchurch
thumb-vase, and a coin of Constantine—the only one of all
the coins found in the cemeteries of Canterbury of which the
date is recorded (Brent, Arch. Cant. iv, 34, calling
the urn Castor ware: it is in Canterbury Museum where I have
seen it). This seems the same as a ‘grave’ said to have
been found about 186o at Ivy House, which was cut down through
‘alluvial soil’ to the chalk and contained a black
globular burial urn; with it, immediately above the chalk,
were tiles, broken glass, potsherds and oyster-shells (J. B.
Shepherd in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser. II, i, 185; hence
apparently Dowker in Arch. Cant. xvii, 367). Brent
records also an urn containing two Roman rings, found in the
gasworks in 1770, and a burial urn from 8 Dane John Grove (Cant.
Olden Time, 14, 42). A deep Samian saucer stamped PATERCLINIO,
found in the gasworks in 1885 and seen by me in Canterbury
Museum, may come from outside the walls, if we can argue from
the date of finding.
(c) Other inhumation-burials in Wincheap and
Martyrs’ Field. Of these we possess only meagre and
unsatisfactory accounts. In 1861 the railway works and also
gravel-digging in Wall Field, south-west of the railway
station, revealed numerous skeletons, mostly 3 ft. to 4 ft.
deep. They lay with feet to the east and south-east, save
one (or two) buried with feet to the west. With them lay many
iron nails, 7 in. to 10 in. long, suggestive of wooden
coffins. Grave furniture was noted only in two or three
burials, and the accounts of the things found in individual
graves do not agree. They consisted of three bronze
armlets—two of twisted wire with hook-and-eye fastening and
one decorated with an animal’s head, a little bronze box
containing coins, an iron hook, green and purple glass beads
cut in facets and a blue ribbed bead, a bone pin with a green
opal (?) head, and |