EDO5178 - Bosley Farmhouse, Christchurch; observations and recording 1980

Barry Coleman, the owner of Bosley Farmhouse, discovered a large number of 9th-14th century pottery sherds during the construction of an extension at the rear of Bosley Farmhouse in 1980. The day before concrete floors were due to be laid in the extension Mr. Coleman, his wife Dena and local historian Michael Hodges, spent a day digging up '...a considerable amount of medieval pot'. The sherds covered a bench measuring 18" x 9' from end to end. David Hinton of Southampton University identified the sherds as 9th-14th century. Mr. Coleman subsequently seived all of the soil from the footings trenches. He found more pottery, metal buttons and a neolithic flint axe. The latter was identified by Professor Steve Channon of Southampton University. A well outside the back door of the farmhouse was identified by Morley Hewitt (owner of Rockbourne Roman Villa) as Tudor in date, but possibly built on the site of an earlier well. Mr. Coleman has subsequently continued to find pottery on the surface of his garden beds and he has found 6-7000 pottery sherds in total (1). Hodges also records the finding of Roman pottery from the site (2). He also has a photograph of Bosley Farmhouse hanging in the hall which shows that in 1908 the door was located at the northern end of the front of the house, firmly off centre (1). The house may once have been a hall building with a through passage and partition at the northern end.