Monument record MDO19017 - Army Camp, Poundbury, Dorchester; Roman burials

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 3, 583-4, no. 225e (Monograph). SDO150.

‘(225) POUNDBURY … (e) Inhumations, three, in stone sarcophagi, found within 100 yds. of each other in Jan. and Mar. 1940 in making roads and hut foundations on the E. slopes of Poundbury in the army camp N.E. of the railway cutting. A sarcophagus of Portland stone (Plate 229; 1940.3.1), with ridge-roofed lid mended with iron cramps leaded into dowel holes, and containing a fragile skeleton broken up by workmen, was found on 5 Jan. in digging hut foundations. It is obliquely tooled, with overall dimensions of 6 ft. 4 ins. by 1 ft. 11 ins., and 2 ft. 4 ins. high.
Another of Ham Hill stone found on 11 Jan., with a flat lid of approximately the same depth, lay E. to W. in a chalk-cut grave 4 ft. below modern surface (Plate 229). A fragmentary skeleton of a man 5 ft. 9 ins. tall, head E., was enclosed except for face and shoulders in a preservative packing of plaster of Paris or raw gypsum (obtainable in outcrops in the Purbeck cliffs). The hands were crossed on the lower part of the trunk. Ring-bolts and ornamental angle-irons, and nails with remains of wood, enabled C. D. Drew to reconstruct the design of an inner coffin of oaken boards 1 in. thick with neatly fitted butt joints (Fig.). The gypsum or plaster mould had collapsed but seemed to retain, in the head area, the impression of a shroud; it was free from lead, traces of which were unaccountably found, on chemical analysis, to be present in the wood. The sarcophagus had been roughly dressed with a bull-nosed axe; the angles of sides and top were bevelled. The external dimensions are 7 ft. 9 ins. by 2 ft. 8 ins. narrowing to 2 ft. 3 ins.; height 2 ft. 2 ins. Sarcophagus and fittings in D.C.M. (1940.4. 1–3).
The third sarcophagus, of Ham Hill stone with shallow flat lid broken in two, was found in laying a water-main at or very near the site of the fire hydrant (68469109) in the turningcircle 60 yds. from the entrance to the Iron Age Camp. The orientation was E.S.E. to W.N.W. (head), but the skeleton was fragmentary. The sarcophagus, with 9-in. sides, length 7 ft. 7 ins., width 2 ft. 6 ins., height 2 ft. 8 ins., is now at the Roman house, Colliton Park (182). (Notes by C. D. Drew in D.C.M.; J.R.S. XXX (1940), 176; information from C. D. Drew.) A small bowl and model axe-head of bronze, in D.C.M., found in 1943 in trenching between the railway and the river, were possibly grave-goods of a burial (Dorset Procs. LXXIV (1952), 98–9; see, however, Monument (214)).’

Record last edited

May 18 2020 11:34AM