Monument record MDO19087 - Beggar's Knap, Great Western Road, Dorchester; Roman burials

SY 6914890298. Inhumation, one or more, found in 1960 after the levelling of part of the garden in front of Mentone Lodge for traffic improvement. A skeleton without grave-goods, unless they were beyond the head, lay NE to SW, at a depth of 2.5ft. A pit or grave noted by Miss M Whitley at the angle in the new garden wall in front of Mentone Lodge, at SY 6914090294, was said by workmen to have held remains of two skeletons. Other remains suggested a "hurried burial" in a similar but shallower pit 10 feet to the west, and there was a skull in disturbed upper levels 12 feet from the wall of Weymouth Avenue.

SY69069026. An unstated number of inhumation burials and a child cremation were found in the 1880s during the building of houses on the south side of the Great Western Road. The burials were invariably placed with feet to the east. The pottery associated with the burials ranged from the 1st-4th centuries, and seven vessels included a patera, and some cooking pots are now in the Hogg collection. Remains of at least three angle irons indicate a coffined buril or burials. Although the apparent position of the graves, or some of them, in the ditch or counterscarp bank of the rampart is anomolous, it is consisten with the dating of the latter, not before 130 at the earliest.

Cunnington refers to three skeletons found in 1881 in digging a cellar near Mentone Lodge; the cellar would be that under 5-6 Great Western Road. <1-2>

<1> Moule, H J, 1901, Dorchester Antiquities, 2, 29 (Bibliographic reference). SDO9439.

<2> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 3, 549, no. 174i; 578, no.219a (Monograph). SDO150.

'(219) Beggar's Knap (Great Western Road)

(a) Inhumations, and one child's cremation, found in the 1880s in building houses on Beggar's Knap or Nap along the S. side of Great Western Road. Hogg refers to an unstated number of burials found in 1881 'all in the chalk, of which the ramparts were formed, and the graves thus varied in depth from three to nine feet, according to their position on the vallum or the fosse'. The feet were invariably E., and the heads usually resting on a stone. Several urns and a patera were found with them, and also a child's cremation 'carefully placed in an urn, and covered by a well chiselled stone which measured two cubic feet'. Cunnington clearly refers to the same locality in recording three skeletons found in December 1881 in digging a cellar near Mentone Lodge (in the counterscarp of the ditch according to Moule), 'two feet under the original chalk, and five feet of the Roman vallum over that again'; two close together were with three pieces of black ware (in D.C.M., with a skull; one is a flanged rim of the 4th century). The cellar will be that of No. 5 or 6 Great Western Road (69069026).

Seven vessels from Beggar's Knap are in the Hogg collection in D.C.M. The patera, found with a bronze penannular brooch (old no. Br. 106, untraced), is a small dish probably of the mid 3rd century (no. 25; 1886.9.144). A cooking-pot with tooled lattice, of the 1st century or first half of the 2nd, was, according to Moule, with a handled mug of ordinary coarse ware (nos. 26–7; 1886.9.47 and 8). The latter is a local imitation of a type common in the 2nd century, also represented here by a wheel-thrown example in hard orange-brown clay, apparently 'Glevum' ware (fn. 85) (no. 28; 1886.9.11). Three cookingpots of rather weak profile, with essentially similar tooled lattice decoration, may reasonably be referred to the mid 2nd to mid 3rd century (nos. 29–31; 1886.9.12–14). Remains of at least three angle-irons, ½ in. wide, and two wider hooked fittings (in D.C.M.) indicate a coffined burial or burials. The cemetery seems to have been in use in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and although the apparent position of the graves, or some of them, in the ditch or counterscarp bank of the rampart is anomalous, it is consistent with the dating of the latter not before c. A.D. 130 at earliest. (B. A. Hogg, MS. note in D.C.M.; Cunnington MS., 103–5, in D.C.M.; Moule MS., 22; Moule, 47, 86; Dorset Procs. XXI (1900), 73.)'

<3> National Record of the Historic Environment, 453472 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Aug 22 2024 7:36PM