Monument record MDO4198 - Roman cemetery, Langton Long Blandford

About twenty burials disturbed during construction of an agricultural building. The burials were described as being extended, randomly oriented and not inter-cutting. Nails, presumed to be coffin nails, were found, and the cemetery is interpreted as being of Roman date.

Roman burial found near Lophill Farm at ST 9070 0478. The burials were cut into chalk sometimes to a depth of 0.3m. They were extended and randomly orientated, some in discrete groups over an area of some 500 sq metres. The burials were cut into a lynchet which may be a continuation of the fields associated with Buzbury Rings. No grave-goods were found other than coffin nails, but their presence suggests a Roman date. Located during turf-stripping, no excavation was undertaken. <1>

National Record of the Historic Environment, 911597 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<1> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1981, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1979, 138-139 (Serial). SDO79.

'Langton Long (ST 90700478). About 20 burials were located during machine stripping for an agricultural building at Lophill Farm, Long Langton, near Blandford. These were noted by the farmer, Mr. Becket, and the site was described by him to P. J. Woodward, who reports the find. It was not possible to make a detailed record of the site and the skeletal remains collected from some of the graves were not available for re-examination.

The burials were cut into chalk bedrock, sometimes to a depth of about 0.30 m. They were extended and randomly oriented, some in discrete groups over an area of some 500m2. None of the graves was apparently cut by another. Many of the burials were face down and the graves packed with chalk. Some had coffin nails present; these were flat-headed, hand-forged with a square stem section, and from 4-8 cm long. No burial goods were found.

The examination of a deep machine cut, to the north-west of the burial area, showed that the bruals were cut into a 'field' lynchet which ran for about 150 m north-west and at right-angles to the parish boundary. This 'field' may be one in a continuation of that group of Celtic fields laid out to the south-west of Buzbury Rings between field tracks and banks, one of which may run down the parish boundary on the south-western side of the site. The burial area has no other defined boundary. These Celtic fields can be interpreted as being laid out earlier than, but in contemporarty use with, the Buzbury Rings defended settlement, which was in continuous use from the Iron Age through to the end of the Roman period.

Since there were no grave-goods with these inhumations, and no contiguous settlement material, the dating evidence for the burials is extremely slight, but the presence of coffin nails suggests a Roman date. If their location in one of the units of the Celtic field system is also accepted, then it is clear that at least one of these fields had gone out of arable use in the Roman period and this in turn may suggest that the enclosed settlement of Buzbury was chainging to a more pastoral economy in its later phases.

The skeletal remains were not well preserved and were reinterred in a pit in a piece of adjoining woodland at approximately ST 90730486. The few well preserved nails are in the possession of the farmer.'

Record last edited

Feb 14 2023 4:36PM