Monument record MDO4458 - Romano-British occupation at Bagber, Milton Abbas

The continued search for the site of the supposed Romano-British pottery kilns on Bagber Farm in 1976 located a thin scatter of worn and fragmentary imbrex tile centred around SY 80129907 in freshly ploughed pasture. The only pottery sherds, however, were a fragment of amphora and wheel-thrown grey jar-rim with no sign
of black-burnished ware. The crucial area may lie in the remaining pasture to the west. (area SY 800991). <3>

<1> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 2, 199-200 (Monograph). SDO136.

‘(26) BUILDINGS AND OCCUPATION DEBRIS, Romano-British, were found at Bagber by C. Warne in 1841 and by J. C Mansel-Pleydell in 1896; the exact locations are unknown, but probably were near 80000930. The finds were on a hill-top, W. of the Milborne Brook, where the chalk is capped with Clay-with-flints. Warne found a rectangular building (44 ft. by 25 ft.) with much pottery and with 2nd-century coins. Mansel-Pleydell cleared three chalk-cut chambers, two of them circular. One chamber was 6 ft. in diameter and had a clay lining 9 ins. thick which had been subjected to ‘intense heat’. A second chamber, communicating with the first, had in the centre an undetached block of chalk 2 ft. by 3 ft. on plan and 3 ft. high; it supported a flat block of sandstone. The largest chamber, with a floor level 8 ins. lower than the others, had rough tooling on the walls. Finds included samian and New Forest wares, part of a circular shale table, a quern, and a coin of Vespasian. It is not certain that these remains are of pottery kilns, as is usually stated; the sherds which survive in D.C.M. do not include wasters. (Hutchins I, 562; Dorset Procs. XIII (1892), 184; XVII (1896), 128-31.)’

<2> Farrar, R A H, 1973, The Techniques and Sources of Romano-British Black-Burnished Ware (Article in monograph). SDO16399.

<3> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1974, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1973, 93-96 (Serial). SDO73.

<4> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1978, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1976, 58 (Serial). SDO76.

<5> National Record of the Historic Environment, 455842 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Mar 19 2023 8:40AM