Monument record MDO8382 - Iron Age and Romano-British settlement and shale working site at Gallows Gore West, Worth Matravers

Iron Age and Romano-British settlement, inhumations and associated shale industry with finds of brooches, pottery and coins. Early Bronze Age inhumation found.

Iron Age "A" to late 4th century settlement, with evidence of shale armlet manufacture, discovered since 1931 over an area 220 yards by 100 yards, centred SY 9782 7901, west of Gallows Gore. Remains found include Iron Age and Romano-British storage pits and shale working floors, dry-stone walling of the 2nd century or later, 1st & 2nd century brooches and 3rd and 4th century coins. Several inhumation burials have been discovered, including one of a child with a brooch of circa AD 50-80, and the unlined grave of two females accompanied by Durotrigian ware and a mid-1st century Gallo-Belgic beaker. One of the Iron Age pits had penetrated an Early Bronze Age inhumation with a handled food-vessel. Finds are in the British Museum, Dorset County Museum, Poole Museum and Christchurch Museum. <1-6>

The area indicated is now a fairly smooth pasture field; surface quarrying continues in fields to the east but nothing significant was noted. <7>

<1> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1939, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1938, 66-72 (Serial). SDO17153.

<2> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1948, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1947, 42-44 (Serial). SDO47.

<3> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1949, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1948, 29-59 (Serial). SDO48.

<4> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1963, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1962, 115 (Serial). SDO62.

<5> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1955, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1953, 52, 69 (Serial). SDO53.

<6> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 3, 620-621 (Monograph). SDO150.

‘(39) GALLOWS GORE, West (SY 97 NE). Inhumation Burials, Pits, Hut-floors, and Occupation Debris, Iron Age 'A' to late Roman, with waste from shale armlet manufacture, have been found since 1931 over an area of 220 yds. by 100 yds. in Lander's quarry S. of Downshay Wood (97827901).
A child's skeleton perhaps in a wooden coffin, with objects including a brooch of c. 50–80, was enclosed in a covered cist of two slabs in the N.E. sector of the site. An unlined grave of two females extended E.-W. with heads at opposite ends was found 12 yds. to S., one elderly with three Durotrigian bowls of Brailsford's class 1 by the body and a native copy of a Gallo-Belgic butt-beaker of perhaps the mid 1st century A.D. in fragments over the head; nearby were two inhumations, one extended in a cist E.-W. Of two more to W. in plain graves, one had legs flexed.
Of 14 pits examined, six were of Iron Age 'A' and two of 'C' or early Roman date; one of the latter, stone-lined, was possibly a well. The others were Roman or undated. Two areas, one oval with central hearth, sling-stones and a crude flint industry, were probably hut-floors of an early phase of Iron Age 'A'; a third was a working-floor with debris of a hand-cut shale armlet industry and 'A' pottery. Thereafter occupation was apparently continuous into the late 4th century A.D., although Iron Age 'B' elements were confined to stray sherds. The Roman phase was marked by storage-pits, the well (?), fragments of burnt clay daub, and a few short lengths of drystone wall thought to be of the 2nd century or later near which were floor-slabs and stone roof-tiles; there were also two rectangular storage cists, one of reused roof-tiles containing three jugs of perhaps the mid 2nd century, and three shale-working floors with ribbed and light-weight plain armlets, class C armlet cores and flint lathe-tools. Miscellaneous finds included Iron Age loomweights, weaving combs, spindle-whorls, Romano-British brooches of the 1st and 2nd centuries, coins of the 3rd and 4th centuries, a pierced shale slab (in D.C.M., possibly a window-shutter), and fragments of crude pottery containers perhaps connected with trade in salt. Objects are in B.M., D.C.M., Christchurch Museum and Poole Museum. (Dorset Procs. LX (1938), 66–72; LXIX (1947), 42–4; LXX (1948), 29–59; LXXV (1953), 52, 69; LXXXIV (1962), 115; Swanage Times 20 Jan., 1954; information from Mr. J. B. Calkin.)’

<7> Quinnell, N V, Various, Field Investigators Comments NVQ, F1 NVQ 23-APR-86 (Unpublished document). SDO11903.

<8> Tatler, S and Bellamy, P, 2007, Downs Quarry, Worth Matravers, Dorset. Archaeological Evaluation, January 2007 (Unpublished document). SDO15185.

<9> National Record of the Historic Environment, 456388 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Apr 21 2023 6:31PM