SDO168 - Archaeological Observations at Wimborne Minster 1988

A report on observations of work undertaken by East Dorset District Council to improve drainage and paving outside and immediately adjacent to the south and west sides of Wimborne Minster. The Trust for Wessex Archaeology undertook an intermittent watching brief, as short sections of open groundworks became available. In general, a simple sequence was revealed of modern turf and topsoil over mixed loose brown loam with fragments of natural flint and disarticulated human bone, though the area outside the west door of the minster also produced a small quantity of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century domestic debris. Occasional discrete groups of disarticulated human bone were observed and left in section or reburied, attesting to the disturbance of earlier burials by later graves. Nearby grave slabs suggest dates of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century for the latest burials. Part of a brick vault, also of eighteenth or nineteenth-century date, was uncovered in the eastern part of the works. Natural or undisturbed graveyard layers were not observed, and no redeposited material pre-dating the present use was seen.