EDO5459 - Wimborne Sewerage Repair Scheme; observations and recording 1992

Observations carried out during the laying of drainage pipes in King Street, East Street, High Street and The Square. All trenches showed considerable disturbance from previous road and service works, and no features earlier than Victorian were observed. The replacement pipes were laid into the Victorian system, which consisted of channels with brick floors and sides, capped with slabs of Purbeck Limestone. A brick wall running along the north side of King Street and into the south path to the Minster was interpreted as the footings of the houses that are known to have been in this location. In Minster Mews a circular brick conduit was recorded, made of pyramid-shaped bricks stamped 'drain' and dated to the period 1784 to 1851, the period of the Brick Tax. Two mid seventeenth-century clay tobacco pipes and pieces of human bone were also found in Minster Mews, indicating that the graveyard around the Minster had extended this far.