Monument record MDO19087 - Beggar's Knap, Great Western Road, Dorchester; Roman burials

Romano-British inhumations on the south side of Great Western Road.

SY 6914890298. Inhumation, one or more, found in 1960 after the levelling of part of the garden in front of Mentone Lodge for traffic improvement. A skeleton without grave-goods, unless they were beyond the head, lay NE to SW, at a depth of 2.5ft. A pit or grave noted by Miss M Whitley at the angle in the new garden wall in front of Mentone Lodge, at SY 6914090294, was said by workmen to have held remains of two skeletons. Other remains suggested a "hurried burial" in a similar but shallower pit 10 feet to the west, and there was a skull in disturbed upper levels 12 feet from the wall of Weymouth Avenue. SY69069026. An unstated number of inhumation burials and a child cremation were found in the 1880s during the building of houses on the south side of the Great Western Road. The burials were invariably placed with feet to the east. The pottery associated with the burials ranged from the 1st-4th centuries, and seven vessels included a patera, and some cooking pots are now in the Hogg collection. Remains of at least three angle irons indicate a coffined buril or burials. Although the apparent position of the graves, or some of them, in the ditch or counterscarp bank of the rampart is anomolous, it is consisten with the dating of the latter, not before 130 at the earliest. Cunnington refers to three skeletons found in 1881 in digging a cellar near Mentone Lodge; the cellar would be that under 5-6 Great Western Road. <1-2>

Record last edited

Nov 2 2023 10:57AM