EDO5437 - St Martin's Church, Wareham; excavations for new drainage system 1985-86

David Hinton and Chris Webster of Southampton University conducted a small excavation around the perimeter of St Martin's Church, Wareham in advance of the construction of a new drainage system during December 1985 and January 1986. The trench measured 0.5m wide and ran around the entire exterior of the building. A strip of floor inside the nave was also removed and investigated. Two sherds of Romano-British pottery were found in a redeposited context on the north side of the church. On the south side of the nave a layer of bright yellow mortar was observed at least 150mm deep and containing some large stones. This layer appeared to underlie the church, although no dating evidence was recovered from it. The original foundations of the standing church were shown to comprise yellow mortar and stones, some of which were diagonally set. 2-4 plinth courses lay above these foundations. The excavations also suggested that the West wall of the nave had formerly lain east of its current position. This conclusion runs contrary to those made by Keen in 1979 in which he suggested the nave had originally been longer and had been shortened due to the erosion of North Street. The first phase of the present structure could not be dated by archaeological means, although it was suggested that the church dates from the last quarter of the 11th century on architectural grounds. The chancel arch has romanesque detail unlikely to have been used on a lesser English Church until the last quarter of the 11th century. [1]