Monument record MDO18417 - Poundbury Late Roman Mausoleum R7

Late Roman mausoleum R7 was discovered in the southern end of the western half of the main Late Roman cemetery during the 1966-1979 excavations at Poundbury. It was a stone-footed rectangular structure, though only traces of the northern and western walls were found. The northern wall had been robbed out. The structure had been terraced into the hillslope: outside the line of the western wall, traces of a construction terrace were exposed. Substantial quantities of stone roof tile and chalk rubble were found within the structure. Two graves and a large robber pit were found within the mausoleum. One grave contained an adult male burial in a Ham stone coffin filled with gypsum and the other grave had an adult male burial in a wooden coffin. In the southern part of the interior a large robber pit had a coffin-shaped distribution of Ham stone chips on the base, suggesting the former presence of a stone sarcophagus.

Found during the excavations directed by Christopher Sparey Green, for the Dorchester Excavation Committee, between 1966 and 1979 during development of the Grove Trading Estate on the eastern slopes of Poundbury Camp, Dorchester (1). The numbers in square brackets below refer to the context and feature numbers used in the published report and archive (1)(2).

Mausoleum R7 was a fragmentary stone-footed rectangular structure excavated on site B, in the southern end of the western part of the main Late Roman cemetery at Poundbury. Traces of the northern and western walls were found. The western wall comprised a 1.5m length of an inner face of limestone blocks and a flint core over a mortar bed. The outer face had been destroyed by modern disturbance. The remains of the northern wall comprise a single in situ limestone block,which formed part of the inner face. The course of the northern wall is marked by a robber trench filled by mixed brown soil with mortar and limestone rubble. Outside the line of the western wall were traces of a construction terrace filled with limestone and flint rubble in a mortar matrix. No other structural evidence was recovered or recorded.

Within the area of the building, against the north side, there was a layer of debris containing chalk rubble and fragments of limestone roof tile, covered by limestone blocks. Iron nails, ceramic tile fragments and late Romano-British pottery were also present in this layer.Two graves [98] & [99] containing the skeletons of adult males with their heads to the west were found beneath this layer. The earlier grave [99] had a Ham stone coffin filled with gypsum and the secondary grave [98] had a wooden coffin. In the southern part of the interior there was a large robber pit, recorded as grave [1284] containing building debris in a brown soil matrix. The excavator noted that the outline of a coffin could be seen from the distribution of Ham stone chips on the floor of the grave. The contents and size of the pit suggest that it had been dug after the demolition of the building to extract a stone coffin, which had presumably been paired with grave [99] (1).

<1> Farwell, D E and Molleson, T I, 1993, Excavations at Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset 1966-1980. Volume II: The Cemeteries (Monograph). SDO9538.

<2> Sparey Green, C, 1966-1979, Poundbury, Grove Trading Estate, Dorchester (Excavation archive). SDO10096.

Record last edited

Aug 3 2010 5:26PM