Monument record MDO6797 - Bronze Age urned cremation, 100 Willett Road, Poole

A human cremation in an inverted Middle Bronze Age bucket urn was disturbed during the digging of a cess pit in the garden of 100 Willett Road, Poole in 1966. The urn was placed inverted in a small pit about 4 feet deep. The base of the vessel had been truncated in the past.

A Bronze Age burial urn was found in 1966 during construction of a new cess-pit at 100 Willett Road, Poole. The urn was recovered in fragments but the contents, including cremated bone, were kept intact. The urn is a simple bucket urn of Middle - Late Bronze Age date.

The vessel is described as being of a 'black ware, mostly gritless, with only two small lugs on opposing sides of the body'. It is now in Poole Museum. <1>

<1> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1967, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1966, 105-106 (Serial). SDO66.

A Bronze Age burial urn from Willett Road, near Wimborne
In September 1966 contractors makin a new cess-pit at 100 Willett Road, Poole, on behalf of the landlord, Dorset Coounty Council, came across a burial urn in the extreme S.E. corner of their excavation (SZ 00479904). The iste, adjoing Merley Hall Farm, less than a mile S.W. of Wimbrone, lies on a low gravel terrace, a few feet above the Stour water-meadows, and a dozen yards east of a small stream running down from the south. The vessel was extracted in fragments, though it was possible to keep intact the mass of soil and cremated bone forming the contents. Poole Museum and the writer were both notified of the find and a brief examination of the find-spot was made by artifical light. It seems likely, from the fact that most of the base was missing and had apparently perished earlier, that the urn had lain inverted in a small pit. The bottom of this feature was now some 4ft. from the surface and had been cut 15ins. into natural gravel.


The urn is of a black ware, mostly gritless, with only two small lugs on opposing sides of the body as distinguishing traits. Mr. J. B. Calkin has examined it and describes it as a simple bucket-urn of Middle to Late Bronze Age date and of native inspiration. This is the first find of its kind form the immediate area, though other urns of similar type are recorded form the Ballast Hole, Corfe Mullen, and from Merley, both about 1 mile distant. It is not surprising that the south side of the Stour valley should yield further evidence of man's presence at that period of prehistory. AN age-old track along the dege of the heathland has long been suspected, leading form the important landfall at Christchurch into central Dorset.
N. H. Field

<2> National Record of the Historic Environment, 458064 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Aug 23 2024 5:00PM