SDO9759 - Dorchester, Colliton Park

Following a watching brief in 1947 on the cutting back of earth prior to the construction of a brick retaining wall at Colliton Park, Dorchester, Miss P.A.M. Keef later dug a trial trench in March 1948. The trench was at right angles to the main exposed section and revealed the remains of a wall associated with a plaster floor. Beneath this floor were traces of an earlier floor in which there was a hearth or burnt patch containing a fragment of late Iron Age pottery. Below the level of the floor was a small unlined oven of roughly pear-shaped form which was cut into the undisturbed natural sub-soil. This oven, considered to be a corn-drying oven, was filled with dark earth containing fragments of RB coarse ware and a rounded stone slab in the bottom.