Volume 1

The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    o North Ockenden. [1859, Part I., p. 174 ] During the last month a large number of labourers have been em- ployed in trenching some fields belonging to Holme Farm, situate about a mile and a half west of North Ockenden. In the course of their operations they found a number of beds of dark soil, about 18 inches in depth, and at about 1 foot from the surface, in which were deposited a large quantity of bones, supposed at first to be human, together with fragments of pottery and pieces of charcoal. It was the general opinion of the workmen that the field was once the scene of a great battle, and this opinion is supported by some local tradi- tions. One thing, however, is certain, viz., that the scene of their labours is the site of a Roman burial-ground, extending over a space of about 16 acres, but whether it marks the battlefield of one of those many great struggles which took place in this county between the Britons and Romans, or whether it denotes the peaceful cemetery of a Roman station, it is perhaps not very easy to determine. The little evidence, however, which the plough and the harrow have left behind, seems in favour of the latter. The regular and almost equidistant arrangement of the graves, and the large quantity of fragments of cinerary urns found in nearly all of them, seem to indicate rather the orderly interment of a cemetery than the hasty burial of a battlefield. The graves are at once discernible from the surrounding soil, the natural soil being a yellow clay, while the earth of the graves is nearly black. They vary in size from about 10 to 40 feet in circumference; it is impossible with any accuracy to trace their original form, but they appear for the most part to have been circular; one, however, is much larger than the rest, and of a different form; it is about 60 feet in length by about 20 in width. The fragments of pottery vary very much in character, some being of the very rudest workmanship, while others have been more carefully manufactured; a few very small pieces of Samian ware have also been found. The bones are all of different animals—of the horse, the deer, etc., but these have all been so broken by the plough as almost to render identification impossible. No coins nor any fragments of metal have as yet been discovered. An adjoining field is still called Church Field, which, as it contains no foundation of any building, probably received its name from the multitude of barrows or burial mounds which must formerly have crowded the surrounding locality.—Essex Herald. Rivenhall. [1S47, Part I.,p. 185.] Mr. Jonathan Hutley has lately been extensively drawing a pasture field contiguous to the churchyard, and almost in every part some interesting remains are discovered. A tessellated pavement of several
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