David Griffiths latest garden finds

 

Were the Romans in your garden too?

Having previously found quite a lot of sherds of medieval pottery in my garden I have been wondering what else of local historic interest might also be lurking there.

In the spring I was planting a shrub and found in the hole I had dug a small fragment of metal which was slightly curved and with a pattern along the edges. At first I thought it was plastic as it was so thin ,green and shiny.

Later in the year Alan Crisp was kind enough to lend me his metal detector and using it I found several metal items including an army button on which is embossed ''Wherwell Loyal Volunteers'', maybe a relic from the first world war .

I also found a folded up piece of lead. When I unfolded it I noticed that where it had fractured, on the line of some of the folds, I could see that it had an inner layer from which the end of a small strip was protruding.

I took the metal fragment and the unfolded lead to the Andover museum.

3 months or so later I have these objects returned.

The museum says that the little metal fragment is: 'part of asmall bracelet and the chip carved decoration suggests Roman in date. There are some similar pieces from the Lankhills cemetry at Winchester.'

	Metal fragment , from a Bracelet, Roman in date

However the lead was reported to be indeterminate in date and not recognised as anything special.

	Unfolded lead object

Does anyone recognise my unfolded lead object as a curse? I feel sure that I have seen similar objects in a museum somewhere but can't remember exactly where. I understand that the Romans had a habit of cursing fellow citizens who had wronged them by making up a small parcel of lead inside on which is written the name of the cursed person.This would then be deposited near the cursed person's home without their knowledge so as to encourage the evil spirits to have a bad influence on them.

Since then I have acquired a metal detector of my own and have found many more objects in my garden including an assortment of English, Irish, French and German coins, more buttons, belt buckles, several hoops mostly about 2 inches in diameter, live ammunition and of course much rubbish.

One of the more interesting items is a rectangular belt loop (Medieval). A similar one can be seen on the 'object' picture database at www.finds.org.uk under the reference BH 30B647.

Now instead of suggesting that Chilbolton residents dig 1m square test pits in their gardens to see if they have any objects that would help identify the type and age of any previous occupancy, I am looking for owners of gardens, paddocks, fields etc where they would be willing for me to search with my newly acquired metal detector.

My neighbours, Steve and Gwen Picco have been the first to agree. A quick sweep turned up a 1p coin and a cast lead musket or pistol ball !

If you are interested in helping to discover more objects which might help us to learn more about the past activities in and around the village then please call me
on 01264860244 

 

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The Mark Way

In Chilbolton we have the remnants of a pre-historic trade and drove way called the Mark Way. The Mark Way started at Totton at the end of what are now Southampton waters. At this point the water would have been low and easy for primitive boats to be loaded for their passage around the coast. The River Test comes out at this point, it is known that the Romans and the Vikings navigated the Test and so there might have been a series of loading areas here. The line then went to Braishfield and can still be seen the lane which runs below and through the village. From there to Chilbolton the line is lost but Little Somborne could well have been the next staging point. From here across what is now the A30 and has been the line of the Roman road to Salisbury and beyond to the west. The Way at this point crossed Chilbolton Downs and down to the Mayfly bridge. At the point where it leaves the top of Downs (the Leckford estate) to the bridge it is clearly seen in a sheep worn pathway about 30 feet wide at the edge of the Downs. The hedging along the several hundred yards of this Way is very, very ancient. The Mark Way was used up to Victorian times to move enormous herds of cattle and sheep across country.

From here to the North and West of Andover on a line traced by the lanes between Penton Mewsey and Linkenholt, which continues to Wantage, and then up into Warwick. Much of this is guess work based on looking at OS sheets and the sites themselves. If anyone can point to any books on the subject please let me know.

The new owner of the farm at the top of the track adjoining the Mark Way has agreed with the Hampshire County Council to clear and relay the footpath along the line of the Mark Way. This will be a considerable improvement for walkers as the views across the Leckford Downs from the new path are delightful.

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An input from the other side of the Atlantic

Here are two letters from Linda Rogers whos grandmother was born in Chilbolton in the 1880s. There is also a web site:

 http://individual.utoronto.ca/lrogers/chilbolton.htm

 Dear Alan,   Thank you.  I have pictures of my mother visiting the village in about 1922 (when she was age 9), with my grandmother who was born in Chilbolton in the 1880's.  I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in the 1950's.    My grandmother, Kate Baverstock by birth, spoke about her father working for the church where he supervised people in activities like digging graves and basically maintaining the property.  She also remembers him being gone for long times ringing changes on the bells for special occasions of one kind or another. She said that they didn't really farm at all, but had a kitchen garden and some small lifestock.  I believe they had a little land (not much) that someone may have farmed for them or which they rented out.  From her account they lived within sight of the church. There's a house in some of the photos that my mother has and we think it was my grandmother's family house but we're not sure.  I can look them out and scan for you.  At the time I was looking for something entirely different.  (Isn't that always the way one finds things?)    Of interest perhaps to your historian, my grandmother and her sister were the only children in the family  (of 11 I believe) who survived a small pox epidemic that left many dead.  She said that most of her hair came out in the illness and it never grew back the same.  My grandmother had very fine whispy hair the whole of my life but she said it was full and wavey before she had small pox.   She told me that she was the first child in the family to ever complete grammar school and there was talk of sending her away to study at a high school but it never came to pass.  Instead she became a children's nanny and nursery governess.  The family she worked for was related to the Earl of Rochester's family, Willmot. She fell in love with her employer's nephew, Walter James Willmot (his grandfather was an Admiral and his father went into the import business after retiring from the navy) and he went off to Canada to set up a business (machinist shop)  and in a year or so sent for her.  They were married in Montreal by a preliminary civil ceremony because it wouldn't have been "proper" for them to be on the overnight train together being not married.  (I find that hilarious.)  I still have some bits of lace from her wedding dress.    I was rather close to my grandmother because my mother always worked and so my grandmother lived in and cared for me as a child.  As a result of this generation-skipping experience of mothering, I am possibly the last Canadian woman who was taught to dance "The Lancers" and to know fine points of ettiquette such as "the length of a lady's glove should match the length of the hour" or the more useful, "One should always compliment personal qualities and never comment on a person's possessions.  Thus, according to my grandmother's rules,  it is correct to say, 'my, you have decorated this room with such taste' and it is coarse to say, 'what nice new furniture you've bought".  What a fine distinction that was!  And indeed I was fortunate to be raised by this diminutive woman, of keen intelligence and gracious disposition,  who began life in your village.   I own a rather large "chunk" of Chilbolton history in a way.  I have carted a huge dresser about the world  that my grandmother brought with her from her family home in Chilbolton.  It was hers all her life.  An antiques dealer has told me that it likely predates 1835 due to the hand carved tongue and groove jointing on the drawers.  I was always fascinated by the "secret" drawer in the bottom as a child so my grandma gave it to me in her later life.  I won't have the mirror replaced despite the silvering going on it.  At 50, I don't need that close a rendering of my wrinkles anyway!  I also have a "Mrs. Beeton's Home Cookery Book" that was given to my grandmother by her mother and is an old enough edition that it tells one to "build a high fire" and how to wring a goose's neck.  More importantly are the many home recipes stuck between the pages, either brought from Chilbolton or sent in messages in response to pleas like, "Dear Mother, please tell me how you make up the Christmas pudding.  Mine was quite the disaster last year."   This backward looking mood has been brought back by the recent death of my father (at age 97)  which prompted the usual great spate of photo album sessions.  I assembled the "memory board" for the visiting room and in looking for his family's early photos, came across a great deal more of my mother's family.   I've enjoyed your website enormously and was struck immediately by the picture of the church which I had just seen in photos from 80 years ago.  Thank you for affording me a virtual visit. 

Best regards,   Linda    

Hi Alan,   I've since learned that my grandmother's sister's name was "Lil" (Lillian?) and that sister had a daughter who was known as "Queenie".  My mom couldn't remember the married name of the sister but she's working on it!  At 92 sometimes the wheels have to grind for awhile. But thank goodness she's got all her wits.    I'm visiting my mother again on Wednesday and I will make a point of borrowing some of her photos.  She confirmed that her grandfather was the church Verger. She spent a year in Britain when she was nine and visited Chilbolton often although they were staying primarily with her father's family in London.  It would have been 1922 when she visited if she is correct about being aged 9 at the time.   I'm quite sure that my grandmother was born in Chilbolton.  She spoke of it her whole life and had a picture of the cottage that she was born in on her bedroom wall and there is the odd letter from home amongst photos.  Other little objects she treasured included a little candleholder shaped like a monkey that she used to take up to bed with her as a child.  The handle was the tail and the candle sat in the monkey's tall hat.  She'd bring it out for me when the electricity went down and tell me stories about when she was little.   I've never been genology crazed, but there is a connection for me with a place that I've heard about all my life, I suppose. Thanks for your kind messages.  My mailing address is:   604-92 King Street East Toronto, ON  M5C 1V8 Canada   

Just an update on the quest for Linda's relations. It appears that this area was full of Baverstocks, there is even a village in Wiltshire called Baverstock. Horse Shoe Cottage was lived in by Tom Baverstock, now dead. Charlie Bavestock now in his late 80s who has lived here most of his life is able to resite a list of all the family who lived around here but could not shed light on the people in the photos Linda was kind enough to send me, the nicest one is shown here. They probably lived in a cottge which was burnt down about 100 yards before Horse Shoe Cottage and is show on the left of the photo.

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 Danebury Environs Roman Project: Fullerton Roman Villa

Tahira Hotton (Friends of Andover Museum)

This material was produced by Susanne Hasselmann, part of the Family of the Month this month together with Tahira Hotton. The 'photos, which I will add as soon as I can, were supplied by Tahira. But David Allen the Curator of the Andover Museum and Senior Keeper of Archaeology for Hampshire kindly assisted and read the material so we at least know it is correct. 

It’s wonderful to think that we have the remains of a splendid Roman villa on our doorstep – situated, as it was, overlooking the river Anton at Fullerton.  The site was first discovered in the late 19th century when the railway was built, and was also examined in the 1960s, but not published.  In 2000-01 Professor Barry Cunliffe of Oxford University and his team made a more thorough excavation as part of the Danebury Environs Roman Project.  I visited the excavations in the summer of 2001 with the Friends of Andover Museum.  It is no longer possible to visit the site, which has been backfilled to preserve the remains, but it is possible to read more about the findings as Professor Cunliffe published an article in the magazine ‘Current Archaeology’, No. 188, October 2003, which is available to buy at Andover Museum, or through www.archaeology.co.uk.  The following has been extracted from that account.

The Danebury Environs Roman Project followed on the heels of the very successful excavations and studies of Danebury Iron Age Hillfort, which began in 1969 and carried on for twenty years, with a further eight years exploring other Iron Age settlements in the area.  The Roman project has grown out of this.  Several Roman villas in the area had already been explored years ago but the information gathered was rather limited.  Thus the opportunity presented itself to re-examine some of these sites in the light of more recently acquired understanding and contexts (continuity of site, economics of farming development, and so on). 

As well as the Fullerton villa site, three other villas have so far been included in the study.  At Houghton Down there was continuity of a site from the Iron Age through to the Roman Period.  Timber buildings were replaced by a large aisled hall, dating to late 2nd century, with partitioning and a bath suite added later, and two further buildings, of lesser architectural importance, added in the late 3rd century.  At Grateley, lying close to a Roman road, an even larger aisled hall was found (late 2nd/early 3rd century), with separate buildings containing double corn drying kilns, one of which was discovered to have been found perfectly preserved.  The villa at Thruxton was originally excavated in the early 19th century and is famous for its remarkable mosaic, now on display at the British Museum.  Here, Professor Cunliffe decided to look at the entire area surrounding the previous excavations.  The aisled hall was a comparatively modest structure, dating again to the late 2nd/early 3rd century, but it wasn’t until the 4th century that this most intricate mosaic was laid.  Nearby were found graves and ritual pits, the hypothesis being that the mosaic was the focus of a family shrine.  

The villa at Fullerton has its own story to tell.  The magnetometer survey revealed two Roman buildings within a ditched enclosure and a canal leading to the mill site 50 metres to the south.  When the corridor villa had been discovered at the end of the 19th century the mosaic floors were removed and relaid in the Manor nearby.  Recent investigations have revealed the complete plan of a symmetrically designed villa, once floored throughout with mosaics, with fragments still in situ. 

This villa was built in the 4th century to replace the original simple hall-house, which dates to the late 2nd/early 3rd century, and which was also completely excavated.  The roof was supported by four timbers set on flint bases with the two ends of the building subdivided into two and three rooms respectively.  Evidence points to walls, or ceiling, decorated with elaborate geometric painted designs.  When the new corridor villa was built, the hall-house was converted into a barn or workshop with a large drying oven inserted into the eastern end.

An artificial canal served the mill, or indeed two mills of different dates, the earlier being fed by a leet of approximately 1.4m wide, which was later widened to about 3.5m to provide for the later mill.  This would have produced an increase of velocity of water and power for the mill.  Little survives of the mills other than evidence of the emplacements of their timber structures, although fragments of millstones were also found.  The corridor villa was built to front the canal with a bridge over it, allowing its residents to stroll across it down to the river.  Professor Cunliffe suggests that “It is difficult to resist the idea that the villa had been carefully sited to allow its occupants to enjoy the tranquil view across the valley and to benefit from the early morning sun”. 

Further exploration of the environs of Fullerton villa suggest that the villa was surrounded by an extensive system of fields, probably growing the corn ground in the mills.  It is likely however, that this facility also provided services to neighbouring farms, helping the family to raise the funds to build this fabulous villa.

In the Spring of 2004, Professor Cunliffe addressed a full-house at Cricklade Theatre on the findings of the Danebury Environs Roman Project.  His enthusiasm for the range and depth of understanding gained from exploration of these sites was infectious and I can only encourage you to look further into the fascinating past surrounding us.  Details of Professor Cunliffe’s article in Current Archaeology are given above, but later this year he will again most likely be leading a community excavation on another local site.  Please contact Andover Museum on 01264 366283 for further information.  Last year’s excavation revealed a fascinating Iron Age site very close to Fullerton again and we await the published results of that with anticipation. 

If you haven’t already done so, I must encourage you to visit Andover Museum, with its local history galleries, and also its comprehensive display of the excavations at Danebury Iron Age Hillfort.  Please note the Museum is closed on Mondays and on Sundays in winter.  The Friends of Andover Museum are a lively group who meet on the first Friday of each month at 7.30 p.m. in the Museum to hear a wide range of talks from experts on archaeology and history from across the globe, with two outings in the summer, one of which has been to Professor Cunliffe’s local excavations for the past few years.  Subscription is nominal, with family membership costing £8 a year.  We very much welcome visitors.  Please contact the Museum for further details of programmes, etc. 

(Andover Museum, Church Close, Andover.  Telephone 01264 366283.  Website: www.hants.gov.uk/museum/ironagem/ .

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	Medieval Pottery found at Upcote Cottage, Chilbolton

Upcote Cottage's Revelations

David Griffiths (Upcote Cot.) wonders if anyone would be interested in supporting a page on 'Digging up Chilbolton’s Past'. People could be invited to dig a 1 metre square test pit in their garden and report on what they find. This could help, for example, to establish the extent of the medieval village. It could include photos of some of the bits of medieval pottery, etc,  like those found in David's garden. See  the adjacent photo.
David thinks watching too much ‘Timeteam’ on Channel 4 could have biased him. It seems a great idea however and could include some team digging sessions

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Further inputs from David Griffiths on Medieval Pottery in Chilbolton gardens.

Ever wondered what you might find about the previous occupants of your plot if you dug up your garden ? Why not try a 1 metre square test pit this summer.

I have lived in Chilbolton for 29 years and have found that my garden, particularly near to the house, is full of bits of glass, pottery, china, tile and brick and much coal clinker from years of domestic rubbish tipping prior to organised rubbish collection.
Nothing of any great age, Edwardian, Victorian and Georgian in keeping with the known age of the present house which is listed as 18th century.

However, last year I was digging a hole (soakaway) at the end of the cottage to take rain water from that side of the roof of the rear extension. Below the level of the ususal 18th/19th century rubbish I found sherds of unglazed coarse pottery that looked as though they might be much older. I don’t recall finding anything like it before but then I don’t often have any reason to dig down this deep, 18 to 24 inches below ground level. Some years ago I did make a similar soakaway at the rear of the garage but this is further away from the house and the road and I found nothing like this there.
I decided to take the sherds to the Iron Age Museum in Andover who will date finds like this for local residents.

After a couple of months the sherds were returned dated as ‘Medieval’ which I understand puts them somewhere between 1066 and 1485.
The two larger sherds were identified as coming from the rim of a cooking pot and from the rim/handle of a jug or pitcher. See photo of the two sherds and the hole from which they came.
There were many smaller sherds without good features to help identify the type of vessel from which they had come. Generally they were bits of ordinary plain cooking pots.
The only intact non pottery item which I found in the same hole was a copper alloy tack with bronze patina which the museum dated as probably being 18th century.

Since making these finds I have also found more medieval pottery sherds in the ground further up the garden, away from the house and road whilst digging out a tree stump. Also when laying  an oil pipe for my new central heating boiler.

I have tried to find out a little about where the pottery might have been made by looking at several books and making contact with the pottery expert at the Winchester Museum Service, Historic Resource Centre.
However it seems that this is very difficult because very few medieval kiln sites have been found . The closest sites seem to be at Michelmersh to the south and Netherton to the north .

I am told that the sherds I have found are well spread in date throughout the Medieval period as early pottery was of a more course composition as sand, ground flint, chalk or crushed shell was added to the clay to prevent cracking in the kiln whereas later sherds are less course and more homogenious.

If anyone in the village wants help to identify finds from their gardens please let me know.
I am also happy to maintain a record of any finds which will help to establish which parts of the village were occupied in times past.

You can contact me (David Griffiths, Upcote Cottage) at : griffiths@janet-david.freeserve.co.uk