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Its area includes the modern London
road, the garden of Roper House on the north-east of St. Dunstan’s
Street, Church Street, Orchard Street, the Southern Railway line, arid the
Recreation Ground. Over all this ground numerous urns, lamps and pottery
have been found, generally 4 ft. to 6 ft. deep, principally in
1844, when the railway was constructed (in 1850), during house-building
near the London Road, and in the drainage works of 1860-1 and 1867-8, but
also on various chance occasions in trenching gardens or in digging
foundations. Further discoveries of Samian and other pottery were made in
the Recreation Ground in March 1906, in a patch of black earth 8 ft. square,
which, however, bore no sign of bones or ashes. More graves were found and
better recorded—in 1925 and 1926 during the erection of a Telephone
Repeater Station near the western angle of St. Dunstan’s Terrace and the
London road, and about 100 yds. from the latter. Upwards of half-a-dozen
cremation burials were found at a depth of about 3½ ft., with pottery
ranging in date from about 90 to 150 A.D. (Arch. Cant. xxxix, 46).
The pottery is now in the Canterbury Museum. Of the previous finds no
proper account exists. Samian found in 1850, 1862, and later bore the
stamps ASIATICIM (Asiaticus; a 2nd-Century
potter of Lezoux); VIDVC.FE (Viduclus, an early
2nd-century potter of East Gaul); MACCIVS (a
2nd-Century potter of Lezoux); and MVXTVLL.M (Muxtullus,
a 2nd-century potter of Lezoux). A white clay figurine of a Gaulish type—a
woman with her hair gathered into a knot on the top of her head, seated in
a wicker chair and suckling two babies—is said to have been found in an
urn 4 ft. below the surface during the construction of the railway in
1844. Glass, including lachrymatories, is mentioned as occurring
sometimes, but apparently only in small quantities. The bronze top of a
‘manicure’ chatelaine, enamelled in white and green chevrons, found in
1868, is more noteworthy. Another chatelaine, enamelled in blue, with four
or five pendent implements enamelled in yellow, came from either this
cemetery or the next. One coin only is mentioned—found in Church Road in
1867-8— and its date is unrecorded. The remains suggest that the
cemetery was in use during the late first and second century, but our
records are altogether too meagre to define its duration more exactly.
General accounts are given by J. Brent in Proc. Soc.
Antiq. Ser. I, iii, 192; Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xii, 73, and
briefly Cant. Olden Time, 32; Dunkin, Brit. Arch. Assoc.
Canterbury Meeting, 330; Arch. Journ. i, 279. For single finds
see Pillbrow, Arch. xliii, 159, coin; J. Brent, Cant. Museum
Catalogue (1875), 24, 25, pottery; C. Brent in Brit. Arch.
Assoc. Journ. xviii, 396, stamp Asiatici (misread), and xi,
255, stamp Vidul.fe; J. Brent, Mus. Catal. no. 107, stamp Maccius,
and Arch. Cant. xvii, 157, for it and Muxtuii.m;
Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xii, 73, and Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser.
I, iii, 192, ivy-leaf saucer; J. Brent in Arch. Cant. iv, 33; Proc.
Soc. Antiq. Ser. i, iii, p. 192;
Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xii, 73; Cant. Olden Time, 40; Gent.
Mag. 1860, ii, 605, the figurine; Gent. Mag. 1863 (i), 355;
Cant. Olden Time, 36, plate iv, 3; Museum Catal. no. 103, plate
iii, red vase; Proc. Soc. Antiq. vi, 152, 377; Cant. Olden Time,
plates x, 4, xvi, 2 (pp. 36, 47, ‘77), the chatelaines; hence C. R.
Smith, Coll. Antiq. vii, 202, pl. xxi, 4. The stamps Asiatici.m and
(?) ntusiani and the chatelaine with pendants are now in the
Museum.
2. North-eastern quarter, Ramsgate Road. A cremation
cemetery lay on both sides of the modern road to Ramsgate, which
represents generally the Roman road to Reculver for the first three miles
out of Canterbury. The burials have been traced along an intermittent line
which runs north and south from the Artillery Barracks to the Vauxhall
brickfields for a distance of about half a mile. The first recorded find,
made in 1861, comprised ‘mortuary urns with other fictile vessels,’
lying just within the Cavalry Barracks ‘parallel to the Ramsgate Road
‘—whatever exactly ‘parallel’ may here mean (Arch. Cant. iv,
37). Two more graves were observed during drainage works in May 1862, 10
ft. apart and 4 ft. below the surface, near the messroom of the
Artillery Barracks, about 60 ft. east of the Ramsgate Road. In one
of them a large urn contained burnt bones, Samian ware, a red clay vessel
and an iron object taken to be a lamp. In the other, in which no ‘mortuary
urn’ was noted, there lay together many little Samian ‘vessels’ and
saucers, a small Castor urn with the usual hunting-scene in relief (Cant. Olden
Time, pl. i, i), two or three Upchurch ‘ollae,’ a round glass
bottle 4 in. high, a twisted yellow glass rod, estimated to have been
originally 10 (or 16) in. long, adorned with a cock at one end and a ‘stamp’
at the other (J. Brent, Gent. Mag. 1863, i, 354, and Cant. Olden
Time, pl. vi, 9); hence Cochet, Seine lnf pp. 236, 7, who cites
parallels from Gaul: compare Kisa, Das Glas in Altertume, p. 353)
and some bronze objects—eight bronze studs or ‘engraved bosses,’
some handles and rings, a bolt) a hasp about 4 in. long, all thought to
have belonged to a perished wooden box (Cant. Olden Time, 39; Proc.
Soc. Antiq. Ser. II, ii, 200). Other notable burials were found in
digging for brick-earth at Vauxhall, at intervals between 1870 and 1873.
In March 1870 a very large globular jar, stamped SFE
on the handle, was found and is now in the Museum (Cant. Olden Time, 39,
ignoring the stamp). A year later there emerged an Upchurch urn, 13 in.
high, with a raised ‘scroll pattern’ round the shoulder, now also in
the Museum (Brent in Proc. Soc. Antiq. v, 129). May 1871 brought a
better recorded and really remarkable find. This was a sepulchre 3 ft.
below the surface and occupying a circular space about 3 ft. in diameter,
which contained a small ‘mortuary’ urn, two or three Samian saucers,
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