The fifth- to sixth-century British church in the forum at Lincoln: a brief discussion

The aim of the following brief note is simply to bring wider attention to the post-Roman British apsidal church in the centre of the Roman forum of the former Late Roman provincial capital of Lincoln. A variety of dates have been proposed over the years, but a recent reconsideration of all the available evidence, including a Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon data from the cemetery, indicates that the timber apsidal church almost certainly dates from the fifth to sixth centuries and had been demolished to make way for a cemetery by c. AD 600. The following discussion is based primarily on the analyses of the evidence found in my Britons and Anglo-Saxons and an earlier article, with additions and expansion as required.(1)

The sequence of buildings at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, showing their relationship to the Roman forum. Image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig, 12, copyright English Heritage.

Although the former Romano-British provincial capital of Lincoln (Lindum Colonia, British Lindon,*Lindocolonia) has produced little to no evidence for a pre-seventh-century 'Anglo-Saxon' cultural presence, there are nonetheless strong indications of activity in the city from the post-Roman period. In particular, a complex sequence of east–west orientated burials and two timber buildings were excavated from the St Paul-in-the-Bail site here—at the centre of Lincoln's former Roman forum—in the 1970s. One of these buildings is now generally agreed to have been an apsidal timber church and it cuts the foundations of an earlier structure which belonged to the same building tradition, had the same orientation, and potentially had the same function too.(2) The apsidal church is in turn overlain by complex sequence of inhumation burials, some of which cut the wall-line of the church or cut post-church layers from within its walls.(3)

The question of the date of this timber apsidal church—capable of holding around 100 worshippers—has been the subject of considerable discussion ever since its discovery, with initial reports suggesting that it could be the documented seventh-century church constructed in Lincoln by Paulinus sometime around AD 630.(4) However, there are significant issues with this idea, even before we look at the radiocarbon dating of the post-church cemetery and its implications, not least that the seventh-century church of Paulinus at Lincoln mentioned by Bede in c. 731 was still standing in his day and is clearly stated by him to have been made of stone, not wood. Likewise, the fact that the apsidal church in the forum appears to be the second in a sequence of two buildings is a further significant potential impediment to accepting it as Paulinus's church.(5) An alternative proposition is that we have here a sequence of very late and post-Roman British churches, located in the centre of the forum courtyard and orientated with reasonable precision to follow the alignment of the forum itself, with the proximity of the unexcavated west ends of the churches to the western portico of the forum implying that they were designed to be entered from between its columns. Certainly, this positioning and alignment of the buildings and their apparent relationship with the forum's western portico has been seen as highly suggestive of a late/post-Roman British origin, and it has been moreover argued that such an origin might well be supported by, for example, the building style/plan of the churches and the recovery of a coin of Arcadius (388–402) from beneath a metalled surface within the walls of the structures.(6)

Reconstruction of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, located in the centre of the Roman forum and entered from the western portico. Image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig. 13, by David Vale/SLHA.

Perhaps the most telling evidence for a pre-seventh-century date for the apsidal church, however, comes from the radiocarbon dates of the graves excavated at the St Paul-in-the-Bail site. One of the most important of these appears to be a foundation deposit for the apsidal timber church, and this has a medial date of cal AD 441 within a likely date range from the very late fourth to the mid–late sixth century, which is certainly suggestive.(7) Even more important are the burials from the graveyard stage of the site, which Brian Gilmour has argued almost certainly only began after the demolition of the apsidal church had taken place, with three of the earliest of these moreover either cutting the wall-line of the apsidal church or cutting stratigraphically post-church layers from its interior.(8) Although the radiocarbon results from these graves have often been used individually (and occasionally rather dubiously) in arguments about the dating of the church, recent Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon dates of these burials has now put things on a much sounder footing. The three burials that cut the walls and interior post-church levels together indicate that there is a very high probability (>85%) that the apsidal church was demolished before AD 600, given their relationship with this structure, and if the graveyard stage as a whole postdates this church, as it is indeed believed to, then an end to the church sequence before c. 600 becomes even more likely on the basis of the Bayesian modelling (c. 95%), although the available evidence would still just allow for a demolition as late as the early seventh century.(9)

All told, then, by far the most credible scenario—strongly supported by the radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling—is that we do indeed have here a sequence of two British churches set up in a significant area of the city (in the centre of the Roman forum and probably entered from its western portico), with the earlier structure rebuilt at some point perhaps around the mid–late fifth century into a larger apsidal church capable of holding around 100 worshippers, which then continued in use into the sixth century before being demolished by c. AD 600.(10) Such a sequence of very late and post-Roman churches not only makes best sense of all of the available evidence from the St Paul-in-the-Bail site, including the recent reassessment of the dating evidence, but it would also have a plausible context within late and post-Roman Britain. After all, just about the only sin that Gildas does not accuse his fellow sixth-century Britons of is paganism, indicating that he considered them to be Christians, albeit sinful ones, and Roman Lincoln moreover is known to have had its own bishop from the early fourth century, when Adelphius, Bishop of Lincoln, was sent to the Council of Arles in 314.(11) In this context, it is also worth noting that other evidence does exist for a partial survival of Romano-British Christianity in at least some areas of early medieval lowland Britain, including the numerous eccles place-names that occur right the way across to East Anglia and Kent, the apparent British cult of an unknown St Sixtus encountered by St Augustine in south-eastern England in c. 600, and Steven Bassett's case for there having been post-Roman British bishops in places such as Gloucester and Lichfield before there were Anglo-Saxon ones installed.(12)

A sequence of fifth- to sixth-century British churches in the centre of the Roman forum at Lincoln would likewise seem to have a very good local and regional context too. First, Lincoln itself seems to have remained economically vital into the very late Roman era, with not only good evidence for continuing specialist industry, cohesive central organization, considerable population and a thriving market at Lincoln right into the very late fourth century, but also indications of both continued urban activity into the early fifth century and the operation of the Romano-British pottery industry here at least partway through the fifth century, as was discussed in a previous post.(13) Second, and most importantly, there is now a reasonably substantial body of evidence to suggest that the former Roman provincial capital at Lincoln actually retained its centrality into the post-Roman period, becoming the focus of a British polity known as *Lindēs (from British-Latin Lindenses), as has been discussed at length elsewhere. This polity would eventually become the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi/Lindsey (a name which derives from Late British *Lindēs), but as a British political territory it is now thought likely to have survived right through the fifth century and at least some way into the sixth.(14) Needless to say, this is a point of considerable significance in the present context.

The Roman Mint Wall, Lincoln. This is the surviving portion of the basilica wall immediately to the north of the St Paul-in-the-Bail site; it originally stood nine metres high. It has been argued that the forum area must have remained open and maintained, with graves from the post-church inhumation cemetery marked, right through into the tenth century, when a small stone church was then built around what would seem to be one of the most important of the inhumation graves here (a late sixth- or seventh-century cist grave containing the only grave gift recovered from the whole cemetery, a Late Celtic hanging-bowl). In this light, one credible interpretation is that after the apsidal church was demolished, significant activity—be it ecclesiastical or secular—continued in this part of Lincoln, focused on the former large basilica that formed the north of the forum: certainly, this would explain not only the significant surviving elements of the basilica here, but also the presence of the graveyard in the forum (image © copyright Richard Croft, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).

The Roman well in Lincoln's forum, located immediately to the east of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church and possibly used as its baptistery; the well remained in use until the seventeenth century (image © copyright Tiger, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).

Notes

1.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3 (based on my PhD thesis), and Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43 at pp. 18–23, supported recently by J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550.
2.     See, for example, K. Steane, The Archaeology of the Upper City and Adjacent Suburbs (Oxford, 2006), especially p. 192; M. J. Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', in K. Painter (ed.), Churches Built in Ancient Times: Recent Studies in Early Christian Archaeology (London, 1994), pp. 325–47 at pp. 328–30 and fig. 5; M. J. Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), City  by the Pool (Oxford, 2003), at pp. 127–9, 137; M. J. Jones, Roman Lincoln: Conquest, Colony and Capital (Stroud, 2002), p. 127; Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 18–23; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82–3; pace B. Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon, pagan or Christian: who was buried in the early cemetery at St-Paul-in-the Bail, Lincoln?', in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007), pp. 229–56.
3.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 65; Steane, The Archaeology of the Upper City and Adjacent Suburbs, especially pp. 160–1; Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', pp. 249, 252.
4.     See especially Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1998), pp. 226–30, for a championing of this theory, but beware his use of the radiocarbon data, which stretches it to the very utmost limits and beyond; this dating is also supported, far more tentatively, in A. G. Vince, 'Lincoln in the early medieval era, between the 5th and 9th centuries: the archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), The City by the Pool. Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (Oxford, 2003), pp. 147-151.
5.     For criticisms of Sawyer's theory, see further Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', especially pp. 19–20 at fn. 85; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82. It should be noted that Alan Vince acknowledges that the theory of a seventh-century origin for the apsidal church requires both a degree of special pleading and doesn't account for the first building on the site, which Vince would (somewhat bizarrely given that the alternative interpretation of the whole site) have as a late Roman or post-Roman British church: Vince, 'Lincoln in the early medieval era', pp. 149, 150–1, and see further below.
6.     Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 19–20; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 65; M. J. Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', in K. Painter (ed.), Churches Built in Ancient Times: Recent Studies in Early Christian Archaeology (London, 1994), pp. 325–47; K. Steane, 'St Paul-in-the-Bail – a dated sequence?', Lincoln Archaeology, 3 (1990–1), 28–31; M. J. Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), City  by the Pool (Oxford, 2003), pp. 127–9, 137; M. J. Jones, Roman Lincoln: Conquest, Colony and Capital (Stroud, 2002), pp. 127–9; B. Eagles, 'Lindsey', in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), p. 207.
7.     Sample number 34, see B. Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians (Oxford, 2007), pp. 229–56 at pp. 247–9, 252; Steane, Archaeology of the Upper City, pp. 157, 210; Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', pp. 332–3, 344; Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', p. 129.
8.     Sample numbers 30, 29 and 26, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–6; Steane, Archaeology of the Upper City, especially pp. 160–1, 210; Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', pp. 248–50, 252–3. See also Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln', pp. 332, 344; Steane, ‘St Paul-in-the-Bail – a Dated Sequence?’, pp. 30–1.
9.     On the results of the Bayesian modelling, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–7, 83 (fn. 37), supported recently by J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550; as I note in Britons and Anglo-Saxons, my thanks are due here to Alex Bayliss, the Head of Scientific Dating at English Heritage, both for constructing a Bayesian model and for her analysis and advice with regard to the radiocarbon dates and chronology of this site.
10.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3; J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550. Incidentally, it should be noted here that Gilmour's variant theory on St Paul-in-the-Bail (outlined in his 2007 paper 'Sub-Roman or Saxon'), which posits a mid-sixth-century de novo start for the church-stage of the site, is not discussed in the present post, as it both does not seem to have been widely adopted and—as was noted in Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 82, and Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', p. 20, fn. 86—can be considered significantly less plausible than the scenario outlined here, lacking an obvious context and, moreover, seeming to be largely contradicted by the Bayesian modelling of the site.
11.     Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', p. 21; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25, 67; and see further Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?'; Jones, 'Colonia era: archaeological account', pp. 127–9, 137; A. C. Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 (London, 1981), p. 197; K. Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), p. 117.
12.     For eccles names, see for example K. Cameron, 'Eccles in English place-names', in K. Cameron (ed.), Place-Name Evidence for the Anglo-Saxon Invasion and Scandinavian Settlements (Nottingham, 1987), pp. 1–7; P. Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 80; C. Hough, 'Eccles in English and Scottish place-names', in E. Quinton (ed.), The Church in English Place-Names (Nottingham, 2009), pp. 109–24. For St Augustine and the British St Sixtus, see N. P. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (London, 1984), p. 20; P. Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, Volume XIII Gregory the Great, Ephraim Syrus, Aphrahat (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 77. On British bishops, see for example S. Bassett, 'Church and diocese in the West Midlands', in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds.), Pastoral Care Before the Parish (London, 1992), pp. 13–40; S. Bassett, 'Medieval ecclesiastical organisation in the vicinity of Wroxeter and its British antecedents', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 145 (1992), 1–28; B. Yorke, 'Lindsey: the lost kingdom found?', in A. Vince (ed.), Pre-Viking Lindsey (Lincoln 1993), pp. 141–50 at p. 145; Jones, ‘Colonia era: archaeological account’, p. 137. See also S. Bangert, 'Menas ampullae: a case study of long-distance contacts', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalization? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 27–33.
13.     On late fourth- and fifth-century Lincoln, see, for example, K. Dobney et al, Of Butchers and Breeds: Report on vertebrate remains from various sites in the City of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1996), pp. 2–4, 57–61; K. Dobney et al, ‘Down, but not out: biological evidence for complex economic organization in Lincoln in the late 4th century’, Antiquity, 72 (1998), 417–24; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25–7. On the evidence for a degree of continuity in the pottery industry here into the fifth-century and possibly even slightly beyond, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 111–12, and Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 23–4, and the expanded discussion in Green, 'Romano-British pottery in the fifth- to sixth-century Lincoln region', blog post, 12 June 2016, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/06/romano-british-pottery-fifth-century-lincoln.html.
14.     The case is fully developed in Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43, and Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012).

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2017, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Romano-British pottery in the fifth- to sixth-century Lincoln region

The question of whether Romano-British pottery continued to be produced into the fifth century AD continues to be a topic of some considerable interest, as most recently demonstrated by the fact that the latest issue (volume 41, 2016) of the journal Internet Archaeology is entirely devoted to this question. In this light, I thought that I'd offer some draft notes on the potential situation in the Lincoln region, based primarily on the brief discussions of the evidence found in my Britons and Anglo-Saxons and an earlier article, with additions and expansion as required.(1)

Reconstruction of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, located in the centre of the Roman forum and entered from the western portico (image: extract from Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons (Lincoln, 2012), fig. 13, by David Vale/SLHA).

Needless to say, the Lincoln region is arguably as good a place as any to look for continued circulation and production of Romano-British pottery into the fifth century AD. Lincoln was, after all, a Late Roman provincial capital—*Lindocolōnia or Lindum Colonia—and appears to have remained prosperous and remarkably vital right into the very late fourth century, with evidence for continued urban activity into the early fifth century too. Similarly, the probable villa-palace of the provincial governor, located around a mile to the east of the city, was occupied right up until the end of the coin sequence in the early fifth century and maintained to a high standard.(2) Perhaps even more significantly, a detailed examination of the available archaeological, linguistic, literary and historical evidence indicates that Lincoln continued to see a degree of activity and be of both local and regional importance even after the early fifth century. Not only does it seem to have lain at the heart of a significant British post-Roman territory named *Lindēs (from British-Latin Lindenses), which probably survived into the sixth century and clearly had some sort of intimate connection with the early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi (Lindsey), but a reconsideration and Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon data and other evidence from St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, indicates that the famous apsidal church excavated there was indeed a British church of the fifth–sixth centuries that was located in the centre of the Roman forum and able to hold up to 100 worshippers, not a later Anglo-Saxon construction as has sometimes been suggested.(3)

Turning to the actual evidence for the continued use and production of Romano-British pottery in the fifth-century Lincoln region, the most obvious place to start is with the Romano-British pottery retrieved from the city itself. As Mark Whyman and others have noted, pottery is generally dated through its association with coins and, as such, the fact that very few fifth-century coins appear to have found their way to Britain may well have caused archaeologists to mistakenly assign a c. AD 400 end-date to Romano-British pottery fabrics and forms when these actually continued in production and/or use for some time after this.(4) An awareness of this possibility has, in recent years, increasingly led to the identification of very Late Roman pottery wares that show some signs of having continued in production after c. AD 400, via finds in 'post-Roman' contexts and in association with fifth-century and later items such as brooches, with notable examples here being Black Burnished ware in Dorset and Somerset, calcite-gritted wares in Yorkshire and the north, and Much Hadham and Verulamium wares in Hertfordshire.(5) In this light, Lincoln's Local Coarse Pebbly ware (LCOA) may also be of some potential interest. With over 1,800 sherds recorded, this relatively popular local wheel-thrown ware—the forms of which show a marked similarity to items produced by the Late Roman Swanpool kilns just to the south of Lincoln—seems to have its origins in the mid- to late fourth century and is most commonly found in both assemblages of the last decades of that century and in 'post-Roman' contexts. Indeed, over 50% of all LCOA sherds come from 'post-Roman' contexts, particularly those at Flaxengate, an area of Lincoln that is thought to have seen continued urban activity into the early fifth century. In consequence, this ware would seem to be a credible candidate for a Lincoln-region analogue to the Late Roman pottery industries recently identified in other parts of Britain as arguably continuing into the largely coin-less fifth century, something perhaps reinforced by the fact that some of the same 'post-Roman' contexts it appears in have produced small quantities of Anglo-Saxon pottery of broadly fifth- to eighth-century date too.(6)

Roman-type wheel-thrown pots used for cremations at the Cleatham Anglo-Saxon cemetery; these are considered to represent products of the mid- to late fifth-century 'post-Roman' British pottery industry by Maggie Darling and Kevin Leahy (image: fig. 23 from Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons (Lincoln, 2012), drawn by Kevin Leahy and used by kind permission).

If Local Coarse Pebbly ware is at the very least most suggestive, it does not stand alone as the only evidence for a degree of continued Romano-British pottery production and/or use in the fifth-century Lincoln region. Of particular interest in this context are a number of individual pots that are thought to be potentially of Romano-British manufacture but which are either found in early Anglo-Saxon contexts and/or show signs of early Anglo-Saxon influence in their form or design. Perhaps the most convincing candidates here are four pots excavated in the 1980s from the exceptionally large fifth- to sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery at Cleatham, Lincolnshire, located around 30 km to the north of Lincoln. These cremation urns were all made using Romano-British wheel-throwing techniques but, as both Maggie Darling and Kevin Leahy have observed, they cannot be seen as re-used Roman-era pots due to their body-shapes and fabrics, and are instead considered to represent products of the mid- to late fifth-century 'post-Roman' British pottery industry, given their phasing in the cemetery.(7) Interestingly, another urn of the same type and manufacture was found in the fifth- to sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery at Millgate, Newark, 25 km to the south-west of Lincoln, and further fragments have been found in the south of the county at the Roman 'small town' of Great Casterton—in a destruction layer coin-dated to some point after AD 375—and close to the Roman 'small town' of Littleborough (Segelocum), on the Trent north-west of Lincoln, with the first of these Roman sites possessing a well-known Late Roman to early Anglo-Saxon cemetery that is considered to offer 'a convincing case of Roman–Saxon burial continuity' and the second appearing to have still been a key site in the Lincoln region into the early seventh century.(8) Needless to say, the above evidence would thus seem to indicate that the local Late Roman pottery industry not only continued to function into at least the mid-fifth century in this area, given the nature and contexts of these wheel-thrown vessels, but that its products also circulated relatively widely in the region around the former provincial capital at that time, being found to both the north and the south of Lincoln.

Other material that may well also be indicative of a degree of continued Romano-British pottery production into the fifth century and potentially beyond includes a wheel-thrown bottle sherd from Hibaldstow, the site of a Romano-British 'small town' that has evidence for activity into at least the late fourth/early fifth century and is located just a little to the north-east of the Cleatham cemetery. This item was found in a ditch along with Romano-British greyware and some ‘normal’ early-mid Saxon sherds, and, intriguingly, is in an attested local very late fourth-century Romano-British fabric despite having the form of a 'Germanic' sixth-century or later bottle.(9) Similarly worthy of note is a sixth-century 'Anglo-Saxon' domestic pot that is believed to show signs of Romano-British manufacture in terms of both its fabric and technique and was found in the former provincial governor's villa-palace at Lincoln, an intriguing findspot given that the villa-palace was not only maintained to a very high standard right into the early fifth century on the basis of the coin record, but its estate also apparently survived largely intact right through into the medieval period.(10) Potentially most interesting of all, however, is a final sixth-century Anglo-Saxon vessel that was recovered from the flue ashes of one of the Late Roman Swanpool kilns at Rookery Lane, Lincoln. This highly unusual findspot is, of course, most suggestive, and Ken Dark has argued that the pot both dates and represent the last firing of this 'Late Roman' kiln, which is a point of considerable interest in the present context.(11) Moreover, it is noteworthy in this light that the pot itself actually features a distinctive rosette stamp motif that also occurs on some Late Roman pottery from Flaxengate, Lincoln, a fact that has been considered to be potential evidence in its own right for some sort of continuity in pottery production in the Lincoln region!(12)

Sherd from a greyware vessel of the same type as the Roman-type pots recovered from Cleatham; dated to the mid-fifth century by Kevin Leahy and found near to Littleborough on the Trent (image: PAS).

The distribution of early 'Anglian' cremation-predominant cemeteries, represented by filled squares, plotted against 'Saxon' artefacts of the second half of the fifth century, represented by stars, and the Late Roman provincial boundaries as reconstructed by J. C. Mann in Britannia, 1998 (image: fig. 21a from Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons (Lincoln, 2012)).

All told, then, we would appear to have a potentially interesting situation in the 'post-Roman' Lincoln region. Taken together, the contexts and nature of the finds of Local Coarse Pebbly ware and Cleatham-style wheel-thrown vessels from Lincoln and its surrounding region would seem to offer a credible case for the likely continuance of the Romano-British pottery industry here at least partway into the fifth century and potentially some considerable distance into it too, given the phased dating of the Cleatham vessels to the mid–late fifth century. Furthermore, the finds from Hibaldstow, the Lincoln villa-palace, and the Rookery Lane/Swanpool kiln all hint at the possibility that this could even have continued as late as the early sixth century. Of course, as was noted above, we should perhaps not be terribly surprised by this: not only is fifth-century continuity in the Romano-British pottery industry suspected from other parts of Britain too, but there is also good evidence for a significant degree of 'post-Roman' British activity in Lincoln and the wider Lincoln region during the fifth and sixth centuries, including the construction of a large fifth- to sixth-century church in the centre of the Roman forum. Indeed, it has been argued that Lincoln may well have retained control of its whole province at least partway through the fifth century and that at least some of the known villas and major residences within its province likewise saw a degree of continued activity and maintenance into the fifth century.(13) Finally, it is worth observing that the locally-produced vessels discussed here were not the only Roman-style pottery apparently present in 'post-Roman' Lincolnshire, as very small quantities of imported post-Roman wares have also been identified from Lincoln, including a body sherd from a potentially fifth- or sixth-century Biv eastern Mediterranean amphora found in a post-Roman deposit at Flaxengate; a rim sherd from a fifth-century Keay's form LII central/eastern Mediterranean amphora found in Saltergate; and a possible sixth-century Gaulish 'D ware' bowl found in or near Lincoln in the nineteenth century.(14)


Notes

1     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 111–12, and Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43 at pp. 23–4.
2     See Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25–7, fig. 2, and the references cited therein; M. J. Jones, ‘The Colonia era: archaeological account’ in D. Stocker (ed.), The City by the Pool: Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (Oxford, 2003), pp. 56–138, at pp. 97–8, 124–38.
3     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, especially chapters 2–4, fully develops the case for a British territory based at Lincoln and named *Lindēs that was taken over to become the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi; see also Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', passim. The apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, and its dating is discussed at length in Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82–3, which partially supersedes the discussion in 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 18–22.
4     See, for example, M. Whyman, ‘Invisible people? Material culture in ‘Dark Age’ Yorkshire’, in M. Carver (ed.), In Search of Cult (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 61–8; K. R. Dark, ‘Pottery and local production at the end of Roman Britain’, in K. R. Dark (ed.), External Contacts and the Economy of Late Roman and Post-Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 53–65 at p. 59; P. Rahtz, ‘Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire: current research problems’, in H. Geake & J. Kenny (eds.), Early Deira: Archaeological Studies of the East Riding in the Fourth to Ninth Centuries AD (Oxford, 2000), p. 1; J. Gerrard, 'How late is late? Pottery and the fifth century in southwest Britain', in R. Collins & J. Gerrard (eds.), Debating Late Antiquity in Britain AD 300–700 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 65–75 at p. 66; H. Cool, Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 222–38; J. Gerrard, 'Finding the fifth century: a late fourth- and early fifth-century pottery fabric from south-east Dorset', Britannia 41 (2010), 293–312; K. J. Fitzpatrick-Matthews, 'Defining fifth-century ceramics in north Hertfordshire', Internet Archaeology, 41 (2016), online at http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue41/4/toc.html.
5     For the wares mentioned, see Gerrard, 'Pottery and the fifth century in southwest Britain' and J. Gerrard, 'The Black Burnished type 18 bowl and the fifth century', Internet Archaeology, 41 (2016), online at http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue41/5/toc.html; M. Whyman, Late Roman Britain in Transition, A.D. 300–500: A Ceramic Perspective from East Yorkshire (University of York PhD Thesis, 2001); and Fitzpatrick-Matthews, 'Defining fifth-century ceramics in north Hertfordshire'.
6     See M. Darling and B. Precious, A Corpus of Roman Pottery from Lincoln (Oxford, 2014), pp. vi, 109, 114, who support the possibility of this local ware continuing in production into the fifth century. With regard to urban activity into the early fifth century at Flaxengate, see for example Jones, ‘The Colonia era: archaeological account’, p. 133; Darling and Precious, Corpus of Roman Pottery from Lincoln, p. 215.
7     K. Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), pp. 52–3, 86; K. Leahy, ‘Interrupting the Pots’: The Excavation of Cleatham Anglo-Saxon Cemetery (York, 2007), pp. 122, 126–7.
8     Leahy, ‘Interrupting the Pots’: The Excavation of Cleatham Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, pp. 125, 126–7; Leahy, Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey, pp. 52–3; K. Leahy, 'Vessel', Portable Antiquities Scheme FAKL-895042, 5 September 2013, online at https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/575261. For the quote on Great Casterton and Roman–Saxon burial continuity, see S. Lucy, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death (Stroud, 2000), p. 150; on Littleborough/Segelocum in the time of Edwin of Deira, see B. Yorke, ‘Lindsey: the lost kingdom found?’, in A. Vince (ed.), Pre-Viking Lindsey (Lincoln, 1993), pp. 141–50 at pp. 141–2.
9     C. F. Lingard and L. Bonner, Blyborough-Brigg 300mm Gas Pipeline, 1993, Archaeological Report (1994), pp. 21–6, 79, fig. 7.
10     J. N. L. Myres, ‘Lincoln in the fifth century A.D.’, The Archaeological Journal, 103 (1946), 85–88 at pp. 87–88; C. R. Green, 'An early Anglo-Saxon pot from the Greetwell villa-palace', blog post, 8 April 2015, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/an-early-anglo-saxon-pot-from-greetwell.html; D. Stocker et al, 'The Greetwell villa', LARA RAZ 7.23, Heritage Connect Lincoln, online at http://www.heritageconnectlincoln.com/lara-raz/the-greetwell-villa/908; D. Stocker & P. Everson, 'The straight and narrow way: Fenland causeways and the conversion of the landscape in the Witham valley, Lincolnshire', in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, A.D. 300–1300 (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 271–88 at p. 279.
11     K. R. Dark, ‘Pottery and local production at the end of Roman Britain’, in K. R. Dark (ed.), External Contacts and the Economy of Late Roman and Post-Roman Britain, edited by K. R. Dark (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 53–65 at pp. 58–9; see also Jones, ‘The Colonia era: archaeological account’, p. 138. It should be noted that whilst Dark's argument has been approached with some caution in the past due to an apparent lack of other evidence for the continuence of the Romano-British pottery industry beyond c. AD 400 in the Lincoln region, this is clearly no longer a credible objection in light of the other evidence noted above. See also Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 23 and fn. 97, for another Romano-British kiln in the Lincoln region, at Lea near Gainsborough, which has some curious magnetic dating results that appear to indicate that its last firing could have taken place in the mid–late fifth century—Dr D. Tarling and Mrs N. H. Yassi's note that ‘[i]f the kiln was not last fired at this time, then the reason for the observed deviation is not known and urgently requires further study’: N. Field, ‘Romano-British pottery kilns in the Trent Valley’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 19 (1984), 100–02 at pp. 101–02.
12     D. C. Briscoe, 'Two important stamp motifs in Roman Britain and thereafter', Internet Archaeology, 41 (2016), online at http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue41/2/index.html.
13     See Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 93–5, 113, 152 and fig. 21a on possible provincial continuity. On major Late Roman residences in the region that may have seen continued maintenance and use into the fifth century, see, for example, the Roman palace at Castor, located 10 miles to the south-east of Great Casterton—the walls here still stood up to 11 feet high in the nineteenth century and it has been suggested that both they and the roof of this structure were maintained and remained sound at least partway into the 'post-Roman' era. Likewise, the Late Roman villa at Denton, near Grantham, had at least one additional phase of building work after the very late fourth century and appears to have still had a sound roof as late as the early sixth century, which is clearly intriguing. Finally, the previously mentioned sixth-century domestic vessel found in the villa-palace at Lincoln has been considered indicative of continued occupation there into the sixth century, and the recovery of an exceptionally high status British silver proto-hand-pin of potentially fifth-century date from the villa at Welton le Wold, near Louth, is clearly similarly suggestive. See further on these examples S. G. Upex, 'The Praetorium of Edmund Artis: a summary of excavations and surveys of the palatial Roman structure at Castor, Cambridgeshire 1828–2010', Britannia, 42 (2011), 23–112 at pp. 97–8; J. T. Smith, 'The Roman villa at Denton', Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society Reports and Papers, 10.2 (1964), 75–104 and C. R, Green, 'Roman mosaics from the Greetwell villa-palace and other sites in Lincolnshire', blog post, 11 February 2015, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/02/roman-mosaics-from-lincolnshire.html; J. N. L. Myres, ‘Lincoln in the fifth century A.D.’, The Archaeological Journal, 103 (1946), 85–88 at pp. 87–88, and J. N. L. Myres, The English Settlements (Oxford, 1986), p. 182; and S. M. Youngs, 'Welton le Wold, Lincolnshire', in DCMS, Treasure Annual Report 2001, pp. 43–4, and C. R. Green, 'Villas and ranches on the late Roman Lincolnshire Wolds: the Welton le Wold villa and its landscape context', blog post, 5 December 2014, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2014/12/villas-and-ranches-roman-wolds.html.
14     M. Darling and B. Precious, A Corpus of Roman Pottery from Lincoln (Oxford, 2014), pp. 228, 241; L. A. Gilmour, Early Medieval Pottery from Flaxengate, Lincoln (London, 1988), p. 167; C. Thomas, 'Imported pottery in Dark-Age western Britain', Medieval Archaeology, 3 (1959), 89–111 at p. 95.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Ketsby DMV: a Roman–Early Modern settlement & pilgrimage site on the Lincolnshire Wolds

Aside from cropmarks, very little now remains of Ketsby, a Deserted Medieval Village (or, more correctly, a Shrunken Medieval Village) that is located in a valley between two ancient trackways in the Lincolnshire Wolds. Nonetheless, the archaeological and historical material relating to Ketsby suggests that this was a place of some local significance, and one which saw notable activity in every period from the first century through until the sixteenth. The following post offers a very brief discussion of the site and the finds that have been made there.

A Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age flint knife, found in South Ormsby-cum-Ketsby parish (image: PAS)

The earliest evidence for human activity at the Ketsby DMV consists of a Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age flint knife, dated to sometime around 3000–2000 BC, and a cropmark of a probable Bronze Age round barrow (with a diameter of around 15m). These are, however, the sole representatives of the prehistoric period currently known from the site, with all other finds from here probably dating from the first century AD and after, starting with a Late Iron Age 'dangler' or 'hanger' and a late first-century Roman coin of Vespasian.

With regard to the Roman period, although there are not a vast number of finds recorded on the various databases, there are enough to indicate that there was probably a settlement here from the first century AD through until at least the very late fourth or fifth century. Not only do we have the two first-century finds mentioned above, but the East Midlands Anglo-Saxon Pottery Project (EMASPP) recorded various pieces of Romano-British pottery from the DMV, and there are a number of other items of metalwork too, including a lead-alloy Roman foot in a sandal (possibly a votive piece or part of a fairly substantial statuette), a second-century plate brooch, a late fourth- or early fifth-century Romano-British 'dolphin and bird' buckle, and a clipped silver siliqua of Arcadius, minted 395–402. The last two items are particularly interesting, suggesting that British activity continued at the site into the fifth century.

A clipped silver siliqua of Arcadius, minted in Milan, 395–402 (image: PAS)

Turning to the post-Roman period, the EMASPP recorded a small amount of possible 'early Anglo-Saxon' pottery from the site, and a fifth- to ninth-century loom weight has also been found here, helping to confirm the continued presence of settlement activity at the DMV site in this era. In addition to these, two pieces of culturally 'early Anglo-Saxon' metalwork have been recovered from this site, a fragment of a late fifth- to sixth-century girdle hanger and another of a sixth- to seventh-century small-long brooch. Given both the presence of this probably sixth-century material and the very late fourth- to fifth-century Roman material mentioned above, we would seem to have good reason to suspect that the site was continuously occupied throughout this period, with the former Romano-British inhabitants of Ketsby perhaps having adopted the new immigrant material culture at some point in or around the sixth century. Certainly, such a scenario would find a good context within the general pattern of Anglian-British interaction and acculturation that recent studies have suggested for the post-Roman Lincoln region.(1)

Moving on to look at the Middle Saxon period (the seventh–ninth centuries), there is a notable increase in the amount of material produced by the site. In addition to various pieces of Middle Saxon pottery recorded from Ketsby DMV by the EMASPP, including some eighth- to ninth-century Maxey-type ware, metal-detecting has recovered no fewer than 12 items from the site. These include four eighth- to ninth-century polyhedral dress pins; an eighth- to ninth-century globular headed dress pin; a seventh- to ninth-century dress hook; two or three Middle Saxon strap-ends; a Mid-Late Saxon dress pin, and a possibly seventh-century purse mount/strike-a-light. Perhaps most interesting of all, however, are a silver-gilt mount of the eighth century and an 'Irish' pressblech die of the seventh century. The first of these has its parallels in the St Ninian's Isle treasure and in an eighth-century silver-gilt mount found in Leicestershire. and is a lovely piece. The second of these is a metalwork die for making silver or bronze foil mounts, and is again a very significant find.

A Middle Saxon dress-hook of the seventh to ninth centuries from the Ketsby site (image: PAS)

The eighth-century silver-gilt mount and seventh-century 'Irish' pressblech die from Ketsby DMV (images: UKDFD & UKDFD)

Needless to say, the above evidence for a significant degree of pre-Viking activity at Ketsby DMV is interesting given the Scandinavian -bȳ place-name attached to the DMV (Ketsby is Chetelesbi in Domesday Book, which derives from Scandinavian Ketil + bȳ, 'Ketil's village'). Such names have often been thought to mainly represent new Viking settlements of the late ninth century founded on previously unused sites, but this is clearly not the case here, just as it is not at the Maltby DMV near to Louth, which has similarly seen Romano-British, early Anglo-Saxon and Middle Saxon finds recovered from the DMV, along with later Scandinavian-era and medieval material. A more plausible scenario is perhaps that this Ketil took over a pre-existing Anglo-Saxon settlement on the site of the Ketsby DMV in the later ninth or tenth century and that the modern place-name records this change in lordship.

Although we can only speculate as to the pre-Viking situation at Ketsby, it is worth noting that only a third of a mile to the north of the site is Walmsgate DMV. Unlike at Ketsby, no Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian artefacts have yet been recorded from Walmsgate DMV on any of the available databases, although a small coin hoard of the 870s was recovered from somewhere in the parish in the 1980s. What Walmsgate does have, however, is an Old English name that derives from OE Waldmǣr or Walhmǣr + gāra, probably meaning 'Waldmǣr's or Walhmǣr's triangle of land' according to Cameron and Ekwall. In this context it is worth noting that both Walmsgate and Ketsby are not only extremely close to one another, but are also located in a valley on opposite sides of a stream and between two probably prehistoric trackways (now the A16 and the Bluestone Heath Road) that come together to meet at a point to the south-east of Walmsgate and Ketsby, enclosing a large triangle of land between them. It might be wondered whether this area was originally the 'gore' or triangle of land that belonged to the Anglo-Saxon Waldmǣr/Walhmǣr, with the settlement now known as Ketsby therefore being, in the pre-Viking period, a part of this estate—perhaps an important part—before it was split off to form a separate unit that, at some point, came under the lordship of Ketil?

The location of Ketsby and Walmsgate; for a zoomable version of this image, click here.

A Viking Jellinge-style die found at Ketsby DMV (image: UKDFD)

Whatever the case may be on the above, the Anglo-Scandinavian period (late ninth–eleventh centuries) appears to have seen an even greater degree of activity at Ketsby. Once again, pottery of this era—'Late Saxon' and 'Saxo-Norman'—is recorded from the site by the EMASPP, now supplemented by 27 metal-detected finds recorded on the PAS and the UKDFD, and a very significant cluster of 'Viking coins' noted at this location by Kevin Leahy in 2007. The metalwork found includes multiple hooked tags, strap-ends, lead-alloy disc brooches, stirrup mounts, and pieces of Urnes-style metalwork from this period, along with a fragment of a Viking trefoil brooch. Furthermore, there is once again probable evidence for metal-working from the site, with finds of a Viking Jellinge-style die of the late ninth to mid-tenth century and a probable lead-alloy pattern used to produce copper-alloy strap-ends from clay moulds, both of which are most interesting given the general rarity of evidence for the production of Scandinavian-style metalwork in eastern Britain.

With Domesday Book and the medieval period, Ketsby emerges into the historical record. In Domesday, Ketsby appears as a medium-sized settlement under the lordship of Godric in 1066 and under Hugh in 1086, with one mill, six villains, one bordar and eleven sokemen recorded in 1086, whilst Walmsgate appears only as sokeland of Ketsby in the Domesday Book, with no villains or similar listed there, which is interesting in light of the suggestions made above. Moving forward in time, the Pastscape record follows Beresford's Lost Villages of England (1954) in recording that a fair and market was held at Ketsby in the medieval period, although the market was certainly a new innovation of the early sixteenth century, being instituted in 1524. With regard to the archaeology, the UKDFD indicates that the coin evidence from the site clusters 'around the Conquest period' and the PAS notes a coin of William I found on the site, along with some later medieval issues and an eleventh- or early twelfth-century Italian coin. Non-coinage medieval finds recorded in the various databases include pottery, a lovely silver-gilt brooch of the thirteenth century decorated with lions, a papal bulla of Gregory IX (1227–41), and 30 or so other items including bells, brooches, buckles and strap-ends.

A thirteenth-century silver-gilt brooch found at Ketsby (image: PAS)

A very nice example of a lead pilgrim badge depicting St Margaret of Antioch stood atop a dragon, found at Hogsthorpe, Lincolnshire; eight pilgrim badges depicting St Margaret have been found at Ketsby, including some with identical imagery to this specimen (image: PAS)

The distribution of pilgrim badges depicting St Margaret of Antioch, based on PAS and UKDFD data (drawn by C. R. Green)

Perhaps the most significant medieval finds from Ketsby are those of a religious character, however. These include a four pilgrim ampullas of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, a fifteenth-century St Blaise pilgrim badge, and eight pilgrim badges depicting St Margaret of Antioch, dating from the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. The latter are particularly interesting, representing the greatest concentration of such pieces known from Late Medieval England by a significant margin. Furthermore, the distribution map of such badges recorded on the PAS and UKDFD shows that almost all of these items come from Lincolnshire and that they appear to be distributed around Ketsby. In light of this, it might well be wondered whether this apparently local manifestation of the generally widespread cult of St Margaret of Antioch might not have had its focus and centre at Ketsby itself? Needless to say, this suggestion gains considerable weight from a consideration of not only the potential evidence for the production of these St Margaret pilgrim badges at Ketsby, but also the fact that the lost church of Ketsby was dedicated to St Margaret and actually contained a medieval image of St Margaret that was still attracting notable offerings in 1529! As such, there would seem to be a very good case for Ketsby having been a local pilgrimage centre for the cult of St Margaret in the late medieval period. Indeed, in this context it is interesting to note one final metal-detected find from the Ketsby DMV, namely a fragment of lead openwork frieze, which the UKDFD record notes may be 'of some significance', given the historical evidence for an important image of St Margaret here.

With regard to the decline of the village and its church, only a little can be said here. As was noted above, Ketsby was actually granted a market in 1524 and the image of St Margaret in the church was still receiving notable offerings in 1529, with the implication that Ketsby was continuing to function as a local pilgrimage centre then (with this continued religious activity perhaps helping to explain why a new market was created here in the 1520s). Although the image of St Margaret clearly still existed in 1534—when the parson of Ketsby (John Cocke) stated in his will that he wished to be buried 'in the chancel before the image of St Margaret'—the Reformation must have had a significant negative effect on the village and its church, and 1597 saw the last institution of a priest at Ketsby church. Indeed, by the eighteenth century the church was ruinous and it now only survives through chance finds such as the frieze mentioned above, a medieval cresset lamp found on the DMV, and a lead cross perhaps originally from one of the graves. Similarly, although a few houses remain at Ketsby, there are only cropmarks to tell of the main village that once existed here, with the village earthworks having been bulldozed and levelled in the mid-1960s, around the same time that the surviving medieval barn at Ketsby House (variously dated to the fourteenth century and c. 1500) was pulled down.

A fragment of medieval lead openwork frieze found on the Ketsby DMV (image: UKDFD)

Notes

1    In this context, it is interesting to note the tentative suggestion made below that the name 'Walmsgate' may have originally applied to a relatively large pre-Viking estate that included Ketsby DMV within its bounds. The first part of the name Walmsgate, Walmesgar at Domesday, appears to be the name of a pre-Viking owner of this estate or gāra, 'triangle of land', and one possibility is that he was called Walhmǣr, a name that includes the Old English term for a Briton or Welsh-speaker, although it might well be dangerous to press this point too far!


The above post is based on records held by the local Historic Environment Record, English Heritage's Pastscape, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), the UK Detector Finds Database (UKDFD), and the East Midlands Anglo-Saxon Pottery Project (EMASPP). Images from the PAS database are used under their blanket CC BY 2.0 license; those from the UKDFD are used under the 'educational, non-commercial' permission granted by point 2.2 of UKDFD's 'Terms and Conditions'; if there any objections to me using the latter pictures in this article, please contact me and I will remove them.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Villas and ranches on the late Roman Lincolnshire Wolds: the Welton le Wold villa and its landscape context

The following brief post is concerned with the significant Roman villa that was located at Welton le Wold, Lincolnshire, on a spot with good views out over Louth to the Lincolnshire Marshes and coast beyond.

St James's Church, Louth, as seen from close to the villa site on the hilltop at Welton le Wold, with the Lincolnshire Marshes lying beyond (photo: C. R. Green).

The Welton le Wold villa has been discussed in print previously in Lincolnshire's Archaeology from the Air (1998) and my Origins of Louth (2011), and is evidenced via a combination of cropmarks/soilmarks, chance finds recovered from walking the site, and metal-detecting. The crop and soilmarks, which Jones identifies as a villa complex, extend over an area of 650m by 300m—see illustration, below—and are centred on a large rectangular enclosure that measures 200m by 100m, within which there was a sizeable, double-ditched open D-shaped enclosure. Associated finds recorded by Dilwyn Jones and the Historic Environment Record include Romano-British pottery, oyster shell and possible tile (the latter a rare find in eastern Lincolnshire and indicating the presence of a Romanized building). In addition, further material has been recovered from the villa site in recent years by a metal-detectorist, although the site is now apparently impossible to detect on due to contamination.

A Roman silver Siliqua, probably unclipped, of Valentinian I (364-375), found at the Welton le Wold villa site (image: PAS).

Confusingly, the metal-detected material has been recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme database under a variety of grid-references and parish locations, but the detectorist who found the artefacts has confirmed in writing that all of the following finds actually came from the site of the villa (see the gazetteer to Origins of Louth, p. 148). The Romano-British material he recovered from this site consists of a number of first- to second-century items—including brooches and a button & loop fastener—and over 300 bronze and silver Roman coins, primarily belonging to the third and, especially, the fourth century. Needless to say, this is a very significant quantity of coinage for this part of Lincolnshire, with coin concentrations here being otherwise thin, rarely reaching into double figures. Perhaps most important of all, however, is his find of an important silver British proto-handpin of the later fourth or fifth century. Although given a general 'Welton' location by the PAS, it too was recovered from the villa site. Such silver pins are very rare indeed and its presence here would seem to confirm that there were high-status Britons living at the Welton le Wold villa site at the end of the Roman period.

A silver and niello proto-handpin from Welton le Wold, found on the villa  site (image: Green, Origins of Louth, fig. 28)

The distribution of 'Insular Military-Style silver pins', drawn by C. R. Green after Gavin, 2013; click for a larger version of the image (map contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2011).

With regard to landscape context of the Welton villa, two aspects deserve comment. First and foremost is the fact that the villa appears to be part of a larger Romano-British cropmark landscape, running for around 2km from Welton to the prehistoric Bluestone Heath ridgeway. The image below shows the location of two of the other key features in this landscape. The most westerly of these is a 'ladder enclosure', a form of large rectilinear enclosure with regular internal divisions that is found associated with villas and small Roman 'towns' in Lincolnshire. The other is an extensive, irregularly shaped group of rectilinear cropmarks located to the south-west of the villa site, covering an area 500m by 400m. This expanse of cropmarks has produced a Romano-British quern stone, samian ware and third- to fourth-century pottery, and has been interpreted by Jones as a potential dependent village associated with the Welton villa estate.

The second thing to note with regard to the landscape context of the Welton villa is the apparent lack of a cropmark arable field-system accompanying the villa and the potential dependent village. Such a lack of evidence for an associated arable field-system is, in fact, replicated around the other known Romano-British settlements on the Lincolnshire Wolds and is intriguing, as is the presence of a large double-ditched, non-defensive enclosure at Welton, which is probably best interpreted as a feature associated with stock control or stock rearing. Needless to say, the occurrence of this feature alongside the lack of an accompanying arable field system has been seen as evidence that the Lincolnshire Wolds in the Roman period was largely an open range, with villas such as that at Welton le Wold functioning principally as a stock farms or ranches within this landscape.

The general location of the Welton le Wold villa and associated Romano-British landscape features, including a possible dependent village to its south-west: click image for a larger version of this plan. Base image © 2014 Google; red shading reflects Romano-British landscape features, based on D. Jones, 'Romano-British Settlements on the Lincolnshire Wolds', in R. H. Bewley (ed.), Lincolnshire's Archaeology from the Air (Lincoln, 1998), pp. 69–80 at p. 74, and cropmarks visible on the Google aerial photograph.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2014, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.