Category Archives: ENGLAND

Stolen Darwin journals returned to the Cambridge University library

Stolen Darwin journals returned to the Cambridge University library

A pair of Charles Darwin’s iconic notebooks have been returned to their rightful home more than 20 years after they were mysteriously stolen. The contents of the notebooks include the naturalist’s first doodle of the “tree of life,” which he sketched out decades before formulating his theory of evolution by natural selection.     

One of the recently recovered notebooks features Charles Darwin’s first sketch of the “tree of life.”

The notebooks are part of the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library in the U.K., which contains journals, manuscripts and more than 15,000 letters written by Darwin.

The journals were originally stored in the library’s high-security Special Collections Strong Rooms but were removed from storage in November 2000 for a photoshoot. Library officials assumed that the notebooks had been returned to safety after the photoshoot, but during a routine audit in January 2001, librarians discovered that the notebooks were missing.

The library staff initially suspected that the notebooks had been misplaced, but in 2020, the staff conducted a new search for the documents — the largest in the library’s history — and came up empty-handed. The library concluded that the notebooks had most likely been stolen, Live Science previously reported.   

But now, they’ve finally turned up: Librarians found the notebooks on March 9 outside the door of a fourth-floor office in the 17-story building.

The journals were swathed in plastic wrap and left in a box inside a bright-pink gift bag, along with a printed note that read “Librarian Happy Easter X,” according to a statement from the library.

“My sense of relief at the notebooks’ safe return is profound and almost impossible to adequately express,” Jessica Gardner, a librarian at Cambridge University Library, said in the statement. “I was heartbroken to learn of their loss, and my joy at their return is immense.”

The leather-bound notebooks are in “remarkably good condition,” and all the pages are accounted for, according to the statement. Experts think the notebooks have barely been handled, and a special analysis of the ink has confirmed that the notebooks are almost certainly genuine, according to the BBC.

The notebooks are part of the “Transmutation Notebooks,” a collection of journals in which Darwin first laid out his ideas of how animals transmute, or change, over time, which we now know is the result of adaptations caused by genetic mutations in DNA.

The recently recovered books were the second and third instalments of the Transmutation Notebooks and are labelled “B” and “C.” Darwin wrote the Transmutation Notebooks in 1837, when he was 28 years old, shortly after returning from his five-year voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle. 

Both of the recovered notebooks are on a library table.

The standout feature of the notebooks is a sketch of a rudimentary tree of life in notebook B showing how species diverge from a common ancestor over time, above which he simply wrote, “I think.” This was more than 20 years before Darwin published his theory of evolution in the book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. “They may be tiny, just the size of postcards, but the notebooks’ impact on the history of science cannot be overstated,” Gardner said in the statement. 

The library will reunite the notebooks with the rest of the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library, alongside the archives of other famous scientists, such as Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking, according to the statement.

The three scientists are also buried right next to each other at Westminster Abbey in London, Live Science previously reported.

Members of the public can see the notebooks when they go on display as a part of the “Darwin in Conversation” exhibition showcasing Darwin’s letters and notebooks at Cambridge University Library in July.

The exhibition will also be transferred to the New York Public Library in 2023. Digital copies of the two notebooks, and C, can be viewed online.

Stolen Darwin journals returned to the Cambridge University library
The two Darwin notebooks were anonymously returned to where they were taken from in a box in a pink gift bag, along with an envelope signed, “Librarian Happy Easter X.”

Police are continuing to investigate the notebooks’ disappearance, but currently, there are no clues as to who stole the notebooks or where they have been for the past 20 years.

Royston-area man turns up the Indigenous artefact in yard

Royston-area man turns up the Indigenous artefact in yard

Mark Lake was cleaning up his Royston-area yard last April when he came across an object that looked like it had been around a while. He had been working in a wooded area after an old maple tree had blown over. Over the years, he’d found lots of junk before though never anything of historic value, but what he turned up turned out to be an Indigenous artefact.

“I picked this object up, sticking out from underneath a young maple, and didn’t think anything of it,” he said.

At first, he thought it was a type of industrial waste. Once he got around to cleaning it, he realized it was some kind of carving.

The Indigenous artefact Mark Lake found appears to be a war club.

“I was a geologist in a previous life,” he said. “I recognized it was made out of sandstone.”

He showed it to a sculptor friend who told him from the workmanship it looked like a labour of love.

Lake’s wife Katie has a friend who works with K’ómoks First Nation, so the Lakes got in touch to find out more and sent a picture of the object. The process then started to identify and repatriate it. An archaeologist working with KFN examined it, as did a couple of others.

“The archaeologists have looked at it and certainly think it’s pretty unique,” Lake said.

The couple handed the object over to KFN, and Lake says Chief Nicole Rempel was excited to receive the artefact. It is about 45 cm long, weighs about 1.5 kg and is probably made of medium-grade sandstone.

“It’s fairly hefty and quite smooth in the handle area,” Lake said.

He is not sure of its origin. There is a hole in the handle, perhaps for a rope. Whether it was a functional or strictly ceremonial club remains a bit of a mystery, but it seems to have originated in the Vancouver Island region.

“It might not have moved very far,” he said. “It’s pretty rare to find one that’s that complete.”

After contacting KFN, the Lakes agreed to have their Gartley Point property mapped for archaeological purposes, and it will be added to the provincial registry’s archaeological branch.

For KFN, the Lakes’ willingness to collaborate on this effort is a hopeful sign for broader community relations.

“In a time when Reconciliation is a central focus for our Nation, and more broadly across B.C. and Canada, it’s encouraging to see residents within KFN territory recognize the importance of returning artefacts to the people whose ancestors made them,” Chief Nicole Rempel of KFN said in a news release. “It is my hope that more Vancouver Island residents, and in fact all Canadians, will recognize the importance of these artefacts to local First Nations and reach out when they do come across something. I am grateful to the Lake family for connecting with KFN, so that we can learn more about our history and make it accessible to our members and the broader community.”

KFN asks anyone who has found artefacts in KFN territory to contact Candace Newman (reception@komoks.ca), KFN’s archaeology and referrals co-ordinator, to assess the cultural object.

A 2,300-year-old Iron Age shield has been revealed by archaeologists

A 2,300-year-old Iron Age shield has been revealed by archaeologists

The shield is made from green bark that has been stiffened with internal wooden laths.

Found during a dig near Leicester in 2015 and dated to between 395 and 255BC, the shield was made of painted bark, backed by wooden spars. Analysis showed it had been badly damaged, probably by spears and edged weapons, before being left in a pit.

Experts said the shield gave an “unparalleled” insight into prehistoric technology.

A 2,300-year-old Iron Age shield has been revealed by archaeologists.
A reconstruction showed the shield was light and surprisingly strong

The shield, which measured 670 x 370mm (26ins x 15ins), was found on the Everards Meadows site near the M1 by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) archaeologists.

The bark used was from either alder, willow, poplar, hazel or spindle and the stiffening spars were made of apple, pear, quince or hawthorn.

The shield had a rim of split hazel rod and a boss, to protect the hand, woven from a willow core.

Iron Age

  • In Britain, dating from 800BC to AD43
  • Iron tools improved agriculture and industry
  • There were larger settlements and a more sophisticated society developed
  • Seen as ending with the Roman conquest of Britain

Mike Bamforth, from the University of York, used CT scanning and 3D printing to help reveal its secrets.

He said: “This truly astonishing and unparalleled artefact has given us an insight into prehistoric technology that we could never have guessed at.

“Being part of the team working to tease apart the complex secrets of the shield’s construction has been incredibly interesting and rewarding.”

Archaeologists said such shields might have been common in the Iron Age but their organic materials meant they rarely survived.

A reconstruction showed that while it was not as strong as solid wooden ones, the shield could stop blows effectively and had the advantage of being extremely light.

The British Museum, which will store the shield, described it as a “absolutely phenomenal object”.

Roman Malting Oven Uncovered in England

Roman Malting Oven Uncovered in England

Roman Malting Oven Uncovered in England
Archaeologists unearthed the remains of a Roman oven during excavations at Field 44 in Bedfordshire, at a dig taking place near the Black Cat roundabout

Archaeologists have identified evidence of 2,000-year-old beer production at a site of a road improvement scheme. The remains of a Roman malting oven and charred spelt grains were found during digging in Bedfordshire, as part of the proposed work on the A428 between the Black Cat roundabout and Caxton Gibbet.

Experts have analysed the grains and said they suggested people who lived there were involved in making beer.

The site, known as Field 44, was excavated from July to February.

During the dig, the team from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit discovered the remains of a farmstead that they believed was in use from the Middle Iron Age to the late Roman period.

The Iron Age in Britain ran from about 800BC until the period of Roman rule, which ran from AD43 until about AD410.

They said archaeobotanists, who specialise in the study of past human-plant interactions, had since identified that the charred spelt grains were left to germinate before being dried in a kiln.

“As large quantities of grains are only allowed to germinate when the aim is to produce malt – the first step in the brewing process – this strongly suggests the people living at the settlement were involved in beer production,” a Mola spokesperson said.

Archaeologists prepared soil samples for analysis
The grains were probably burnt by accident, but it helped their research, project science advisor Rachel Ballantyne said

However, they added that little evidence of the structures needed for brewing had yet been identified, so it was unclear whether the people at Field 44 were completing the process on-site.

Project science advisor Rachel Ballantyne said: “It is possible only malt was being produced here, which was then taken to be brewed elsewhere.

“This raises interesting questions about how the people living on this farm might have been interacting with neighbouring communities as part of a wider trade network.

“The germinated grains are likely to have been accidentally burnt, but this ancient mistake has benefitted our research.”

Mola said research on the discoveries at Field 44 continued.

The dig revealed the remains of a farmstead, thought to be in use from the Middle Iron Age to the late Roman period

The Search for “Lost” Royal Graves in Britain and Ireland

The Search for “Lost” Royal Graves in Britain and Ireland

The graves of dozens of what may have been early British kings, queens, princes and princesses from the era of the mythical King Arthur have been revealed by a new study. It suggests that British royal graves dating from between the fifth and the seventh centuries A.D. have been overlooked until now, possibly because they weren’t elaborate and contained no valuable grave goods. 

The Search for “Lost” Royal Graves in Britain and Ireland
The new study identifies British Royal graves from the era of the mythical King Arthur. Several places in Britain are claimed to be the location of his burial, but according to some legends, Arthur was taken by a magical boat to the mystical Isle of Avalon after being mortally wounded in battle.

The research reconsiders archaeological evidence from a little-understood period of British history, between the end of Roman rule and the late Anglo-Saxon kingdoms — a time traditionally described by the legends of King Arthur.

The new study by Ken Dark, an emeritus professor of archaeology and history at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, identifies what may be up to 65 graves of post-Roman British kings and their families at about 20 burial sites across the west of England and Wales, including the modern English counties of Somerset and Cornwall.

The British continued to rule in what is now the west of England, Wales, and parts of Scotland in the centuries after the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early fifth century, while the invading Anglo-Saxons settled in the east. 

But while Anglo-Saxon rulers of the time were given elaborate burials with valuable and ornate grave gifts, the Christian British may have viewed this as a pagan practice, Dark said. 

The study suggests the “lost” graves of the post-Roman British royalty are the enclosure graves found at several early Christian burial sites throughout the west of England and Wales.

Instead, the British seemed to have buried their royalty without grave goods in simple graves without stone inscriptions alongside the graves of common Christians – although many of the royal graves were enclosed by a rectangular ditch and probably surrounded by a fence that has since rotted away, he said.

Dark, who is now at the University of Navarra in Spain, is the author of the study published this month in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.

“The royal graves are very standardized,” he told Live Science. “They have some variation, just like the ordinary graves do — some are bigger, some are smaller, some have only one grave in the centre while others have two or three.”

Post-Roman Britain

Roman rule in Britain lasted from A.D. 43, following a Roman invasion under the emperor Claudius, until about A.D. 410, when the last Roman troops were recalled to Gaul (modern France) amid internal rebellions in the Roman Empire and invasions by Germanic tribes. (The Roman general Julius Caesar invaded southern Britain in 55 B.C. and 54 B.C., but he didn’t establish a permanent Roman rule.)

Between the fifth and seventh centuries, the Christian British ruled what are now western England and Wales as a patchwork of small kingdoms that tried to continue Christian Roman traditions. In the same period, pagan Germanic tribes — the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who originated in the north of Europe — invaded and settled in the eastern parts of the country.

Graves thought to be of British kings, covered with mounds of earth, were also found at Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall – a site long associated with British royalty, and especially some legends of King Arthur.

The legends of King Arthur, who was supposedly British and Christian, are set in this period, although most historians think Arthur didn’t actually exist. (Dark, however, suggests that a real person or a fictional hero of that name was famous as early as the sixth century because Dark’s previous studies have suggested there was a sudden spike in the use of the name “Arthur” among British and Irish royal families at the time.)

Dark began his investigation to address a long-standing archaeological mystery: while many British kings were known to have lived during this time period, almost none of their graves had ever been found.

Until this study, the burial of only one British king from this era was known after being discovered in the northwest of Wales; an inscription on a gravestone name the person buried there as Catamanus (Cadfan in Welsh) and declares that he was a king (rex in Latin.) 

But Cadfan may have retired from the kingship to become a monk before his death, and the phrasing of the inscription implies his grave was being commemorated because of his status as a monk, Dark said. 

Meanwhile, the graves of at least nine Anglo-Saxon rulers from the period have been found, including one at the famous ship-burial at Sutton Hoo near the east coast of England.

Royal graves

To get to the bottom of the mystery, Dark reviewed the archaeological work previously done at thousands of burial sites from this period in the west of Britain and Ireland. His study suggests that the British royal graves were placed within early Christian cemeteries; and while they were marked out as those of high-status people, they seem very humble compared to ornate pagan graves and none have stones with inscriptions stating who was buried there. 

The outer enclosures vary in size and some contain up to four graves, but they are typically about 15 to 30 feet (4 to 9 meters) across and up to 30 feet (9 m) long.

“We’ve got a load of burials that are all the same, and a tiny minority of those burials are marked out as being of higher status than the others,” Dark said. “When there are no other possible candidates, that seems to me to be a pretty good argument for these being the ‘lost’ royal burials.”

At one site at Tintagel, a fortified peninsula on the coast of Cornwall that’s long been associated with post-Roman British royalty and legends of King Arthur, what are thought to be five British royal graves in an early Christian cemetery take another form. Each was covered by a mound of earth, possibly because Irish royal graves are also covered with mounds called “ferta,” he said. (The post-Roman British had strong links to Celtic Ireland; the ancient Irish and British were both of Celtic origin and had similar languages.)

But the pattern of placing the royal graves at the centre of an enclosure – usually rectangular, but sometimes circular – appears to be a burial style developed by Christians in late Roman Britain, he said. 

“The enclosed grave tradition comes straight out of late Roman burial practices,” he said. “And that’s a good reason why we have them in Britain, but not in Ireland — because Britain was part of the Roman empire, and Ireland wasn’t,” he said. 

Although previous studies had noted the enclosed graves were thought to hold people of high social status, rather than royals; and archaeologists were expecting royal burials to be covered by mounds of earth or marked with inscriptions on stone, he said. “But I’m suggesting that this burial practice was specifically royal.”

An English Teacher of History and a 9000-year-old cheddar man have the same DNA

An English Teacher of History and a 9000-year-old cheddar man have the same DNA

Separated by 10,000 years but linked by DNA! A 9,000 year old skeleton’s DNA was tested and it was concluded that a living relative was teaching history about a half mile away, tracing back nearly 300 generations!

Four years before, when Adrian Targett, a retired history teacher from Somerset, walked into his local news-agent’s, he was startled to see a familiar face staring up at him. That face, appearing on the front page of several newspapers, belonged to a distant relative of his — around 10,000 years distant, actually — known as Cheddar Man.

Ancient DNA from Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 at Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, has helped Museum scientists paint a portrait of one of the oldest modern humans in Britain.

This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe. Cheddar Man is the oldest complete skeleton to be discovered in the UK and has long been hailed as the first modern Briton who lived around 7,150 BC. His remains are kept by London’s Natural History Museum, in the Human Evolution gallery.

The Cheddar Man earned his name, not because of his fondness for cheese, which likely wasn’t cultivated until around 3,000 years later, but because he was found in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England (which is, incidentally, where cheddar cheese originates).

Some 25 years ago, in an amazing piece of DNA detective work, using genetic material taken from the cavity of one of Cheddar Man’s molar teeth, scientists were able to identify Mr Targett, 62, as a direct descendant.

Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the Western European hunter-gatherer population at the time, with lactose intolerance, probably with light-coloured eyes (most likely green but possibly blue or hazel), dark brown or black hair, and dark/dark-to-black skin, although an intermediate skin colour cannot be ruled out.

There are a handful of genetic variants linked to reduced pigmentation, including some that are very widespread in European populations today. However, Cheddar Man had “ancestral” versions of all these genes, strongly suggesting he would have had a “dark to black” skin tone.

Now Cheddar Man is back in the headlines because a new study of his DNA, using cutting edge technology, has enabled researchers to create a forensic reconstruction of his facial features, skin and eye colouring, and hair texture. And the biggest surprise is the finding that this ancient Brit had ‘dark to black skin — and bright blue eyes. (A previous reconstruction, before detailed genetic sequencing tests were available, assumed a white face, brown eyes and a ‘cartoon’ caveman appearance.)

No one had thought to tell Mr Targett any of this or invite him to the unveiling of the new reconstruction of his ancestor at the Natural History Museum on Monday.

‘I do feel a bit more multicultural now,’ he laughs. ‘And I can definitely see that there is a family resemblance. That nose is similar to mine. And we have both got those blue eyes.’

The initial scientific analysis in 1997, carried out for a TV series on archaeological findings in Somerset, revealed Mr Targett’s family line had persisted in the Cheddar Gorge area for around nine millennia, their genes being passed from mother to daughter through what is known as mitochondrial DNA which is inherited from the egg.

To put it simply, Adrian Targett and Cheddar Man have a common maternal ancestor.

Cheddar Man’s remains were found inside Gough’s Cave in Somerset in 1903

It is only Cheddar Man’s skin colouring that marks the difference across this vast space of time. It was previously assumed that human skin tones lightened some 40,000 years ago as populations migrated north out of the harsh African sunlight where darker skin had a protective function.

At less sunny latitudes, lighter skin would have conferred an evolutionary advantage because it absorbs more sunlight which is required to produce vitamin D, a nutrient vital for preventing disabling illnesses such as bone disease rickets. Later, when farming crops began to replace hunter-gatherer lifestyles and communities ate less meat, offal and oily fish — a dietary source of vitamin D — paler skins would have conferred an even greater advantage and accelerated the spread of relevant genes.

Earlier research suggested Cheddar Man looked like the impression, right, but now scientists are convinced he was dark-skinned and had blue eyes and dark hair

However, Cheddar Man’s complexion chimes with more recent research suggesting genes linked to lighter skin only began to spread about 8,500 years ago, according to population geneticists at Harvard University.

They report that over a period of 3,000 years, dark-skinned hunter-gatherers such as Mr Targett’s ancestors interbred with early farmers who migrated from the Middle East and who carried two genes for light skin (known as SLC24A5 and SLC45A2).

It is no surprise Cheddar Gorge remains Britain’s prime site for Palaeolithic human remains. Cheddar Man was buried alone in a chamber near a cave mouth. But it’s not just Adrian Targett who has links with him. Indeed for many modern Britons, Cheddar Man’s true face offers a uniquely close DNA encounter with their past. Modern Britons draw about 10 per cent of their genetic ancestry from the West European hunter-gatherer population from which Cheddar Man sprang.

“Incredibly rare” 180-million-year-old giant “sea dragon” fossil discovered in the U.K.

“Incredibly rare” 180-million-year-old giant “sea dragon” fossil discovered in the U.K.

Palaeontologists have made a massive discovery in the United Kingdom’s smallest county — the fossilized remains of a giant Jurassic sea creature. The fossil, which researchers said is “very well-preserved,” is said to be the “palaeontological discovery of a lifetime,” according to the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust.

The fossil was found at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in central England in February 2021, according to an announcement from the wildlife trust.

Joe Davis, who works on the water conservation team for the trust, found it during a routine draining procedure for re-landscaping. 

"Incredibly rare" 180-million-year-old giant "sea dragon" fossil discovered in the U.K.
Ichthyosaur skeleton found at Rutland Water Nature Reserve in central England, August 26, 2021.

At first, he said in a statement, he thought the remains were clay pipes sticking out of the mud, except that “they looked organic.” He told a colleague that they looked like vertebrae, and when they got closer, they saw “what indisputably looked like a spine” as well as a jawbone at the spine’s end. 

“We couldn’t quite believe it,” Davis said. “The find has been absolutely fascinating and a real career highlight. It’s great to learn so much from the discovery and to think that this amazing creature was once swimming in seas above us.” 

The fossil was excavated in August and September and has since been identified as an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that somewhat resembled dolphins.

This particular fossil found nearly complete, is nearly 33 feet long and is roughly 180 million years old, researchers said. Its skull measures more than 6.5 feet long.

Davis told the BBC that the fossil was “very well-preserved, better than I think we could have all imagined.” 

Ichthyosaur expert Dean Lomax, who helped with the fossil’s research, said that the find is the “largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever discovered in Britain.” 

“These animals, they first appeared in a time called the Triassic period around roughly 250 million years ago,” Lomax said in a video for Rutland Water Nature Reserve. “Our specimen, the Rutland Ichthyosaur, or the Rutland Sea Dragon, is the biggest complete ichthyosaur ever found in Britain in over 200 years of collecting these things scientifically, which is an incredible feat.” 

Ichthyosaurs are not swimming dinosaurs, he clarified. 

According to the company Anglian Water, which helps maintain the reservoir in which the fossil was found, ichthyosaurs of this size and completeness are “incredibly rare,” especially in the U.K., with most comparable examples being found in Germany and North America. 

Alicia Kearns, who represents Rutland Melton in Parliament, said the discovery “surpassed every possible expectation.” 

“It is utterly awe-inspiring,” she said. 

Though the largest, this was not the first ichthyosaur fossil found in the reservoir. The Wildlife Trust said that two incomplete and “much smaller” remains were found in the ’70s when the reservoir was first being constructed. 

The palaeontologists working on the remains are continuing their research and are working on an academic paper about the findings. 

1,500-Year-Old Silver Site Uncovered in England

1,500-Year-Old Silver Site Uncovered in England

An abandoned mausoleum and silver extraction taking place on an industrial scale at a Roman site in rural Kent has left archaeologists with a 1500-year-old mystery.

Silver extraction on an industrial scale

Archaeologists working on an excavation at Grange Farm, near Gillingham, discovered 15 kilograms of litharge – a material associated with the extraction of silver from other metals. This is the largest amount ever found on a British Roman site and greatly exceeds the amount that archaeologists would normally expect to find on a rural settlement such as that at Grange Farm, suggesting that the refining of silver was taking place on an industrial scale.

However, the excavation team did not unearth any signs of the infrastructure that could have supported the size of operation required to produce this amount of material.

The excavation and subsequent research, which was led by Pre-Construct Archaeology (PCA) and involved archaeologists from Newcastle University, revealed a rectangular building that would have been built from timber and divided internally by three aisles. This type of multi-function ‘aisled’ building was fairly common in Roman Britain and would have been used both as a house and a place for crafts.

However, although the archaeologists found evidence of small-scale metalworking at one end of the building, it was not at a level that would have produced the amount of litharge discovered.

The team was confronted with another mystery when they also uncovered a stone mausoleum – a grand funerary monument usually found at Roman villas, not aisled buildings.

Dating to the late 3rd century or early 4th century AD, this was the height of a two-storey building and would have been visible from the nearby river Medway.  Inside, the mausoleum had a ‘tesselated’ floor of plain red mosaic tiles which was very unusual for mausoleums in Roman Britain, say the archaeologists.

Inside the ruins of the mausoleum, the archaeologists found a lead-lined coffin containing the body of an elderly lady. Isotopic analysis of the lady’s teeth suggests she was probably local, while radiocarbon dating suggests she was buried around the same time the mausoleum was built. Although it wasn’t unheard of for people to be buried in lead caskets in Roman Britain, it wasn’t a widespread practice. The discovery was also unusual because the team did not find any evidence that the lady had been buried with any personal items or grave goods, which was common at that time.  

1,500-Year-Old Silver Site Uncovered in England
Archaeologists unearth the lead-lined coffin. Image courtesy of Pre-Construct Archaeology (PCA).

Dr James Gerrard, Senior Lecturer in Roman Archaeology, said: “There are so many mysteries surrounding the discoveries at Grange Farm. Although we know that the economy during the late Roman empire was based on silver and gold, whose production was heavily controlled by the state, we don’t know why silver was being refined in such huge quantities at Grange Farm – which was only a small rural settlement. It may have been that the site’s proximity to the river was an important factor, or it could have been that the work was being done illegally, out of the Empire’s sight.

“Additionally, we have very few clues as to who the elderly lady was. It’s clear she was someone important with significant status in the community, because to be buried in a lead coffin in a substantial monument like the mausoleum requires resources – both in terms of money and labour.”

Anglo Saxon discoveries

By the fifth and sixth centuries, Grange Farm appears to have fallen out of use as a permanently-occupied settlement, so the team were surprised when the excavation also unearthed a number of early Anglo-Saxon items including two spear heads and ornate brooch. Spears were usually used as part of Anglo-Saxon burial practices but there was no evidence to suggest that Grange Farm was being used either as a settlement or burial site at that time.

One of the Anglo-Saxon spearheads was discovered at Grange Farm. Image courtesy of Pre-Construct Archaeology (PCA).

“The brooch is a very unusual find – stylistically it is closer to southern Scandinavia and is one of only a handful of similar brooches found in Britain,” added Dr Gerrard. “Both the spears and brooch are unusual and high-status objects on an otherwise unassuming rural site.

“The mausoleum wasn’t in use at this time, and in fact it appears that the grave of the elderly lady was disturbed in later years – possibly by early medieval graverobbers or relic hunters.”

As well as the litharge and the mysteries surrounding the mausoleum and the elderly lady in the lead-lined coffin, the team of archaeologists also found 453 Roman coins, more than 20,000 fragments of pottery and 8,000 animal bones.

Complex sequence of activity over centuries

The excavation, which took place before the start of a new housing development on the site, is the subject of a new book, ‘By the Medway Marsh’, written by Dr Gerrard, and published by PCA. It details the excavation and the history of the site, from late-Iron Age, its transition and growth under the Romans, and what happened to it during Medieval times.

“The site at Grange Farm has given us a fascinating mystery and an extensive and complex sequence of activity covering the entire Roman period right through to early Anglo-Saxon – and beyond,” added Dr Gerrard. “But that’s just one phase of the story of this place. Everything we found – and what is happening to the site now – is evidence of the economic pull of the Medway and the area’s changing development.”

Victoria Ridgeway, Director and Head of Post-Excavation, Pre-Construct Archaeology, added: “In some ways the excavations at Grange Farm typify much of the work undertaken by commercial archaeological contractors like PCA, in that the sites’ boundaries were determined by the extent of new development, in this case for housing. But, whilst we knew the area had been important during the medieval period, we were less prepared for the extraordinary range of Roman and Anglo-Saxon finds we encountered.

“This book, in common with others in a series of monographs produced by PCA, is the culmination of several years of work, involving many specialists from different fields of research. We are grateful to the support provided by James Gerrard and the department at Newcastle University. This project has provided a welcome opportunity for collaboration between the ‘academic’ and ‘commercial’ aspects of the archaeological world.”