Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:07:55.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Iron-Making at the Chesters Villa, Woolaston, Gloucestershire: Survey and Excavation 1987—91

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

M.G. Fulford  and
J.R.L. Allen
M.G. Fulford
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Reading
J.R.L. Allen
Affiliation:
Postgraduate Research Institute for Sedimentology, University of Reading
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Chesters villa is situated midway between Chepstow and Lydney on the right bank of the Severn Estuary (FIG. 1). The residential quarters (centred on ST 59709870) lie on the shoulder of the Kidderminster Terrace (sands, gravels), about 250 m from the modern shore between the 11 and 16 m contours, and face south across the estuary. Between 1932 and 1935 C. Scott Garrett carried out a series of excavations, mostly in the field known as Lower Chesters south of the railway line. These revealed, on the eastern side, a residential range with a bath-block at its southern end. From this a courtyard wall was defined on three sides, with traces of structures along the south, and a subdivided, rectangular building at the northern end of the western wall. No evidence was found of a northern range, although rubble spreads on the surface of the field, and now aerial photography, make it clear that such a range existed. Indeed, its size, coupled with the incidence of mosaic tesserae in the ploughsoil, suggest that it was the most elaborate quarter of the villa. The cropmark evidence for this range is plotted on FIG. 1. Apart from one reference to iron slag as a ‘material which can be found almost anywhere on the site', the excavations provided no evidence of the role that iron-making might have played in the economy of the villa.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 23 , November 1992 , pp. 159 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © M.G. Fulford and J.R.L. Allen 1992. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Scott-Garrett, C., Arch. Camb. xciii (1938), 93–125.Google Scholar

2 ibid., 110.

3 Fitchett, M., The New Regard of the Forest of Dean 2 (1986), 24–7.Google Scholar

4 Walker, B.F., Glevensis xx (1986), 37–40Google Scholar; Neal, D.S. and Walker, B.F., Britannia xix (1988), 191–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pullinger, J., Dean Archaeology iii (1990), 12–25.Google Scholar

5 Allen, J.R.L. and Fulford, M.G., Antiq. Journ. lxvii (1987), 246–7; 254–6; 266–77.Google Scholar

6 ibid., 237–89.

7 e.g. C. Hart, Archaeology in Dean (1967), 25–42; Bridgewater, N.P., Bull. Hist. Metallurgy Group 2(1) (1968), 27–32.Google Scholar

8 H. Cleere and D. Crossley, The Iron Industry of the Weald (1985), 57–86.

9 O.S. sortie 69058, photo 016.

10 M.G. Fulford, Trans. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. (forthcoming).

11 Geophysical Surveys of Bradford, The Old Sunday School, Kipping Lane, Thornton, Bradford, BD133EL.

12 op. cit. (note 1), 113–14.

13 Boon, G.C., Trans. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. lxix (1950), 40–5.Google Scholar

14 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5); Allen, J.R.L. and Fulford, M.G., Trans. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. cviii (1990), 17–32; Antiq. Journ. lxxi (in press).Google Scholar

15 op. cit. (note 1), 155–20.

16 Young, C.J., Oxfordshire Roman Pottery, BAR 43 (1977).Google Scholar

17 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5), 253–66.

18 ibid., 282–4, fig. 20.

19 Hooton, D.H. and Giorgetta, N.E., X-ray Spectrometry vi (1977), 6–25.Google Scholar

20 T.F. Sibly, Special Reports on the Mineral Resources of Great Britain, x: Iron Ores -the Haematites of the Forest of Dean and South Wales, Memoir Geol. Survey Gr. Br. (2 edn, 1927).

21 The charcoal identification was carried out at the Geology Department of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London.

22 F.H. Schweingruber, Microscopic Wood Anatomy (1978).

23 O. Rackham, Trees and Woodlands in the British Landscape (2nd edn, 1990).

24 Cleere, H., Inst. Arch. Bull. xiii (1976), 233–46.Google Scholar

25 ibid.

26 F.M. Trotter, Geology of the Forest of Dean Coal and Iron-Ore Field, Memoir Geol. Survey Gr. Br. (1942); F.B.A. Welch and F.M. Trotter, Geology of the Country around Monmouth and Chepstow, Memoir Geol. Survey Gr. Br. (1961).

27 H.P. Klug and L.F. Alexander, X-ray Diffraction Procedures for Polycrystalline and Amorphous Materials (1974); Hooton and Giorgetta, op. cit. (note 19).

28 British Geological Survey Sheet 250.

29 R.F. Tylecote, The Prehistory of Metallurgy in the British Isles (1986), 132–42.

30 ibid.

31 ibid.; Allen, J.R.L., Phil. Trans R. Soc. A 330 (1990), 315–34; Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5); op. cit. (note 14).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Allen, J.R.L., Journ. Hist. Metall. Soc. xxii (1988), 81–6Google Scholar; op. cit. (note 31); Allen, J.R.L. and Fulford, M.G., Britannia xvii (1986), 91–117; op. cit. (note 5); op. cit. (note 14).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Allen, op. cit. (note 32, 1988).

34 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 14, in press).

35 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5), 279–80.

36 idem.

37 Tylecote, op. cit. (note 29).

38 Allen, op. cit. (note 32, 1988).

39 Tylecote, op. cit. (note 29), 225.

40 Cleere and Crossley, op. cit. (note 8), 57–86.

41 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5), 247.

42 Cleere, op. cit. (note 24); Cleere and Crossley, op. cit. (note 8), 78–9.

43 Cleere, op. cit. (note 24); Cleere and Crossley, op. cit. (note 8), 80–1.

44 ibid., 70.

45 Sibly, op. cit. (note 20); Trotter, op. cit. (note 26).

46 O. Rackham, Ancient Woodland: its History, Vegetation and Uses in England (1980), 108.

47 Scott-Garrett, op. cit. (note 1), 109, pl. 108.

48 idem.

49 Fulford and Allen, op. cit. (note 5), 279–80.

50 Monmouth Archaeology viii (1981), 4Google Scholar; Bridgewater, N.P., Trans Woolhope Nat. Fld Club xxxviii (1965), 96Google Scholar; Walters, B., The New Regard of the Forest of Dean 1 (1985), 36Google Scholar; Atkinson, H.D., The New Regard of the Forest of Dean 2 (1986), 28–35.Google Scholar

51 Bridgewater, op. cit. (note 7), 27–32.

52 Bridgewater, op. cit. (note 49), 132; Sindrey, op. cit. (note 7), 32.

53 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5), 279; B.C. Burnham and J. Wacher, The ‘Small’ Towns of Roman Britain (1990), 232–4.

54 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5); op. cit. (note 14).

55 B. and Walters, M., The New Regard of the Forest of Dean 3 (1987), 50–3.Google Scholar

56 R.E.M. and T.V. Wheeler, Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Glos., Soc. Antiq. Res. Rep. ix (1932).

57 Sindrey, op. cit. (note 7), 24–9; Britannia xvi (1985), 300, 299, fig. 24Google Scholar; Britannia xvii (1986), 410.Google Scholar

58 Cleere, H.F., Offa xl (1983), 112–13.Google Scholar

59 Wheeler, R.E.M., Trans Cardiff Nat. Soc. lv (1922), 19–45.Google Scholar

60 K. Branigan in K. Branigan and D. Miles (eds), The Economies of Romano-British Villas (1989), 42–50.

61 K. Branigan, The Catuvellauni (1985), 159–60; Jackson, D.A., Northants. Arch. xiv (1979), 31–7Google Scholar; Jackson, D.A. and Ambrose, T.M., Britannia xix (1978), 115–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wild, J.P., Arch. Journ. cxxxi (1974), 165.Google Scholar

62 Jackson, D.A. and Tylecote, R.F., Britannia ix (1988), 275–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 Fulford, M. in Todd, M. (ed.), Research on Roman Britain 1960–1989, Britannia Monograph 11 (1989), 183Google Scholar; and in Howard, H. and Morris, E.L. (eds), Production, Distribution and Exchange: a Ceramic Viewpoint, BAR Int. Ser. 120 (1981), 195–208.Google Scholar

64 Cleere and Crossley, op. cit. (note 8), 84–6.

65 D. Breeze and B. Dobson, Hadrian's Wall (3rd edn, 1987), 207–34.

66 Allen and Fulford, op. cit. (note 5), 282–4.

67 Cleere, H.F., Arch. Journ. cxxxi (1974), 171–99; Cleere and Crossley, op. cit. (note 8), 66–9.Google Scholar

68 M. Hassall's interpretation of pr rel as praepositus religionum (superintendent of rites) instead of Mommsen's praepositus reliquationis (officer in charge of the fleet base), in Rodwell, W. (ed.). Temples Churches and Religion in Roman Britain, BAR 77 (1980), 82Google Scholar finds favour with Wright, R.P., Britannia xvi (1985), 248–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar