The Stretton Grandison Project

A cemetery containing the remains of at least 18 individuals was revealed at Stretton Grandison in rural Herefordshire in 2007 during excavations carried out by Border Archaeology on behalf of Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water / Laing O’Rourke.

The place-name element Stretton, denoting ‘a settlement on a Roman road’, clearly attests to the
presence of a Roman settlement in this area (Coplestone-Crow, 1989), although the topography
and historical development of this settlement are obscure.

A certain amount of archaeological work has been carried out since the late 1960s - in terms of aerial
reconnaissance, auguring and field walking surveys and archaeological observation of limited trenching - but there have until now been no detailed archaeological investigations. The existing evidence
appeared to indicate that the settlement was a small town and local market centre, with evidence of possible industrial activity (Buteux, 1996, 2; Stanford, 1980, 90). The suggested identification of the site with Epocessa, listed in the 8th century Ravenna Cosmography, remains unproven (O’Donnell, 1997, 27).

Border Archaeology’s excavations comprised a series of 13 engineering access pits forming part of the Ledbury Trunk Main programme of works.

The majority of these pits revealed evidence of Roman settlement activity, with some of the pottery and glass recovered indicating a late 1st century AD date for the initial phase of occupation. The cemetery was revealed close to the River Frome and among the human remains discovered was a ‘mature’ male who had been placed inside an oak coffin, one of the best preserved examples ever found in Britain. The skeleton was excavated and taken to Durham University, where specialist staff have been able to extract a wealth of information from the bones. They found that he was aged over 46 years and, at 5’ 9’’, was unusually tall for this period. His teeth were heavily worn testifying to a lifetime of chewing heavy, gritty food and he suffered from variety of degenerative conditions typical of middle and old age, including osteoarthritis.

A more grisly discovery was the decapitated skeleton of a teenager who had been savagely hacked to death with a sword. The attack may have taken place in a battle situation or it may have been the murder of a ‘civilian’. The remains were contained within a shallow grave and have been dated to AD 550 to 660, thus indicating that the cemetery remained in use well into the Saxon period.

A second, poorly preserved wooden coffin offered tantalising evidence of a Roman ritual known as ‘feeding the dead’. Part of the lid had been cut away to expose the head and a small channel had been dug, possibly to accommodate a pipe, down which relatives could pour food or drink during annual festivals of the dead.

The cemetery also contained a number of cremations, deposited in ceramic jars, and a stone-lined well, within which was found the sole and part of the upper of a child’s shoe of Roman date.

Evidence of much earlier occupation also came to light in the form of fragments of worked wood, which had been preserved in waterlogged deposits at a depth of up to 3m. These have been dated to 3930 to 3870 BC and appear to be the remnants of prehistoric alder hurdles used by Neolithic people as fish
traps or fencing or possibly as part of a trackway over marshy ground.

Invaluable information is being gained from the analysis of the finds and other archaeological material obtained from the cemetery site and this work is being undertaken for us by laboratories and leading specialists.

These are time consuming and painstaking processes, the results of which will allow Border Archaeology to piece together the story we unearthed in the fields of Stretton Grandison. An informative and accessible publication will be produced to complement the official reports we are compiling.

Pictures shown are (from the top):
● Stone-lined well of Roman date
● Oak coffin containing the remains of a ‘mature’ male
● Decapitated remains of teenage ‘battle victim’
● Roman child’s shoe discovered in the stone-lined well

References:
Buteux, V., 1996, Central Marches Histroic Towns Survey: Archaeological Assessment of Stretton Grandison

Coplestone-Crow, B., 1989, Herefordshire Place Names, BAR British Series, Vol. 214

O’Donnell, J., 1997, ‘Stretton Grandison: Settlement and Landscape’, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, Vol. 49, pt. 1, 13-27

Stanford, S. C., 1980, Archaeology of the Welsh Marches, London