Grain and Chaff from an English ManorSavory, Arthur Herbert
History
Grain and Chaff from an English Manor
Savory, Arthur Herbert
Aldington (Worcestershire, England); Country life -- England; England -- Social life and customs
One of my fields--about five acres--called Blackbanks from its
extraordinarily black soil, over a yard deep in places, and the more
remarkable because the soil of the surrounding fields is stiff
yellowish clay, showed other indications of long and very ancient
habitation. Among the relics found was a stone quern, measuring about
21 inches by 12 by 7-3/4, and having, on each of two opposite sides, a
basin-shaped depression about 6 inches in diameter at the top, and
2-3/4 inches in depth; also a small stone ring, 1-1/4 inches in
diameter, and 3/8ths in thickness, with a hole in the centre 1/4 inch
across; the edges are rounded, and it is similar to those I have seen
in museums, called spindle whorls. The quern and the ring I imagine to
be British. This field and the fields adjacent on the north side of
the stream formed, I think, primarily a British settlement and area of
cultivation, afterwards appropriated by the Romans in the earliest
days of the Roman occupation of Britain, and inhabited by them as a
military station until they left the country.
Among other relics found in Blackbanks and in the fields to the north,
called Blackminster, between Blackbanks and the present line of the
Great Western Railway, aggregating about a hundred acres, there were
found large quantities of fragments of pottery of several kinds,
including black, grey, and red, and among the latter the smoothly
glazed Samian. Many pieces are ornamented with patterns, some very
primitive, others geometrical; others are in texture like Wedgwood
basalt ware, and similar in colour and decoration. The Samian is
mostly plain, but a few pieces have patterns and representations of
human figures.
The fields, but especially Blackbanks, contained quantities of bones,
the horns of sheep or goats, pieces of stags, horns, iron spear and
arrow-heads, horses' molar teeth, and flint pebbles worn flat on one
side by the passage of innumerable feet for many years. A millstone
showing marks of rotation on the surface, a bronze clasp or brooch
with fragments of enamel inlay, the ornamental bronze handle of an
important key, a glass lacrymatory (tear-bottle), numerous
coins--referred to below--and other objects in bronze and iron, were
also found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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