The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Monkton Thanet

THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON, TRANET tions to suggest that the cemetery as a whole extended much further down the hill. In 1879, according to published references and Ordnance Survey records,s a skeleton with a knife and several fragments of pottery of different patterns were found on Primrose Hill, the cart-track joining the main road and the by-road to Minster, on the brow of the hill, at N.G.R. TR 28866530. H this reference is correct, this earlier find was on the line of the track which passes between the 1971 Graves 1 and 2, but down the hill about 200 yards (182·88 m.) to the south of them, on the 50 ft. (15·24 m.) contour. Since the pipe-trench revealed that the cemetery occupies an area of downland measuring 370 yards (338 · 32 m.) from west to east and is thus an unusually large one, it is by no means improbable that it extends southwards for 200 yards. As to its northern limit, the fact that no discoveries of skeletons have been reported during road-building or maintenance on the A253 suggests that perhaps the entire area of interments lies to the south of the road. As stated already, this modem road i s still called 'Dunstrete' and, approximately at least, presumably still follows the line of an old trackway across the downs, which, from its name, must have existed at latest by Anglo-Saxon times and can have formed the northern boundary of the Monkton cemetery.4 The siting of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery adjacent to such a trackway can be paralleled elsewhere in east Kent at Finglesham, where the White Way dictated the western limit of burial.5 Since there are plans to widen Dunatrete in the none-too-distant future, there is a clear threat to the northern part of the Monkton cemetery. Moreover, the whole site is currently under arable and many of the graves along the pipe trench showed evidence of plough damage. The relationship of this cemetery to others on Thanet and the mainland of the Kentiah Kingdom is shown by S.C.H. in Figs. 1-2, where areas of alluvial silt have been differentiated by stippling from the older and more solid formations of Chalk, Thanet Sand and Brickearth, on which all the settlements occur. The exact shoreline of Anglo-Saxon times is probably irrecoverable now, owing to subsequent flooding and 'inning' of the marshland, and it must be stressed that the maps give 3 George Payne, A.rclu:eologia, li (1888), 452, mentioning 'interments'; V.O.H. Kent, i (1908}, 385-6, These sources cite, respectively, Thanet Gtdde (Bubb), 41, and Guide to the Isle of Thanet (Kelly's Directory), 46, neither of which has as yet been traced and consulted by the present authors. See also, Audrey Meaney, A Gazetteer of IDarly Anglo-Saxon BurialSitea (1964), 132, under 'Primrose Hill, Monkton (Acol)', quoting an unpublished letter from R. Hurd (19.X.1932) in 􀄬he O.S. records. It should be noted that the crouched burial from Acol in 1942, 1n.cluded with this entry, oe.me from another site at N.G.R. TR 308671. 'Unmetalled tracks across open downland could be very wide, as users sought to avoid the ruta made by others, so the present road may follow a route clear of the northern graves in the cemetery. 1 Excavated by S.C.R. between 1959 and 1967, for the Dept. of the Environment. Here, unfortunately, the :modern road just overlies the westernmost graves of the cemetery. 61