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AN ANCIENT GRAVEYARD NEAR NAZEING.
By S. HAZZLEDINE WARREN, F.G.S.
IN the early part of 1934 a number of human skeletons were
found at Mr. Lapwood's Nursery on Nazeing Mead (0° 0' 30"
E.Long. 51° 44' 30" N. Lat.). I do not know the total number
that have been found, but it must be some twenty or more. The
graves were very shallow, few exceeding 2 feet in depth, while the
majority were less; they were packed closely together, with not
more than 2 feet between them in some cases. The skeletons
were extended at full length, lying upon the back, with the
head towards the west. The azimuth of five of these skeletons,
looking from the feet to the head, that I took with a prismatic
compass was (after correction for magnetic variation) 268°, 268°,
283°, 268°, 263°.
I made several trial holes, and the general result was: (a)
Humus and made earth, 1ft. 4ins. to nearly 2ft. 6ins.; (b) Brown
sand, white sand, black earth and gravel, mixed together in
lumps, about 2ft.; (c) Undisturbed river gravel of the flood-plain
terrace. The upper bed (a) in which the interments were dug
yielded (although not in great abundance) sherds of Romano-
British pottery and fragments of human and animal bones.
The mixed sand and black earth, etc. (b) covers a considerable
area, and looks like a mixture of soil and subsoil dug from
different depths without having been further incorporated
together by subsequent disturbance, but it has not yet furnished
any relics.
Mr. Lapwood's son devoted much time to clearing the bones
with the blade of a knife, but in spite of this care he failed to find
any relic interred with the skeletons. I have also dug up several
with the same negative result.
The bones are in an advanced state of disintegration and
difficult to extract. Miss Tildesley, of the Royal College of
Surgeons, who has visited the site, expressed the view that the
friable state of the bones indicated a date earlier than the
Mediaeval period: that they could not be later than Saxon, and
were more probably late Romano-British, when extended inter-
ments of this type first came into use. One hesitates to differ
in any way from Miss Tildesley, who has had such wide experi-
ence of these matters, but I cannot help feeling sceptical of the