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The Stanway story

The Stanway site was a funerary site which lay beyond the outermost of the earthworks which protected Iron Age Colchester two thousand years ago, just before the Romans came. The site was discovered in the 1930s when air photographs revealed a group of five ditched enclosures set out in two rows. The site is now a sand and gravel quarry owned by Tarmac Quarry Products Ltd. Archaeological excavations took place intermittently between 1987 and 1997 to keep in front of the advancing face of the quarry.

• Location plan
• Explore the site
• Warrior's grave
• Doctor's grave
• Chronology

The site seems to have started off in the second or third centuries BC as a small farmstead which was later enlarged with the addition of four enclosures to become a burial place for a few select individuals.

The main burials were in timber chambers at or near the centre of the enclosures. The dead were cremated and the grave goods broken, with only a few fragments finding their way into the backfill of the chambers. The few surviving items show that the burials must have been lavish.

Surrounding the chambered burials were subsidiary burials where the rite was different. They were no wooden chambers and the grave goods were intact, not having been deliberately broken in antiquity. These burials ranged from a single pot filled with cremated human bone to the "Warrior's grave" and the "Doctor's grave" with its remarkable gaming board and medical instruments.

The latest of the graves dates to around AD 60's, showing that the site continued to be used as a burial place for prominent Britons for about twenty years or so after the Roman invasion of Britain and the conquest of Iron Age Colchester.

With grateful thanks to:

• English Heritage and Tarmac for funding the excavation
• Tarmac for the provision of many on-site facilities and support generally -- especially Ian Findlater and Reg Hilton
• Essex County Council, the Essex Heritage Trust and the Essex History Fair for supplementary grants
• Colchester Museum Service for its support and expertise
• Dr Tim Dennis and Graeme Sweeney of the University of Essex for setting up the live video link on the internet showing the excavations in progress,
• BT for the installation and provision of a telephone line for the live link
• The Colchester Blue Badges Association. for their help with tours for visitors
• Archaeological specialists for their advice and interest including P Cott, N Crummy, G Dannell, Dr R Jackson, V Rigby, Dr P Murphy, Dr P Sealey, Dr P Wiltshire
• and lastly -- but most of all -- the many excavators (volunteers and otherwise) who have helped on the project