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"Secrets of the Grave"

Secrets of the Grave is a booklet summarising the excavations in the late 1970s of the Roman cemetery and church at Butt Road in Colchester. Over 700 Roman burials were excavated in advance of the building of a police station. The excavation had to take place so that the remains could be recorded and removed, because otherwise they would have been destroyed during building work.

The burials belonged to two distinct cemeteries. In the first, the burials were aligned north-south (approximately) and many included pots and personal ornaments such as armlets and bone combs. The second overlay the first, with many of the burials cutting into the earlier inhumations. They were aligned east-west (approximately) with the heads at the west end. These later burials (of which there were more than 600) appear to have been Christian. Grave goods were much less frequent than in the earlier cemetery with those present favouring the graves of children. In both cemeteries, nearly all of the bodies had been buried in wooden coffins.

A church was built to one side of the later cemetery. The building was substantially modified during its life. It underwent several structural changes. These included the addition of an apse at the east end and the insertion of aisles. The full and final report of the excavation, including some interesting evidence for funeral meals in the church, can be found in Colchester Archaeological Report 9.

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