Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TQ 1686 4958
Archaeology & History
Highlighted on the 1914 OS-map (as ‘Site of’), nothing now remains of the prehistoric structure that either covered or surrounded the ancient burial urn, found fortuitously by a Mr Turner in the garden of Southdown Cottage at the beginning of the 20th century. Believed to be either Iron Age or Romano-British in origin, the find was noted by Mr Malden (1913) in his brief in the Surrey ArchaeologicalCollections, who wrote:
“Early in 1913 it came to my knowledge that some years ago some discoveries had been made in the garden of a house on Cotmandene, Dorking. Mr Turner…was digging for sand in his garden when he found a small cinerary urn (see illustration), with ashes in it. The height is only 5 inches, the diameter across the top about 4 inches, but at the widest part 5⅜. The urn is so small that it probably contained the ashes of a child: it is wheel-made, but badly; the diameter is not precisely the same across the top from every direction: Mr Reginald Smith attributes it to the first century BC. Some fragments of other urns were found. Mr Turner has kindly presented the whole specimen to the Society’s Museum. At a lower depth in the same garden were numerous flints, some implements, many flakes, and traces of a hearth with several burnt stones. These clearly belonged to an earlier date, considerably, than the interments, but as the finds were made about 1906-7, and not investigated till this year, it is impossible to be precise about the depth at which they occurred.”
References:
- Malden, H.E., “A Cinerary Urn and other Matters found at Dorking and Betchforth,” in Surrey Archaeological Collections, volume 26, 1913.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
