Outside the Town

Outside the Town describes discoveries made between 2006 and 2009 during excavations immediately south-east of Canterbury's Roman town wall. Situated within sight of Watling Street and the main entrance into the town from the Roman port at Dover, the investigations revealed a late Roman shrine along with finds indicative of ritual offerings and associated feasting. Apparently in use over a twenty year period from c AD 340, the shrine was positioned over a late Iron Age inhumation burial which may have originally been marked by a mound, and is one amongst a group of such late Iron Age and early Roman funerary monuments which exist in the vicinity. Four late third-century burials preceded the construction of the shrine, and represent part of an intriguing funerary and religious landscape now emerging.