Ancient Burials at St Margaret’s

The Canterbury Archaeological Trust has just completed excavations, ahead of new building work, on land at Bay Hill, St Margaret's-at-Cliffe. The site lies on the summit of a chalk ridge, overlooking the English Channel, near Dover. Very particular interest attached to the site from the outset because a substantial Bronze Age round barrow had once occupied part of the plot. In 1920 this barrow was partially levelled to make way for a new tennis court in the garden of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, a famous actor of the day. During the construction of the tennis court, the workmen discovered six extended inhumation burials, fairly certainly of Anglo-Saxon date, together with an earlier crouched burial, most probably associated with the original barrow. Excavations in May and June 2004 showed that other remains still survived.

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No traces of the prehistoric barrow mound remained but almost the complete eastern half of the barrow's enclosing ring-ditch was located. This is estimated to have been about 22 metres in diameter.

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