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Friday 10th October 2025 |
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The Rise and Decline of
Druce Farm Roman Villa (AD60-650), a multi-period site in Dorset
Excavations were carried out
from 2012 to 2018 by East Dorset Antiquarian Society under Lilian's
direction. This long-lived site revealed evidence for prehistoric
activity, and Roman occupation from the mid-1st century, with the
earliest proto-villa found in Dorset. Phases of construction and
demolition highlight a story of villa development and decline. The
report on the Druce Farm Roman Villa is available in the British
Archaeology Reports (BAR) British Series (B676 - 2022).
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Lilian Ladle
Visiting Fellow at
Bournemouth University: |
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Friday 14th November 2025 |
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‘Fall In, Ghosts’
- Archaeological Investigations at the site of a First World War
Training Camp, Cooden, East Sussex’
Opened in September 1914,
Cooden Camp was used throughout the First World War, originally
housing men who would form the 11th,12th and 13th Battalions of the
Royal Sussex Regiment. The Sussex men who trained there were involved
in The Battle of the Boar’s Head at
Richebourg-I’Avoué in France on 30 June 1916, when the
three battalions would suffer some 1,100 casualties.
The camp was also used as the
temporary home of men in training from as far afield as South Africa
and Australia, later becoming the site of a Princess Patricia’s
Canadian Red Cross Hospital in 1918, before closing the following year.
Following a convoluted
planning process, permission was granted for a housing development on
part of the former camp. Geophysical survey and trial trench
evaluations of the site were conducted between 2018 and 2021 and
identified a range of buried remains. Full-scale archaeological
excavation and recording was undertaken between September 2024 and
January 2025 and revealed a variety of archaeological deposits and
artefacts relating to day-to-day life at Cooden Camp.
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Simon Stevens (Senior
Archaeologist at Archaeology South-East, UCL) |
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Friday 12th December 2025 |
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BHAS AGM
followed by:
Travel in the Past: The
Problems and Pleasures of the Journey’
Travel in the past was not
easy, and Sussex was notorious for its bad roads, particularly in the
clay regions of the Weald. It was not until the mid-eighteenth
century, when Turnpike Acts improved the county’s roads, that
journeys became less of a problem. This talk, taking in regions
around London and further afield, looks at horses, coaches and plenty
of Sussex mud. It will make you glad that you have a car or can catch
a bus or a train. Even walking could be better than coach travel in
the 17th century.
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(following on from the AGM)
Presidential Lecture by Dr
Janet Pennington |
