Page 41 - br-sep-2020

September 2020 September 2020

BERE REGIS HISTORY SOCIETY

The Archaeology Section has now found over ten
thousand things during 2020 and one of the most
extraordinary things about this concerted effort during
lock-down is that several unusual things are being
revealed.
As well as the continued finds of Romano-British materials
and the following Anglo-Saxon period pottery, we have found an unusual number
of post-mediaeval, or mid-16th to early 18th century building materials, bricks and
tiles, which have definite evidence of soot or severe burning effects on them.
These have been found in fields not far from the centre of the village.
We know that there is
documentary evidence of severe
house fires at Bere from 1633
onwards and probably many
more house fires not recorded in
the press of the times. These new
finds seem to suggest that after a
house fire in the village, the
debris was carted away by the
only people with suitable horse
and wagons, farmers, and the
material was dumped on nearby
land. They were probably paid a
fee to carry the material away and simply dumped it in the fields and now it is
being found.
It is possible that new evidence will slightly alter this deduction, possibly in years to
come, but the high proportion of bricks and tiles found this year points at only one
possibility of how the village coped with these tragedies. The biggest "fire of Bere"
began on 4th June 1788 which destroyed fifty houses and barns in the centre of
the village. There was only one death, a blind man, who was buried the next day,
5th June 1788 and recorded in the parish records.
John Pitfield, Project Secretary

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