Stories from the Store: Great Discoveries by Aldbury School

During a nature ramble around Aldbury, the class 1B boys were trying to locate a special plant – the Great Henbane – on Mr. Wright’s small holding. We don’t know if they found the plant in question, however they did find some small fragments of pottery.

Once back at school, they showed their find to Miss. Harris, the headmistress of the school at Aldbury.

In early September 1943, Miss Harris reported to her neighbour, Percy Westall, that some small fragments of pottery had been found.  He was the Curator of Letchworth Museum at the time.

Following the identification of the finds as ‘pre-Roman’, a fascinating series of events unfolded.

The site, a rare cremation cemetery dating from the early 1st century AD was excavated by the school children. They kept detailed records of their work, including written description, scaled drawings of the site and their finds, in exercise books as a school project.

Several of the exercise books have survived and these, together with other correspondence in the Letchworth and St Alban’s Museums and at county Hall, Hertford, have enabled the full story to be recorded.

The finds consisted of at least six individual burial groups. Each group was buried in a separate pit and consisted of several pottery vessels. In each case, one served as a burial urn and probably contained cremation ashes. The others, known as Accessory vessels, contained flagons, platters and drinking beakers. These almost certainly contained food and drink for the afterlife.

The pottery seems to be mainly of local manufacture, although some pieces were almost certainly imported from outside the region.