Great Dunmow was a small Romano-British roadside settlement in north-west Essex, situated on Stane Street where the road from Braughing to Colchester crossed the River Chelmer. Occupation extended from the mid-1st century AD through to the late 4th century, with the settlement functioning as a minor nucleated centre serving the surrounding agricultural hinterland.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site is one of several small "small towns" or roadside settlements punctuating Stane Street, providing local market, craft, and probably posting-station functions between the larger centres of Braughing and Colchester (Camulodunum). It is also notable for evidence of religious activity, including a probable shrine or temple complex.
Excavations, particularly those by N.P. Wickenden in the 1970s at Church End, revealed timber buildings, ditches, wells, pottery kilns, and substantial late Roman cemetery evidence, alongside material suggestive of a temple or ritual focus including votive deposits and structured pit deposition. Finds include large pottery assemblages, coins, brooches, and animal bone indicative of feasting, pointing to a settlement of modest scale but with significant ritual as well as economic dimensions.
Great Dunmow was a small Romano-British roadside settlement in north-west Essex, situated on Stane Street where the road from Braughing to Colchester crossed the River Chelmer. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Great Dunmow is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Leez Augustinian Priory, fishponds and Tudor mansion, Leez (7.3 km), Pleshey (7.9 km), Roman villa 200m east of Howletts (11.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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