Island Thorns Enclosure lies within the New Forest Roman pottery industry in Hampshire, one of the major late Roman ceramic production centres in southern Britain. The kilns here were active primarily during the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, producing both fine wares (including red-slipped and painted indented beakers) and coarse grey wares on a substantial scale for regional distribution.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As part of the New Forest industry, Island Thorns supplied pottery widely across central southern Britain, competing with the Oxfordshire and Alice Holt industries and reflecting the increasingly regionalised ceramic economy of the later Roman period. Its enclosed setting suggests an organised production complex rather than dispersed peasant kilns.
The site was investigated by Heywood Sumner in the early 20th century, who recorded multiple kilns within a banked enclosure and recovered characteristic New Forest fine wares, including stamped and painted vessels. Modern excavation has been limited, and much of what is known still derives from Sumner's pioneering survey and later syntheses by M. Fulford in the 1970s.
Island Thorns Enclosure lies within the New Forest Roman pottery industry in Hampshire, one of the major late Roman ceramic production centres in southern Britain. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a production site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman pottery kilns at Island Thorns Enclosure is classified as a Roman production site — a industrial 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 Roman pottery kilns at Crock Hill (0.7 km), Roman pottery kilns in Amberwood Enclosure (1.7 km), Roman pottery kilns in Sloden Enclosure (2.3 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Roman pottery kilns at Island Thorns Enclosure