Royal Society Award to Beaminster Museum
Beaminster Museum has been awarded a grant to purchase a new 3D Scanner to improve access and education to heritage objects.
Our initial focus will be on the Roman Fort of Waddon Hill, the material from which is scattered in many locations, from Bridport Museum, Dorchester Museum and Art Gallery, The British Museum, Poole Museum, The Ashmolean Museum, Stoke Abbott village hall and Beaminster Museum. We are interested in tracking down material from the collection of Richard Hine, and items donated in 1912 to Beaminster Institute, now lost.
Bournemouth University have an ongoing project on the site, see … waddon-hill-archaeological-research-project
Bridport Museum holds both the Ralls collection from the 1880’s, donated by the Colfox Family, and a collection from the Tolley family, who farmed the site until 2018, and have generously allowed some of their collection to be scanned.
Both an infrared scanner and photogrammetry techniques have been used in preparing these models, and many of them will be a part of our summer exhibition in 2025. Some of the models are large and may take time to load.
Additional models of our artefacts and fossils can be seen here.
Bridport Museum items, Tolley Collection Intaglios, Ralls Collection Mercury and Bull.
We are very grateful to Bridport Museum for allowing us to scan the objects below, and encourage everyone to visit to see the material on display. We also believe the sword blade and scabbard fragments in the Ashmolean is the blade of the other sword items (Hilt and scabbard decorations and belt) on display at Bridport. The text is an abbreviated version of the text from Webster’s final report on his excavations.
Material from the Tolley collection, donated in 2018, and now with Bridport Museum, but not yet on display.
Intaglios. A cornelian in a gilded iron mount of Ajax carrying the body of Achilles, (10 mm diam.) and a paste glass tragic mask oval (11 mm by 9 mm ). This material is described by Webster, but was in the possession of the Tolley family.
Cornelian Ajax
A magnificent rendering in cornelian of Ajax carrying the body of Achilles with flat upper surface set in the remains of a gilded iron ring.
The subject is Ajax kneeling towards the right, nude apart from a conical cap or helmet upon his head. Over his left shoulder the limp corpse of Achilles (who wears a tunic) can be seen. The gemcutter has shown great skill in contrasting the lively musculature of Ajax with the drooping and pathetic remains of his companion.A number of features, for example Ajax’s great beak of a nose and pointed chin as well as the tapering of his fore-limbs, point to a glyptic tradition other than the Graeco-Roman one. The subject was known in Etruria at least as early as 570 BC as it occurs on the handles of the Francois Vase . The Waddon Hill intaglio is doubtless of North Italian workmanship. It was an antique when its owner (presumably an Italian legionary) took it to Britain and lost it, as it was made about 200 years early then the fort at Waddon Hill.
Tragic Mask
Paste intaglio with blue upper surface and black lower surface, imitative of Nicolo (blue onyyx).The paste depicts a facing tragic mask with long hanging locks on each side. It was evidently intended to suggest Medea or some such character. Dramatic themes seem to have been popular in the Roman army; similar items include a paste from the fort of Kirkbride, Cumberland that shows a playwright holding a similar tragic mask , or a fine garnet intaglio portraying a mask in profile, from the praetorium at Housesteads, Northumberland. It can probably be assigned to the middle years of the first century AD.
Apart from some chemical corrosion (pitting) on the face, the condition is excellent for a paste, and suggests that it was not long in use before its loss.
Bridport Museum material from the Ralls (1880) collection, donated by the Colfox family in the 1930’s. These items are on display in Bridport.
Bronze Bust of Mercury
The bronze is 3.7 cm high and has a fine dark green patina. It shows the head, part of the shoulders, and the nude chest of Mercury, the bust terminating below in a calyx of stylised acanthus leaves. The god has a chubby, boyish countenance and wears a winged petasos, beneath which is seen his hair, combed forward on to the brow in neat locks that fork in the centre after the Augustan style and escape down either cheek in front of the ears and down the neck behind. Minute drilled holes mark the pupils of the eyes. The complete circuit of the brim of the petasos is edged with tiny ‘pearls’. The modelling of the face and chest is remarkably plastic and vigorous and the engraving of the individual strands of hair and of the leaves of the calyx is extremely fine.
While the head is solid-cast and fully finished at the rear, the back of the bust is hollow, shows distinct traces of tooling, and displays a sharp, triangular nick cut in the base of the neck. Possibly the bust was attached to a slightly rounded boss on the outside of a small box or casket, the head slanting forward to some extent, as in the case of two bronze busts on the exterior of a chest from Pompeii. An officer of the fort garrison could well have possessed a decorated casket; and what better mascot than Mercury could have adorned a money-box ?
A ‘twin’ of the Waddon Hill bust, also 3.7 cm high and obviously cast from the same mould, but with its details far less well preserved, was found in France, at Villardó-d’Héria (Jura), and is now in the Besancon Museum . This piece, too, is hollow behind and has a similar triangular nick at the base of the neck. It must have served the same purpose as the Dorset Mercury, which was clearly imported from a continental workshop. The god’s hair-style suggests for these pieces a date not later than the first quarter of the first century AD.
Three Horned Bull God – A Tarvos Trigaranos
A small finely modelled bronze bull. The animal stands with the right fore-leg raised, and has a band round the middle of the body of a type frequently worn by sacrificial animals portrayed in Roman art. The bull has three horns, which suggests that the animal represents a bull-god known from several monuments and statuettes found in Gaul, where similar examples are in the Glanum Museum, Saint Remy de Provence and in Xanten in Germany.
Bronze statuettes of three-horned bulls are widely distributed. Several bronze statuettes of bulls have been recorded from various places in France and are of comparable quality to that found at Stoke Abbott.
In Britain a few representations of bulls in bronze have been found in this country. A much later example was found at the Roman Temple on Maiden Castle only some fifteen miles in a direct line north-west of Stoke Abbott. That bull figure is surmounted by three human busts which each terminate in bird-like bodies. The human busts may be the Celtic trinity mentioned by Lucan, namely the gods Taranis, Teutates and Esus.
Gladius from the Ashmolean Museum
This blade, some scabbard fragments and a Claudian coin were purchased at Sothebys in 1948. They originated with Mr. Powlesland, a tax inspector in Crewkerne, who worked with Ralls in 1878. It is believed the blade and scabbard fragments are from the same sword as the items on display in Bridport Museum, (Photo below) which include the bone hilt, belt, and scabbard decoration.
Bridport Museum sword fragments on display.
Click on the icon bottom right of the model or the “Toggle Fullscreen” button to make it full screen. You can manually grab and move the 3D objects yourself.
Waddon Hill : Two handled Flask fragment- Webster, Dorset Museum Proceedings 1962, course pottery item 4, DMAG number 1962.46. Ref 1. Dimensions approx. 200 mm tall.
Two handled Flask fragment – from Webster 1962, course pottery. Item 4, DMAG number 1962.46.
Compare the published illustration, with the 3D model below. Which helps you better understand the object ?
A double handled flagon with the handles showing a peak and the rim with an internal lid seating, in Black Burnished ware with brown oxidised patches. This is a fully romanised form but made in the local native technique including the vertical burnishing on the neck, a feature of later flagons made in the South West. Kindly on loan from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery.
(Photogrammetry based Model . Use button for full screen view.)
Waddon Hill : Samian Ware
This fragment of high status pottery made in Gaul (Southwest France) in a mould, is part of a Dragendorff type 30 bowl, found in Websters Trench 2 in 1961.The first image is of a very similar patterned complete type 30 bowl, from La Graufesenque kilns in Gaul (South West France).
Waddon Hill : Broadwindsor Brooch
These are the first scans using the new scanner. A faster process, and a more accurate mesh model, than photogrammetry but first attempts lacked the desired resolution on the surface texture. We have a new approach combining the best of photography and the mathematical precision of the scanner and we will improve the textures on this same model in the next few weeks. The scanner models can also be reproduced physically with 3D Printing, which we plan to use on a few selected objects.
This fragment of a 1st century brooch is almost certainly a stray from Waddon Hill, and was found by a metal detectorist in 2015 two fields to the north of Waddon Hill fort. It was kindly donated to Beaminster Museum.
Spatial coordinates : 4 Figure: ST4400
Entry In PAS DataBase at the British Museum
The model below is the first using the new scanner, with a hybrid approach to improve the surface textures. In in the next few weeks we will replace this with a better version we know is possible, and with new imagery, and later still with a new viewer giving easier control over the object.
An incomplete copper alloy Aesica bow brooch.There are old breaks in several places. The open wings are incomplete. At the head is a remnant of a rearward hook. The pin is missing. The lozenge-shaped head arches steeply forming a loop with the flat bow behind it. The head is decorated with a central longitudinal rib with and eye-like moulding either side (a curving ridge around a pellet). There is a slight projection on each side apex. Where the head joins the bow there is a raised circular ridge. Below this extends the stub of the leg decorated with a crescent at the top a pellet below and side ridges. At the back is a remnant of the catchplate.
Date: Late Iron Age to Early Roman – c. AD 43 – 100
Dimensions: 37.58 mm x 23.03 mm x 18.50 mm
Weight: 20.80 g
Roman Pilum tip from Waddon Hill.
The pilum (Latin: [ˈpiːɫʊ̃]; pl.: pila) was a javelin commonly used by the Roman Army. It was generally about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long overall, consisting of an iron shank about 7 mm (0.28 in) in diameter and 600 mm (24 in) long with a pyramidal head, attached to a wooden shaft by a socket. Click box bottom right for fullscreen view, and this model can be zoomed.
Poole Museum Waddon Hill Brooch
Brooch in Poole Museum, Keith S Jarvis, DMAG Proceedings Vol 104, 1982
Poole Museum Accession number T:2021.193 . A bronze brooch, said to be from Waddon Hill (ST 447016), is now in the Poole Museums collection. The brooch has the pin missing and may be compared with the aucissa type since the head, ribbing and foot-knob are of this form although the profile is not sufficiently bowed. The find is consistent with the early Roman military occupation known on this site. KEITH S. JARVIS – 1982
It is believed this is one of the earliest finds from the fort, made in the late 1870’s by quarrymen working at the site, and passed to the landowner of the time, Mary Cox of Beaminster Manor House. It was handed round as an example of finds at the site, by Boswell-Stone at his 1892 lecture at the Bridport Literary Institute. The missing pin is rendered in green.