Muntham Court Romano-British site

Muntham Court Romano-British site stands on a hilltop near the village of Findon in West Sussex. The scheduled monument covers remains from the Iron Age and the Romano-British period, discovered in the 1950s by G.P. Burstow and G.A. Holleyman with equipment borrowed from Brighton College Junior School. Excavations revealed housing, trackways, field boundaries and a temple or shrine, plus a 76.2-metre-deep well in the field to the south. Finds include Bronze Age macehead fragments, Iron Age pottery, spindle whorls and loom weights. A storage pit and post holes mark the late Iron Age settlement at the hill’s summit, partly enclosed by a palisade and ditch. The Romano-British temple survives as a circular earthwork 11 metres wide, built of wood with square and trapezoidal structures marked by post-holes. A copper alloy boar plaque from the site may link to a temple at Chanctonbury Ring and is now in Worthing Museum with a 2nd-century enamelled fish brooch and a 3rd-century musical instrument mouthpiece. The museum holds many artefacts from the site, both on display and in storage. Nearby, a private burial ground for the Thynne family and Muntham Court Estate dates from 1925 after Edward Thynne’s death. The burial ground lies within a tree clump at the hill’s highest point and contains graves of Edward Thynne, his brother Tom, Alice Rachel and Colonel Thynne and his wife Marjory. Edward’s headstone was designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, who also created The Cenotaph, and the same design was used for Tom’s grave. A stone cross from Edward’s original grave stands among the trees. The cemetery was consecrated after an inquest ruled his death an accident rather than suicide. An obelisk, likely moved by William Frankland, appears on an 1837 map near the present burial ground.