Corfe Mullen Military Kiln
About
A pottery kiln built beside the road linking Poole Harbour to Badbury Rings fired coarseware for the Roman army within a few years of the 43 CE invasion. It stood near a military stores base in the Stour valley, serving the legions campaigning through Dorset in the conquest's opening decades. Dated to the Claudian period, it ranks among the earliest datable Romano-British pottery kilns anywhere in the south.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Nearby
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