A forensic report on exposed Human remains uncovered at Five Vents Lane, Old Romney Kent on the 25th May 2016. Remains included partially intact skeletons and pieces of exposed human bone.

The remains were noticed by a passing off duty police officer after they were exposed by a farmer digging a ditch to prevent vehicles accessing his field.

The attending forensic archaeologist "visually inspected both the spoil heap and the sides of the ditch and then cleaned around one of the inhumations, using a trowel, to better understand the nature of the burials."

The report states that: " A significant quantity of disarticulated human bone was observed in the spoil heap. This was clearly from more than one individual due to the repition of certain bones, such as the mandible (or lower jaw bone), for example. This bone was generally in poor condition. It was very bleached in colour, brittle in compisition and light in weight. There was also no sign of dental fillings on any of the teeth that were inspected. Also present within the spoil heap were pieces of crudely dressed stone, at least five pottery sherds that in my professional assessment appeared to be Medieval in date, together with a large number of oyster shells."

Along the machine cut south-east facing section of the ditch the forensic archaeologist noticed; "three partially intact articulated inhumations. These inhumations were east-west aligned, the skeletons were in a supine position (i.e. lying on their backs), and their heads were located at the west end of the graves. There was no sign of either clothing, hair or decomposition, neither was there evidence of a coffin apart from one very badly corroded nail found during the cleaning of one of the graves. The inhumations were approximately 2m apart and had been obliquely cut by the recently-dug ditch. The depth of the hurials was between 0.7m and 1m." (1)

It has been suggested that the burials were possibly related to the former Saint Michael's church where a previous excavation in the 1970's had found evidence of Christian burials of probable 13th century date.

<1> Alecto Forensics, 2016, Final Short Summary Report (Unpublished document). SKE31667.