Mill Hill Anglo-Saxon cemetery

• Landmark Historical Place
• Landmark & Historical Place

Mill Hill Anglo-Saxon cemetery is a place of burial. It is located close to the town of Deal in Kent, South-East England. Belonging to the Middle Anglo-Saxon period, it was part of the much wider tradition of burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England.Mill Hill was an inhumation-only cemetery, with no evidence of cremation.LocationMill Hill is close to the foot of the North Downs dip-slope, forming a 2 kilometre ridge of Upper Chalk. The cemetery lies on the south-east end of this ridge, adjacent to two dissused chalk quarries opposite Deal Waterworks. The site on which it was located is now under two housing developments, Walmer Way and Fairview Gardens, on the south west side of St. Richard's Row on Mill Hill, Deal.BackgroundWith the advent of the Anglo-Saxon period in the fifth century CE, the area that became Kent underwent a radical transformation on a political, social, and physical level. In the preceding era of Roman Britain, the area had been administered as the civitas of Cantiaci, a part of the Roman Empire, but following the collapse of Roman rule in 410 CE, many signs of Romano-British society began to disappear, replaced by those of the ascendant Anglo-Saxon culture. Later Anglo-Saxon accounts attribute this change to the widescale invasion of Germanic language tribes from northern Europe, namely the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Archaeological and toponymic evidence shows that there was a great deal of syncretism, with Anglo-Saxon culture interacting and mixing with the Romano-British culture.