Spring 2012/92
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KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL ISSUE NUMBER 92 SOCIETY SPRING 2012 Your Quarterly Newsletter STOP PRESS Your AGM agenda and papers are included in this Newsletter. We hope to see you there. Rocky Road to the IRon age at Folkestone VIlla Turn to Page 2 INSIDE THIS ISSUE 2-4 Rocky Road 4-5 Notes from the Archive 6-7 What’s On 8-9 You & Your Society + Committee Round Up 10-11 Later Medieval Kent + New Books 12 - 13 Lower Medway 50 years 13 - 15 Luddenham 16 Bronze Age Hoard www.kentarchaeology.org.uk the Rocky Road to the Iron age: excavations at Folkestone Roman villa, 2011 Facing inland, work in progress !e second season of excavation at of the main villa house, which is the surface of the natural Gault was the East Wear Bay Roman villa, portion of the site most imminently sealed by a succession of clays Folkestone ran between May and threatened with collapse into the producing signi$cant amounts of November 2011. !ings got o" to sea. !ick archaeological deposits struck flint, flint-tempered a #ying start with a visit by Dr Alice were preserved here, many relating prehistoric pottery, animal bone and Roberts and the Digging for Britain to occupation that occurred before marine shell, although there were TV $lm crew in June. !is was the construction of the Roman villa only two small associated features. followed by an open weekend with complex. !e uppermost clay layer was cut Roman re-enactors drawing the At the base of the sequence, the across by a sunken, metalled crowds in early July. !e investigations form a major The Rocky Road, c.100 BC component of a three year Heritage Lottery-funded community archaeological and historical project entitled ‘A Town Unearthed: Folkestone Before 1500’ (ATU). !e work is being undertaken by volunteers led by Canterbury Archaeological Trust, in association with Canterbury Christ Church University and the Folkestone People’s History Centre. Additional funding has come from the KAS and the local Roger De Haan Charitable Trust. The 2011 excavations were positioned across part of the Front - Hare brooch, cover Small Find 330 Front inset cover - Cleaning tiles near the cliff edge undisturbed courtyard area in front 2 Spring 2012 - KAS Newsletter - www.kentarchaeology.org.uk trackway (christened !e Rocky Road), associated with pottery provisionally dated to around 100 BC. An infant burial had been casually deposited by the side of this track at some stage. A short distance further to the north-east was a substantial oven pit. These discoveries, together with a scatter of post-holes, appeared to represent the earliest features of a settlement continuously occupied throughout the late Iron Age and into the Roman period. Eventually, the trackway went out of use and the hollow became $lled with soil and rubbish. At one point a pit had been cut into these accumulated soils to allow the insertion of a burial urn containing cremated bone. Subsequently, the levelled area became occupied by hearths and chalk #oors relating to two separate timber buildings, each one rebuilt several times. Traces of a possible four-post structure, perhaps a raised granary, were also recorded close by. All these structures would seem to date from Intaglio, found near the main entrance the late $rst century BC. After the timber buildings had gone out of use the area was cut did, however, yield one important side, closest to the main entrance across by a succession of ditches. find – an engraved gemstone into the villa, this new rubble layer !ese probably served to delimit (intaglio), found near the main occurred at two distinct levels. $elds and enclosures. Some of the entrance. On the north-east side, Nearest the building it existed as a ditches were of substantial during the earlier part of the fourth clear platform. A sloping rubble proportions; the latest ones were century, the yard surface became bank separated this raised area from early Roman in date. !e $nal ditch covered with soil and rubbish and the remaining spread. As well as in the sequence had been deliberately quite clearly this part of the pottery and animal bone, soil mixed back$lled sometime during the later courtyard was now out of use. with the stones produced eight $rst century AD, to make way for Subsequently, a section of the villa coins. !eir dates indicate that the the construction of the villa. roof collapsed onto the courtyard, rubble cannot have been laid before Once the ditches were levelled, followed by masonry from the walls. the mid–late fourth century AD. the area was covered by more soil It would seem that at least part of !e heyday of the Roman villa had and clay before rough, patchy the villa was by now ruinous and certainly passed by now and the new metalling was laid down as a unoccupied. courtyard may have been laid down courtyard in front of the Roman Later, however, the roof-fall, as a work area after the main house villa. No evidence of any associated collapsed walling, and soil layers was abandoned. garden or ornamental features was over the courtyard were all sealed A thin layer of dark soil discovered and the whole by a laid rubble surface which subsequently accumulated over the arrangement appeared lacking in seemed to constitute a new (upper) rubble surface. !is contained much re$nement. !e metalling courtyard. Along the south-western much domestic rubbish and a www.kentarchaeology.org.uk - Spring 2012- KAS Newsletter 3 THE ROCKY ROAD TO THE IRON AGE - Continued further nine coins, all of which are There are also more than 800 great deal of new information is still fourth century in date, one perhaps registered small $nds, including to be recovered from this long- being as late as c.AD 390. Activity coins, brooches, glass, iron known site. It is clear that the on this part of the site, however, implements and quernstone excavated Roman villa complex does not seem to have continued fragments. Of special interest were occupies the site of a much older much into the $fth century. After the engraved gemstone, four pieces settlement. Intact strati$cation, the villa was $nally given up, the of a small Mother Goddess $gurine, untouched by previous excavation, site seems to have remained largely a complete iron writing stylus, a appears to survive across much of unoccupied until the present-day. decorated Iron Age bead, and an the area but the entire site is A signi$cant quantity of $nds was important collection of 36 Iron ultimately threatened by coastal recovered from the 2011 excavation. Age coins. erosion. Without doubt, much !e bulk of the material consists of The two seasons’ work at more work is warranted here. pottery, animal bone, marine shell, Folkestone have now yielded some roo$ng tile and prehistoric #intwork. remarkable results and show that a NOTES FROM THE ARCHIVE The English at School From the Papers of W.P.D.Stebbing by Pernille Richards ‘!e English at School’ was the Act. !e Times article of the name of an exhibition arranged 12th of April, announcing the by Arnold Muirhead on behalf exhibition and appealing for of the National Book League material, is found among the between April and May 1949. papers of W.P.D. Stebbing, It aimed to show English School along with other items on Life in its various guises; private education collected in the schools, charity schools and the years between 1947 and 1949. eventual establishment of state W.P.D. Stebbing’s papers schools. Kenneth Lindsay, reveal a keen interest in Chairman of the National Book education; he attended many league, appealed for old school Education Committees as a reports and similar documents councillor between 1941 and to be lent to the exhibition and 1955 and he was a frequent a variety of textbooks and speaker for Educational documents were exhibited, along Societies including the Deal with a selection of disciplinary Men’s Society. !e collection equipment. An article in !e on educational matters is Times on the 8th of April more eclectic than his reported it as an ‘exhibition of archaeological notes. It progress’ in education. !e story consists of a mix of articles of education always fascinates, selected from !e Times and but no doubt interest in the Fig 1 more academic items such as subject matter was heightened the address ‘On Education’ to by the recent 1944 Education the British Association for the Fig 1: ‘Horn book (AN1887.2561) Courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford Fig 1: ‘Horn book (AN1887.2561) Fig 2: Image of Village School found among Stebbing’s papers, edition of Longfellow’s Prose possibly from Works the 1835 4 Spring 2012 - KAS Newsletter - www.kentarchaeology.org. Advancement of not neglect to wash has Stephen Pritchard in his 1864 Science by Lynda Grier and comb their book, nor John Laker in his 1917 (1880-1967). He also children every book on the History of Deal. All assembled lists of old morning and take three appear to have used the same school textbooks, them punctually to sources in their accounts of literary references and school.” !e $rst education in Deal. images. Most items are location of the !ere are two interesting catalogue research notes for a talk school is uncertain, entries, the most likely looking one on education before later it moved to is in the East Kent Archives Centre, 1870. !ere is also a Broad Street and in the other at Canterbury Cathedral short talk on Deal Fig 2 1813 it moved Archive, but as both are currently Charity School, 1792 again to Middle closed, in preparation for the move to 1814, where Stebbing Street, where it to the Kent History Centre and recounts its establishment and early changed its name to the National building works respectively, it has history.