The Swale District an Archaeological Survey March 2000 Foreword by Professor Alan Everitt
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The Swale District An Archaeological Survey March 2000 Foreword by Professor Alan Everitt The Kent Archaeological Field School Director; Paul Wilkinson, PhD., MIFA., FRSA., MSIA. School Farm Oast, Graveney Road Faversham, Kent. ME13 8UP Tel: 01795 532548 or 07885 700 112. e-mail: [email protected] www.kafs.co.uk Foreword England has no such dramatic Roman monuments as those to be seen in Mediterranean countries, or at towns like Arles and Orange in southern France. Striking remains can be found, as at Hadrian’s Wall in the north, or the walls of Richborough and Colchester in the south-east. Substantial stretches of the Roman road-network also survive to remind us of the massive impact of Imperial rule. But after the end of that period, Britannia took a rather different course from other parts of Europe, as Rosamand Faith has recently reminded us (Faith, 1997: 1), and the break with Roman tradition was more complete. The English climate, moreover, as we know to our cost today, is more destructive of ancient monuments than that of drier or sunnier countries. The walls of Colchester and Richborough have survived because they are built of indestructible flint. Such circumstances mean that the prehistoric past must be reconstructed from more fragmentary evidence. Often it can only be discovered through the kind of expert, systematic methods pioneered by Dr Paul Wilkinson and his team in the Swale District. Yet the sheer scale and variety of the evidence recorded in this report is astonishing: some 14,000 sherds of pottery alone, for example, and 231 fragments of painted wall-plaster at Deerton Street, still sufficiently vivid to give us some impression of the somewhat garish interior of a Roman villa. Through these methods, it has been possible to identify not only Roman villas, moreover, but riverside ports, village complexes, rural temples, bath-houses, warehouses, and barns, as well as a number of Iron-Age hill-forts, and some far more ancient sites dating back to the Bronze Age and beyond. It is perhaps the discovery of a further 18 or 19 likely Roman villas, in addition to the three or four already known to archaeologists, that opens up the most exciting prospect in Dr Wilkinson’s survey. For their distribution on either side of Watling Street, particularly to the north, has also enabled him to reconstruct something of the estate-organisation centred upon them. Like their successors in Europe today, the Romans loved rules. Wherever possible, they chose to follow straight lines, and it is clear that in the intensively cultivated lands alongside the road, these agrarian territories were laid out or developed to an almost mechanical pattern. The villa-farmsteads were situated at remarkably regular intervals, carefully sited on south-easterly slopes, always close to freshwater streams or springheads, with ready access to riverside havens, and linked by short, straight roads to the Street and the world beyond. In places, they were even divided by rectilinear boundaries, of which that to the east of Bax Farm can still be followed for 22 km between the Swale and the Pilgrims Way: a truly remarkable survival. Within the pattern of regularity, suggestive signs of local diversity may also clearly be traced, as in the huge site at Blacklands and Ewell, or the striking complex of Roman buildings at Deerton Street. The greatest contrast, however, occurs on the southern side of the study-area, where the highly-farmed plain gives way to the broken, wooded hill-country and narrow, winding valleys of the Downs. Here, no such regularity could be imposed on the landscape during the Romano-British era, any more than in subsequent centuries. England is one of the most varied countries in the world in relation to its size, both in its physical structure and in its resources, and Roman farmers were compelled to adapt them- selves to that diversity. Little though we may yet know in detail of the early history of this region, it seems certain that they did not leave it wholly unexploited. Woodland, even of a relatively poor and in places wild kind, was always needed for fuel, for building purposes, for making agricultural imple- ments, and for pastoral purposes. In Kent, as in other parts of England, transhumance has very ancient origins, and was evidently one of the keys to Roman farming practice. The scanty nature of the early archaeological evidence on the Downs may be due to the fact that seasonal or periodic exploitation usually gives use to humble or temporary structures: to mere sheds and shielings, to stock-folds and sheepcotes, or to charcoal burners’ hovels of a kind still familiar in woodland districts in my own childhood. If so, perhaps another kind of challenge will face the ingenuity of archaeologists and field-walkers. Vestiges of the past may yet be discovered to illuminate the early history of this fascinating upland countryside: fragments of a herdsman’s seasonal hearth in the woods, perhaps, or a few scattered sherds of pottery beside a prehistoric droveway. Whatever may be found, it will probably speak to us of a more lowly, and perhaps more native, way of life than that of the civilised Roman villas in the plain. But there will not be much, I am certain, that escapes the vigilant eye of Dr Wilkinson and his dedicated team. Professor Alan Everitt. Illustration File Please note the illustrations accompanying this report are a selection only from the many hundreds of artifacts and photographs generated by this survey. Extensive use of the picture archive will be made in the more specialist reports. Fig.1. Stone artifacts found by field-walking in the Faversham area. Fig.2. The location of a possible Roman marching camp at Graveney. Field boundaries on this c. 1795 OS surveyors drawing indicate a rectangular area with rounded corners. The area enclosed is about 22 acres and measures about 300 by 310 metres (983 ft). Limited excavation exposed a rampart and ditch. Fig.3. Modern OS map showing the surviving features of a possible Roman marching camp at Graveney. The road leading south from Broom Street joins with Watling Street and excavation indicates the road is of Roman date. Fig.4. Aerial photograph of the possible Roman marching camp at Graveney. Although taken in January 1976 it clearly shows internal roads and external multiple ditching with rounded corners. Fig.5. The location of a Roman fort at Syndale, west of Faversham was indicated on the OS map of 1858. Contemporary documents indicate the size of the fort was some four and half acres and that more ditches and ramparts could be seen at this date. To the north-west can be seen Stone Chapel, the only example in Britain of a Roman temple built into a Saxon church. Fig.6. Geophysical survey of Syndale Park shows the original route of the Roman Watling Street south of the existing modern A2. Other features may be stone buildings connected to the known Roman cemetery associated with the settlement traditionally known as Durolevum. Fig.7. Close-up view of the geophysical survey of Syndale Park. It shows the Roman Watling Street and associated stone buildings. Fig.8. Geophysical survey of the Roman fort at Syndale. A section was dug through the rampart and ditch to the west (left of picture). A Roman fastigated ditch was found infilled with some 500 pottery sherds dated to the time of the Claudian invasion. Fig.9. The field boundaries on this 1858 OS map suggest that the Roman buildings (confirmed by field-work) have influenced the shape of the fields in the near vicinity. Note also the parish boundary (dotted line) dating from about the 7th century follows the shape of the Roman (or even earlier) fields. This is one example among many of the continuity of the Roman landscape into modern times. Fig.10. Drawing of foundations exposed by Mr Philp at the Roman site of Blacklands, east of Faversham in 1996. Fig.11. Results of geophysical survey by English Heritage at Blacklands. The main resistivity anomalies suggest a site larger than seven acres (2.85 hectares). Of particular interest is the ‘depression in field’ which on excavation was found to have been terraced into the chalk with Roman drainage ditches. This circular depression, and the situation of the site above a large spring suggests this Roman site could have religious connections. Fig.12. Results of the English Heritage resistivity survey at Blacklands Roman site, just east of Faversham. Fig.13. Geophysical survey at the Roman villa site at Newbury Farm, south of Watling Street. The results indicate a substantial Roman villa building measuring some 50 by 20 metres. A integral bath- house is shown to the north and there is a front corridor facing south-east. Further Roman buildings are suggested by field-walking in the near vicinity. This villa is typical of the nineteen Roman villa estates in the Swale District, of which only three were known to the writer before the survey started. Fig.14. Map showing the approximate position of all nineteen villa’s in the Swale District. Worthy of note is the mathematical precision of placing and it does suggest a post-conquest division of land in the Roman period. It is worthy of note that most fields in the Swale District have now been field- walked and the map shown is a result of this field-work. Fig.15. Location of the Roman potteries and Roman jewellry finds at Slayhills in 1864. George Payne writing in 1889 says, “the writer’s collection contains several golden rings, set with engraved stones, two only of which can be deciphered; upon one is a figure of Plenty, with a cornucopia; and upon another, is a figure of Minerva cut on a red carnelian.