Category Archives: Thanet archaeology

News items about Thanet archaeology

VM_365 Day 339 Downland landscape of Birchington

Archaeology, Birchington, Landscape, Thanet archaeology, Thanet's Heritage Pioneers, Uncategorised, Uncategorized, VM_365 Project

VM_339

The image for today, Day 339 of the VM_365 project, is a north west facing view of the historic downland landscape of Birchington. The view of the horizon beyond the cornfields stretches from the complex of Glasshouses at Thanet Earth on the left side to the tree enclosed Quex Park on the right.

All across this landscape in the ripening corn, the secrets of the archaeology below the ground are revealed in a mass of cropmarks. Some of the earliest images of archaeological sites revealed by cropmarks were aerial views of this very landscape published by OGS Crawford, known as the father of aerial archaeology, in the Journal Antiquity in 1934.

Excavations in advance of the construction of the Thanet earth glasshouses gave an opportunity to investigate a set of the largely unexplored crop marks in the landscape. Archaeological features from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and even modern periods were revealed as each greenhouse was built.

The Iron Age settlement of the landscape stretches far across the rolling hilltops and one of the most remarkable discoveries of the era was of a large hoard of Iron Age potin coins discovered when trees were planted to surround the newly enclosed Quex Park in the 1853. The remaining unexplored landscape almost certainly holds archaeological evidence of the same range of dates in the wide sweep of linear features and circular enclosures that can be seen in aerial views.

Standing archaeology visible in today’s picture includes the spire of the Parish Church of All Saints at Birchington near the middle of the picture and on the far right the historic Gun Tower within the grounds of Quex Park. Beyond the horizon in the image is the coast at Minnis bay, whose remarkable archaeological landscape was itself explored on Day 334 of the VM_365 project.

VM_365 Day 336 The landscape from Dumpton Gap to Viking Bay

Archaeology, Broadstairs, Landscape, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 336Today’s image is another in the Our Thanet series of posts. This time it is a view of the coastline from Dumpton on the left side to Viking Bay at Broadstairs on the right.

This part of Thanet’s coast is also subject to heavy erosion, which has formed a distinctive wave cut platform which can be seen in the foreground and the high chalk cliffs that can be seen in the centre of the picture.

Like the other coastal areas shown in our two previous days posts, this landscape would not have been recognisable to the prehistoric inhabitants of Thanet, who may have lived and died on rolling downland slopes that have been cut away by the sea. Their coastlines were much nearer to the vantage point on the edge of the platform where the picture was taken, but were always advancing toward the high central chalk ridge of the isle.

If they were somehow able to return, even the later Iron Age people and the Roman settlers of the area would have trouble placing themselves, their settlements and their buildings which are known to exist at Dumpton on the far left and on the promontory next to Fort House on the extreme right.

Much of the archaeological evidence of past occupation in the landscape between has been lost to the cliff falls that occur regularly following storms at sea and we will now never be able to piece together the whole story of early settlement along the coastline that is shown in today’s image, which makes the knowledge we have gained from previous excavations, many of which were carried out by pioneering archaeologists like Howard Hurd and Dave Perkins and have featured in earlier posts, so much more significant.

VM_365 Day 335 The landscape of Pegwell Bay

Archaeology, Landscape, Pegwell bay, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 335Our image today for Day 335 of the VM_365 project is another for the Our Thanet series. This picture shows Pegwell Bay, viewed from the southern end of the Ramsgate harbour esplanade. The thin band of land on the horizon stretches from Deal pier at the western end, past Richborough and the mouth of the River Stour to the cliffs on the north east edge of the bay with their sea caves.

Once again the early prehistoric inhabitants of the area would not have recognised the bay as it is today. Evidence of their settlement has been found on the fringes of the present coast where it continues to be eroded by the force of the waves. On the land above the cliffs to the right of the image, two neolithic causewayed enclosures have been discovered and there are many sites of Bronze and Iron Age date in the landscape.

Rising sea levels created the bay and expanded the Stour, dividing Thanet from the mainland. The Iron Age people of Thanet first saw Roman traders and invaders arrive off this Bay and the forts and town at Richborough were dominant sites in the Roman period. Later the early settlers of the Anglo-Saxon period also sailed into this bay at Ebbsfleet and in 597 St Augustine’s Christian mission landed near Cliffsend, near the right side of the image.

The Stour’s present mouth was created to serve a port and supply bases created to serve the western front in World War 1 and in World War 2 the D-Day mulberry harbours set out from the Bay.

This view over Pegwell Bay encompasses thousands of years of significant events in both Thanet and Britain’s history.

VM 365 Day 334 The landscape of Minnis Bay

Anglo Saxon, Birchington, Bronze Age, Landscape, Neolithic, Palaeolithic, Roman, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 334

Today’s image for Day 334 of the VM_365 project shows a view of Minnis Bay, taken from the east, facing west toward Reculver. This view begins another short VM_365 series showing you our Thanet; the historic isle that we as archaeologists see around us.

Before the Bronze Age this landscape would have been significantly different. Sea levels were significantly lower than they are in the present day and much of the coastal area visible here would have been dry land.  A freshwater creek extended along the approximate route of Minnis Road, just out of the picture to the right. The flat greyish green area of the beach visible in the foreground are the remnant of chalk cliffs that once formed the edge of the valley the creek flowed through, which has been eroded to a flat platform by the sea pushing into the creek mouth in the later prehistoric period.

Many prehistoric finds including Palaeolithic and Neolithic worked flint have been found off this foreshore, the tools used by the people who once lived on the land that has been lost to the sea.  The remains of a Bronze Age settlement was discovered on the wave cut platform around the mouth of the creek in 1938. A Bronze Age hoard discovered in one of the pits has previously featured on Day 202 of the VM_365 project.

Beyond the wooden groynes that can be seen in the middle ground of the image is the former northern mouth of the Wantsum Channel, which became more significant as the sea advanced from the Bronze Age onward and separated what would become known as  the  Isle of Thanet from the mainland of Kent.

The sea continued to eat away at the land that was occupied by communities in later periods.  The bases of Late Iron Age and Roman pits and other features, possibly wells, have also been identified as truncated pits on the wavecut platform on the foreshore. Artefacts retrieved from these pits included a Roman millstone,  a two handled wine jar, and a colour coated dish.

Eroding pits and archaeological features of Late Iron Age and Roman date have been identified in the eroding cliff edges at Minnis Bay. On the horizon on the far right of the image is the site of a Roman fortress built on land at Reculver,  overlooking the mouth of the Wantsum Channel and the west coast of the Isle of Thanet.  The Fort and the settlement associated with it is beginning to be claimed by the sea. Coastal erosion has exposed the bases of Roman wells which are sometimes visible at low tide on the wave cut shelf at Reculver.

Reculver was also the site of one of the earliest and most important  Anglo Saxon monasteries. The former monastery and the church that now stands at Reculver were built on the site of the Roman Fort and elements of all these structures have been revealed in a long series of archaeological excavations.

The vantage point of the cliff top at Minnis Bay provides a view of thousands years of Thanet’s history which the archaeologist’s eye can distinguish from the natural landscape.

VM 365 Day 333 Hidden Hamlet of Upton, Broadstairs

Archaeology, Broadstairs, Landscape, Post Medieval, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 333

Today’s image for Day 333 of the VM_365 project shows a series of views of surviving agricultural buildings in the now hidden hamlet of Upton which is located on the eastern side of Broadstairs.

The main focus of the former hamlet is located around the junction of Fair Street and Vale Road. This picturesque corner of Broadstairs contains a number of buildings and features reflecting its rural past that are easily visible from the road.

The oldest surviving building is Little Upton, shown in the top left of the image. This Dutch gabled house was constructed in the late 17th century in two sections with different roof levels and is located on the northern side of Vale Road.

On the opposite side of Vale Road you can see the remnants of Upton Farm which incorporates an Oast House, (bottom left)  probably originally constructed in the 18th century as a timber framed single storey barn. The pyramidal slate cap on the left side is a mid 19th century construction. If you look at the brick gable end that faces on to the footpath you can see where the roof has been raised probably in the 19th century.

Other buildings hinting at the area’s rural past can be seen along Vale Road (top right) where long, narrow flint built buildings are located side on to the street aligned along the edge of  the former farmyard. Near the junction of Fair Street is a long brick and flint wall forming the boundary to a cottage. This wall has many phases in its construction and once formed part of an agricultural building or barn that has since been demolished.

There are lots of other elements visible in the street scape around Upton that hint at its rural past which can be easily identified if we take the trouble to really look.

 

 

 

VM 365 Day 332 Lower Gore End Farm, Minnis Bay

Birchington, Landscape, Medieval, Post Medieval, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 332Today’s image for Day 332 of the VM_365 project shows the farmhouse of Lower Gore End Farm, Minnis Bay, Birchington which was established around 1540 or earlier.

Old Bay Cottage along with Elder Cottage formed the farmhouse of Lower Gore End Farm, all that remains of this farmstead which would originally have been isolated,  away from the focus of the village at Birchington to the east.

The farmhouse was originally detached and was located with its gable end facing on to the farmyard. Historic maps indicate that working farm buildings were located on two sides of the farmyard which faced side on to the route from the village of Birchington to Minnis Bay, now known as Minnis Road.

Old Bay Cottage, on the right of the image, is the oldest part of the farmhouse and was built in the 15th century as a two storey timber framed cottage with a tiled hipped roof and close studded timbers. The porch, which is just visible, was a later addition. The thatched roof visible on the left side of the image belongs to the 18th century extension known as Elder Cottage.

Lower Gore End Farm was quite isolated in the early to mid 19th century and surrounded by agricultural land, with Minnis Creek nearby still flooding nearly as far as the farmstead at the spring tides. It was probably still possible to have a clear view of the parish church of All Saint’s, Birchington from the farm although by the 1870’s new roads were beginning to be laid out at Minnis Bay, west of the relatively new railway line and brickfields were beginning to encroach on the agricultural land. By the late 19th century the farm was nearly surrounded by brickworks and by the 1950’s was surrounded on the north, east and west sides by suburban development focussed on Minnis Bay.

Nowadays the farmhouse is all that survives of the farmstead, completely surrounded by suburban development but still remains as an indicator of the once isolated rural character of Minnis Bay.

VM_365 Day 314 Mid Saxon pottery fabrics from Westgate

Anglo Saxon, Archaeology, Places, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project, Westgate

VM 314

The image for Day 314 of the VM_365 project is  of examples of pottery fabrics dating from the Mid Saxon period, spanning the mid 8th to the mid 9th century.

Pottery in Kent and elsewhere in this period was mostly handmade, with small bag-shaped vessels with everted rims most common. Some had their rims more neatly and evenly finished by turning the pot on a tournette, a stick or hand-turned wheel.

In East Kent two main fabric types were employed; sandy ware and shelly ware, the latter sometimes with some additional sand added.
Most of the the Mid Saxon sandy ware products were made at sites near Canterbury, beginning a nearly 900-year long period of continuous pottery manufacture in these workshops.

The two left hand rim fragments in the image are from cooking jars in Canterbury sandy ware fabrics. A small everted rim cup in a similar dark grey sandy ware fabric featured in the post for Day146 of the VM_365 project.

The larger rim at the right-hand end of the picture is from a larger vessel in shelly ware. The small plates of deliberately crushed shell are just visible on the surface of the sherd.

All of the sherds shown can be dated to a period between c.750-850 AD  which is currently rarely represented in Thanet’s archaeological record. The relative scarcity of pottery of this period is partly due to the fortunes of archaeological recovery. Few sites have been found in Thanet’s rural and coastal landscape and all the sherds shown as well as the cup in the earlier post were from a single site near Westgate. Much of the occupation in this period will have been masked by later medieval settlement and dwellings will have been mainly wooden structures which can be hard to detect. The rather low-fired pottery is vulnerable to damage from modern agricultural or building activity.

The information and images for this post were kindly provided by Nigel Macpherson Grant.

VM_365 Day 304 Tiny ceramic tazza, Roman temple near Margate?

Archaeology, Margate, Roman, Roman pottery, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project
VM 304The image for Day 304 of the VM_365 project shows two images of a group of small ceramic vessels of a type  that have been called tazza, a term derived from the Italian word for a cup. The image on the left shows the upper surface of the vessels, the right hand image shows the bases of three of them.

The term Tazza occurs in archaeological literature mainly in reference to elegant Late Iron Age and Early Roman pedestalled cups or goblets of Gallo-Belgic origin. The vessel design is ultimately stimulated by Roman originals and their British counterparts in Late Iron Age grog-tempered ‘Belgic’ style. The term tazzeti occurs less frequently but has been used in reference to the cluster of little saucer-like vessels shown in the images.

Seven of these small tazzetti, complete or broken, were recovered from an excavation in the 1980s near the Sunken Gardens at Westbrook, which was led by David Perkins. The vessels are wheel-made. The image on the right shows the characteristic whorl, typical of many wheel made pots, on the upturned bases of three of the pots that show the whorls most clearly.
The tiny cups are made in a sandy fabric, very similar to the products of many Roman pottery kilns in Canterbury made between c.75-175 AD.  They fact that they are not very hard-fired suggests a likely manufacturing date between c.75 or 100-150 AD.
But what were they used for? There is no certain answer.
The small cups are a rare vessel type and nothing quite like these has been found in Thanet or the East Kent region before. The only clues may lie among the finds associated with the cups which include several fragments of pseudo-marble wall facing and a small rounded quartz pebble. Perhaps the quartz pebble could is no more than an object picked up by a child from the  beach nearby, but the rounded and semi-translucent nature of the pebble might have been considered ‘special’ by an adult.
The occurrence of both the unusual little dishes and the pseudo marble  seems altogether different and  ‘special’. The ‘marble’ is not true marble, but is composed of broken fragments of genuine red and green marble deliberately added to a fine white mortar, which is polished so that the whole mix of small inclusions shines like genuine colour-flecked marble. A similar technique called Terazzo is still used to create wall and floor finishes.
The marble finish suggests the presence of a building with a pretension to opulence,  although the community was not rich enough to afford the real thing but had enough resources to have a reasonable facsimile created. In turn this suggests that the ‘marble’ fragments could come from the wall of a domestic shrine belonging to a fairly well-to-do family, or just possibly a public shrine or temple.
Whatever the context of discovery, a reasonable explanation for the use of these little vessels in the Roman period is as little offering dishes

VM_365 Day 301 Dumpton archive confirms Roman building

Archaeology, Broadstairs, Coy Archive, From the Archives, In the Store, Iron Age, Landscape, Ramsgate, Roman, Roman pottery, Thanet, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 301

The image for Day 301 of the VM_365 project is taken from a digitised colour slide that was taken at the site at Dumpton near Broadstairs which was excavated by Joe Coy in the 1960’s. The archive from this excavation has been featured in a series of VM_365 posts, which have been looking at the detail of the finds to try to understand the significance of this unpublished site. Although the archive box for this site is labelled 1965, it appears that the dig began in 1961, when the slide archive indicates that this image was taken. The labelling of individual pottery sherds in the archive also indicates that some were recovered in a dig on the site in 1961. The picture is very important because it proves that one of the major features investigated on the site was a Roman structure, partly built in a distinctive local type of building stone used extensively in the Roman period.

Several strands of evidence have led to previous suggestions that a structure  from the Roman period was present on the site. The earliest evidence was given in Reverend John Lewis’s History of the Isle of Thanet, where it was noted that Roman coins had been found in the Dumpton area. At the time of writing in 1736, Lewis reported that a Roman wall had relatively recently been observed, but had fallen into the sea following a cliff fall. An excavation carried out by Howard Hurd on the cliff tops when new roads were being laid out on the sea front also recorded ditches and enclosures, which were predominantly of Iron Age date. A dig by the Trust for Thanet Archaeology at site near to Joe Coy’s excavation that re-examined part of Hurd’s published site, recognised that the period of occupation on the site extended well into the Roman period, much later than Hurd had suggested. One significant find in the Trust’s excavation was of a small number of fragments of distinctive Roman roof tile forms, including both Tegula and Imbrex. this evidence all pointed to the previously unrecognised presence of a building on the southern slopes of the dry valley at Dumpton gap.

Recent evidence from excavations on major Roman buildings in Thanet have suggested that all were founded on substantial Iron Age settlement sites. It is likely that prosperous Iron Age farming communities in Thanet quite quickly adopted Roman building methods and began to use imported Roman pottery alongside vessels that continued to be made in traditional pre-Roman forms and in local fabrics exhibiting various degrees of influence from the material imported from the Romanised continent.

Sadly many of Thanet’s Roman buildings have been so heavily damaged by ploughing and stone robbing that little remains of their structure but the lowest courses of walls or those lining deep recessed parts of the structures like cellars and sunken floor levels. However the presence of structured remnant of walls, built of the distinctive rounded flint cobbles is paralleled on so many sites that their presence in this image, taken with the range of finds that were associated with the excavation site, are strong evidence that another Roman building was present on the southern side of the dry valley that leads to Dumpton Gap. The topographic location of the structure is also similar to the buildings excavated at Stone Road, Broadstairs and the Abbey Farm Villa at Minster.

In today’s VM_365 image, the presence of a building is confirmed by the presence of the  line of rounded flint cobble wall which is visible running from left to right in the foreground of the image. Although the pictures have not yet been reconciled fully with the plan that was contained in the archive, it appears that the wall is part of the southern side of a rectangular  flint lined cellar, which once formed part of the structure of a building. There are striking parallels with the image and the pictures of the surviving structures found further to the north at Stone Road and on the cliff top on the northern side of Viking Bay at Fort House, Broadstairs, which have appeared in previous VM_365 posts.

It is likely that further research on the archive and re-examination of the results of the other digs in the area will bring more evidence confirming the importance of this site which spans the Iron Age and earlier part of the Roman period.

 

 

VM_365 Day 296 Mortaria from the 1964 Dumpton Gap site

Archaeology, Broadstairs, Coy Archive, From the Archives, In the Store, Roman, Roman pottery, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 296The image today, for Day 296 of the VM_365 project, is of three sherds of Roman Mortaria, giving a closer look at the types of pottery that were present in the collection of paper bags storing finds from a site archive from 1964.

Mortaria were a distinctive  type of Roman kitchen ware  made in fine light brown and buff fabrics. Mortaria were made by several Roman pottery manufacturers, many based in the region around the Roman town of Verulamium. The steep sided bowls had flat bases and a broad outcropping rim, incorporating a finely  moulded pouring spout. The interior of the bowl was roughened with the addition of sharp grits in the clay fabric.

A well established typology and dating series has been developed for these vessels, often based on the makers stamps that were pressed into the rims. The size of the vessels and the moulding of the rim vary between manufactures and can be used to identify individual vessels. At the Dumpton site the sherds of Mortaria contained in the archive box, and shown in the image here,  represent three separate vessels.

The presence of Mortaria sherds in the pottery assemblage from the site helps to identify what type of site or settlement the material may have come from and  tells us something about its status. Similar Mortaria have been found at both the Abbey Farm Villa at Minster and from a Roman building at Broadstairs, where a well preserved Mortairium was present among many vessels apparently representing the dumped contents of a kitchen.