Today’s image shows a very large, polished, late Neolithic flint axe from Northdown, Margate. The axe was found in 1940 by a Mr Kelf while he was digging an Air Raid shelter behind his shop on Northdown Road.
The axe is unused and made of non-local flint. The true reason for making it is unclear; it may have been more a status object rather than a useful tool, or perhaps, for ceremonial use, or maybe it was made to show off the skill of its creator. We can only guess at its purpose.
One of the sites recorded by Dr. Arthur Rowe was an Anglo Saxon cemetery loctaed at Half Mile Ride off Manston Road, Margate. In 1922 he was called to examine human remains that had been found during road improvements, next to the ancient track which was known as Half Mile Ride. Burials had already been uncovered nearby in 1848 and a further nine burials were exposed when the road gradient was reduced in 1863, another burial was exposed in 1893.
Rowe recorded 20 more graves in 1922 and from the paucity of grave goods he found, he suggested that these burials represented a small and early community that was somewhat impoverished. The finds from the graves, along with a buckle found near the cemetery wall in 1924, were included in the Rowe bequest and were stored in the Margate Museum.
In the mid 1980’s the late Dr David Perkins, former Director of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology, reviewed the Half Mile Ride archive and using data which was not available to Rowe at the time, concluded that the burials were actually part of a larger cemetery, dating to the late sixth to seventh century which extended along the brow of the hill (hatched in the plan above). Rather than an impoverished community, Dr Perkins suggested that from the descriptions in Rowe’s notes, the graves he had encountered had in fact been robbed of their valuable grave goods in antiquity. A similar pattern of grave robbing seems to occurred in cemeteries of a similar date on Thanet at Sarre and Ozengell that were investigated by Dr. Perkins.
References
Perkins, D. R. J. 1987. The Jutish Cemetery at Half Mile Ride, Margate: A Re-Appraisal. Archaeologia Cantiana CIV, 219-236.
Doctor Arthur Rowe recovered a number of Iron objects from the Tivoli Villa excavations, including the nails, reaping hooks, knives and brackets that are as shown above. He also found a more unusual item shown below, part of a window grille.
Window grilles were structures that retained small panes of window glass, held by the star shaped clips riveted to the bar, within a wider frame. The grille let in light over a larger opening than could be covered by any single pane of glass that could be made at that time. The presence of a window indicates the high status of this building. Examples of the type of window glass that would have been used have been excavated locally at Abbey Farm Villa, Minster.
In 1924, a Roman building known as Tivoli Villa was discovered while laying out new roads on the west side of Margate. The building was discovered at the southern end of the new Tivoli Park Avenue and was excavated and recorded by Dr Arthur Rowe. Only a single photograph, shown above, and a sketch plan survive although Roman finds from the site are at Margate Museum and the British Museum.
The walls of the building were constructed from flint and there was also evidence of painted plaster and mosaic floors. The layout of the part that Rowe excavated suggests that the structure was foundations of a series of rooms from a much larger range of buildings.
Dr Arthur Rowe was born in Margate in 1858 and practised as a GP and surgeon until he retired at the age of 51 to concentrate on his other interests, microfossils, the formation of chalk and local history and archaeology in Margate.
Rowe took a great interest in archaeological discoveries that were made as the town of Margate expanded and he was responsible for recording a number of Anglo Saxon burials during roadworks at Half Mile Ride, next to the present cemetery and Council Tip, in 1922; excavating the Iron Age settlement and Roman building found whenTivoli Park Avenue was being constructed in 1924 and recording a number of burials that were eroding from the cliffs at Westgate in 1925.
Rowe was a contemporary of Howard Hurd who had carried out archaeological research in Broadstairs and the two men corresponded by postcard while Rowe was excavating the Tivoli Villa, with Hurd offering Rowe advice on his excavation.
Rowe died of an untreated tooth infection in 1926, while working on a report of his excavations. On his death he bequeathed his collection of Margate books, pictures and prints to the corporation of Margate and his collection of archaeological artefacts, mainly pottery, to the British Museum.
Arthur Rowe’s Margate collection formed the Rowe Bequest and various parts of the collection are to be found in Margate Library’s Local Studies Collection and at the Margate Museum.
Part of the archaeological collection in the Rowe bequest was probably built up by Arthur Rowe’s father, Thomas Smith Rowe, who is less well known than his son but passed on an interests in local history to his son. Thomas Smith Rowe was also a Doctor and Surgeon and was well respected in Margate. Amongst other appointments he was Senior Visiting Surgeon to the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary and Honorary Surgeon to the Alexandra Orphanage and Victoria Hospital for Children . Thomas Rowe also took part in the formation of the Margate Centre of St John’s Ambulance Association in 1879.
Dr T. Smith Rowe died in 1907 aged 82.
References
Moody, G. 2008. The Isle of Thanet from Prehistory to the Norman Conquest. The History Press, 20.
Perkins, D. R. J. 1987. The Jutish Cemetery at Half Mile Ride, Margate: A Re-appraisal. Archaeologia Cantiana CIV, 219-236
With thanks to Bob Pantony for his research on the Rowe Bequest presented in a lecture in 2012 celebrating 25 years of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology.
Today’s image shows a fragment of a 14th century glazed medieval floor tile found in 1979 during excavations at Salmestone Grange, Margate by the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Unit.
Salmestone Grange was a Benedictine Monastic Grange founded in the 12th century by the Monks of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury. The Grange operated as an administrative centre for their large estate, part of which covered most of Thanet. The Grange was also occasionally used as a retreat for the Monks.
The excavations, carried out in 1979, were located in the now ruined south western end of the domestic range, in the area of the garderobe and dormitory built in the 14th century by Thomas Ickham, Sacristan to the Abbot of St Augustine’s.
Today’s image is of the Reverend John Lewis, vicar of the parish of Minster and Thanet’s first historian. His book, The History and Antiquities of the Isle of Thanet published in 1736 was a study of the area that had been his home for 30 years. His book covered the etymology of local place names, the geography of the island and local miscellanea but also, and most importantly, he was aware of a growing interest in the survival of ancient features in the landscape and ancient artefacts found locally, which he described in detail. He included plans and illustrations of places and finds of antiquarian interest including the first Bronze Age Hoard recorded on Thanet at Birchington and the standing Bronze Age Barrows at Hackemdown Banks, North Foreland.
Lewis’ work was heavily drawn on by a number of publishers of traveller’s guides and also by Edward Hasted whose Thanet volume of The History of the County of Kent, published in 1800, largely reproduced Lewis’ account with minor amendments. Lewis’ History and Antiquities remains to this day an interesting and valuable source of local history of the late 16th and 17th centuries which should be a first port of call for anyone interested in the history of the area.
Today’s image is from the Roman cellared building described previously in our VM365 Day 44 post. The picture above shows the remains of an oven constructed from clay and tile. Elsewhere, in the floor, we found several ovens or kilns, one of which was constructed from fragments of millstones and on one of the corners of the building there was a quern stone set in the floor used for grinding grain. From the soot collected in the clay and tile oven shown above charred Spelt, Emmer, Barley and Oat grains were recovered suggesting that this structure is likely to have been used as a bakers oven.
It would be interesting to know what type of bread can be made from grains like this.
Today’s image shows a common geological phenomena that we sometimes encounter on archaeological sites called patterned ground. It looks rather like the ripples you get in the clouds called a Mackerel sky. It is very visible in this picture, taken in 2002, at a site on the cliff top at Ramsgate. The ripples in the ground are actually masking a large Iron Age and Roman enclosure ditch on the left hand side of the picture and a middle Bronze Age mortuary structure comprising a small ring ditch surrounding a group of pits containing pottery vessels and cremated human bone in the north part of the site.
Around 21,000 years ago, large areas of patterned ground were formed as the land surface went through cycles of freezing and thawing. Fine clay and silts percolated into the fractures in the chalk producing the linear stripes and polygons that you can see here.
Following on from Saturday’s Environmental Archaeology Workshop, where we processed some samples from a Roman cremation burial, today’s image shows the cremation vessel under excavation alongside an image of the human bone that was extracted from the heavy residue.
The cremation vessel is a large copy of a globular amphora vessel in a local, pink, sandy fabric dating between c. 170-200 AD. The tiny slivers of burnt human bone shown in the right hand side of the image are all that remain of this heavily truncated cremation. The fragments measure between 2 and 10 mm in length and were painstakingly picked out from the heavy residue by hand by the team who took part in the workshop.