Miscellaneous Notes
CHILHAM
On several occasions Dr. S. Graham Brade-Birks and I have tried unsuccessfully to find an earthwork which was said to lie in the woods eastward of Julliberrie's Grave, Chilham. It is that which Hasted1 describes as "a little entrenchment in the road under Denge Wood, a little eastward above Julliberrie's Grave," and which Flinders Petrie£ could not locate when he wrote his Notes on Kentish Earthworks in 1880. That it did exist in 1891 we were certain from a detailed description made by George Payne,[fn3] who said that it was a mile east of East Stour Farm, oblong in shape and surrounded by a deep external ditch which enclosed an area of some 9 acres. It was known as Great Court Town, and on the north side was another enclosure called Little Court Town. A wide local enquiry has shown that these names are to-day quite unknown.
There the matter remained w1til March 1942, when, in flying over Denge or Penny Pot Wood, which had been in part felled, I saw a large rectangular earthwork about half a mile south-west of Mystole House and between 300 and 400 yards inside the north boundary of the wood.[fn4]
Subsequent exploration on the ground showed that the eastern side of the earthwork was aligned upon a north-south bridle track which has every appearance of antiquity ; the track is marked as a road on Andrews Drury and Herbert's map of 1769, but the enclosure is not shown. It is rectangular in shape, of roughly 200 yards by 130 yards, and is divided into two unequal portions by an east-west trackway apparently later than the earthwork. An outer ditch 20 feet wide surrounds the enclosure, and there is an inner rampart of some 20 feet in width. The rampart is rounded, well consolidated, and made of the local clay-with-flints dug from the ditch, except in the north-eaat corner where chalk is used. Here the change in woodland from uniform chestnut, birch and beeoh to wayfaring tree and thorn is .especially noticeable from the air. Young oaks grow both inside the enolosure and out, and there are fairly mature oak trees on the rampart.
The enclosure is not a tree-nursery, of which there are easily recognizable examples in the wood. It has no characteristics of a prehistoric [pg69]earthwork. There are no traces of Roman occupation, and it is far from any known Roman site, and moreover in a very unlikely geographical situation for a Roman camp. One can but guess that, like the somewhat similar enclosure in Well Wood, Aylesford, it was a large medireval cattle-pen. The more interesting suggestion implied by the name which Payne recorded is not supported by any other evidence known to the writer.
ROMAN ROAD-CANTERBURY TO DOVER
The course of the Roman road can be traced from the air from the top of Bridge Hill almost continuously to Lydden Hill. There is nothing to add to Mr. 0. G. S. Crawford's adequa.t,e notes.[fn1] The following notes were made during two flights in March and September 1942.
The Saxon barrows just inside the Pale of Bourne Park, already mutilated by excavation in 1845, have been almost obliterated by recent ploughing under the war emergency scheme, as has much of the well-known lynchet on Barham Downs with its small three-sided -earthwork first recorded by Lambarde. All these earthworks were scheduled for preservation under the Ancient Monuments Acts, and it is indeed unfortunate that the small pieces of ground which they cover ,could not be spared. There are ploughed-out Saxon barrows visible at many places on Barham Downs, and the wonder is that not more than .a few of the hundreds which Faussett overturned can be seen. The Race Course laid out on the north side of the road in the eighteenth century was responsible for much destruction, as were the 1914-18 trenches westward of Barham Hill.
A small regular six-sided encloslll'e appears immediately to the north-east of the hammer-shaped tree enclosure in Bourne Park. About 400 yards to the south-east and 50 yards from the Roman road is a fairly large barrow circle, possibly Roman.
Three other possible Roman barrow circles, together with an .associated rectangular enclosure and two smaller ploughed-out barrow ,circles could be seen in the fields between Bourne Park and Charlton Park, east of the road to Bishopsbourne village and a short distance ..south of the Roman road, on which the large barrows seem to be aligned. This complex showed up extremely well at both seasons of the year. There were other crop-markings in the :fields, and the whole site will be worth further investigation. It is not impossible that these are the three large barrows six feet high, close to the Canterbury-Dover road, upon one of which Faussett in 1772 " spent much time and pains, no less than five men being employed for eight hours in endeavouring to “overturn it.”[fn2]
[fn]1|"Field Notes in the Canterbury District," Arch. Cant., XLVI (1034), p. 57. z B. Faussett, Invemorium Sepulcllrale (1866), p. 84, Noa. 242 a-nd 257.[/fn][pg70]
The double-box type of enclosure aligned on the side ditch of the Roman road in Womenswold parish,[fn1] which was discovered in 1932 by a pilot from Manston, was quite invisible from the air on both flights. The land, however, was fallow in March.
A curious rectangular crop-marking of somewhat similar character was visible in March a few yards north of the Roman road in Siberts- wold parish and immediately west of the road which runs from Watling Street to West Court Farm. It has not been possible to examine the area on foot.
WALMER DlSTRICT.
Nothing of interest seen. The Belgic "circles" are either built over, or do not show up in the grass covering of the chalk downs.
R. F. Jessup.
[fn]1|Antiquity, VII, 202, and Plate 2.[/fn]
Gerrard Winstanley’s Socialistic and Religious Discourses — A Kent Association Volume
[pg70]A bound copy, badly shaved, of five of the outpourings of this mystical tithe-resister has recently been through the writer's hands. Winstanley (fl. 1648-52) , the "Digger" or "Leveller," came into notice as the leader of a party who, in his contention "peaceably," created disturbances through starting to cultivate waste lands on St. George's Hill, Surrey. He claimed the right of the landless comm.on people to do so without paying rent. The author prefaces one of these discourses to" my Beloved Countrey men of the County of Lancaster," so is not a Kentish worthy, but the book has local interest as it belonged to a Man of Kent, one William Jones of Harbledown. On one blank leaf besides Jones's signature is the following : Novr the 28 1728 Borrowd this Book of Mr Wihiam Joans of Harbledowne and whatever frinde hand it should chance to fall into are desird to return it to him. John Ludington."
On the leaf of a second discourse Wm. Jones has written his name with the date 1727 , but this had been erased for a Thomas Turner'E signature. However below in fine handwriting is this: "William Jones his Book living in barbel-down if I should chance to Lend thiE Book to any frind or whose ever hand it should chance to fall in to : to deEver y° same to y° said Wm Jones"
On another flyleaf of this pamphlet appears in large script "Wm Jones his Book living in Harble down Lent to John Ludington No t 23-1728 By mee Wm Jones."
Winstanley's claim on posterity is that in his religious outlook a.nd in his writings he is undoubtedly the forerunner of that theory of life so strenuously upheld by the Society of Friends, whose early memben came before the authorities as resisters.
[pg71]The printer of Winstanley's pamphlets was a Giles Calvert. From his press "at the Black-spread Eagle at the West end of Pauls" later issued many Quaker publications.
W. P. D. STEBBING.
A Twopenny Seventeenth-Century Token from Goudhurst
[pg71]of Sevenoaks has recently dug up there a Goudhurst token of known type-STEPHEN stringer. I 661. g0WDII.A.ST in kent -but differing from other reported examples in the value. Two values are already known, the halfpenny and the penny, the value being represented by figures placed on the left of the anchor which appears on the reverse of the token. Mr. Betts' find has a figure II in Roman numerals in the same position. It is in excellent condition and the figure is quite clear.
GORDON WARD.
A Note on Elizabeth Barton (the Maid of Kent)
[pg71]Recent research has put a new light on the bona fides of tih s servant of a Thomas Cobb, the .Archbishop's" farmer" of Aldington. Mr. L. E. Whatmore comments on the sermon preached against her and her adherents at St. Paul's Cross on November 23rd, and again at Canterbury on December 7th, 1533, in a paper in the English Historical Review for October, 1943. He is now going further into a case as much political as religious when the Papacy at this Jate pre-Reformation date was doing all it could to stay the growth of an independent nationalism, while engineering opposition against the marriage of Henry VIIIth and Anne Boleyn. The Society may see the outcome of these new studies later.
[pg71]Source. The very imperfect skull here reported on formed part of a single pit-like interment about 3 ft. deep in the chalk found at St. Margaret's at Cliffe in the autumn of 1943. It would appear that the body had originally been interred in a crouched posture, though whether the left lateral or the right lateral posture is not clear.
Material. The material submitted for report by Mr. W. P. D. Stebbing, F.S.A., who visited the site after police information, consisted of the two halves of a frontal bone and a number of associated parietal and occipital fragments, together with a -fragmentary anterior [pg72]portion of each maxilla and the greater part of the body of the corresponding mandible. This and some other fragmentary bones came- into Mr. Stebbing's hands through Dr. D. M. M. Fraser of Eastry.
Osteological Notes. The various cranial fragments were duly pieced together, with the result shown in the accompanying dioptographio tracing, from which, however, all lines of mend between unnatural fragments have been omitted. The restored calvaria is mesticephalic, with a strong tendency to brachycephaly. The glabella-inion maximum length is 175 mm., and auricular height 115 mm., and the minimal frontal diameter is 99 mm. The maximum biparietal breadth cannot be estimated and the cephalic index cannot therefore be determined. The brow region is low and vertical, smooth and well-rounded in all directions, and typically feminine in characters : its contour is harmoniously continuous with that of the median parietal region. The even median contour of the cranial vault itself is, however,. interrupted by a slight but marked obelionic flattening, beyond which the occipital pole of the calvaria projects as a " boss " rather more· distinct and prominent than the accompanying figure would indicate. The two halves of the frontal bone remain ununited, an open metopic· suture intervening; the coronal, sagittal and lambdoid sutures likewise remain fully open. The supra-orbital eminences are but feebly developed, and each is confined to the medial third of the supra-orbitat region. The temporal ridge, which marks the upper limit of the· attachment of the great temporal muscle, is very faintly developed, and that in its anterior or frontal extent only. The osteologicaI evidence, therefore, points unequivocally to the calvaria being that of a female of about 18-22 years of age. The pa.la.to-maxillary fragment. suggests an orthognathous facial profile. The canine fossa is shallow. At death a full complement of maxillary teeth was present, with the- exception, perhaps, of the 3rd molar of ea.eh side, which may not have- yet erupted. The left maxillary 1 st and 2nd molars remain in sit1i ; both are tartar-encrusted upon the labial surface and both show an excessive crown-wear, so severe as to have denuded the occlusal smface, of its enamel to a greater or lesser extent. The mandibular fragment. suggests a lightly-built and typically feminine lower jaw, with a sma.ll,. somewhat pointed, chin. The position of the mental fora.men indicates early adult age. The mandibular 3rd molars were not apparently erupetd at the time of death. The mandibular right 1st molar was lost from parodontal disease some time before death : the corresponding 2nd molar remains in situ and manifests both considerable tartar incrustation and a severe degree of crown-wear.
Sex and age. The configuration of the frontal region of the ca.lvaria, the absence of pronounced cranial secondary markings, the build and the relative smallness of the jaws and teeth, all proclaim the female.
[pg73]The open state of the cranial sutures, the configuration of the mandibular body, the non-eruption ofthe mandibular (and possibly of the maxillary) 3rd molars, all suggest an estimated age of about 18-22 years. The St. Margaret's specimen may therefore unhesitantly be regarded as the cranial remains of a round-headed young (just-adult) woman.
Race. There is little indicative of race in the fragmentary remains themselves. The degree of crown-wear in the three remaining teeth suggests a historic period not more recent than Roman or pagan Saxon times, and is consist.ent with an even earlier date. The bossing of the occipital region recalls the similar configuration frequently encountered in ancient British and Romano-British crania, but cannot of itself be taken as diagnostic of such a dating. On the available morphological evidence no definite period can be assigned to the St. Margaret's specimen, and its historic horizon must be determined by the conJ comitant archreological evidence.
Professor of the Royal College of Surgeons,