Recent Fieldwork around Canterbury

RECENT FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY TIM TATTON-BROWN (with Paul Bennett, John Bowen and Nigel Macpherson-Grant) l. Three Deerparks (Fig. 1) On the east side of Canterbury are the remains of three very ancient and very different parks. The youngest of these, and the closest to Canterbury, is what is now called the Old Park. It was a Royal Park and dates from about 1538 and was set up within the old manor of Caldecote which had belonged to Christ Church Priory, Canterbury. In February 1538 Sir Anthony Sentleger was granted £100 towards the paling of the King's Park at Canterbury, and it is clear that soon afterwards Sentleger became Keeper of the 'New Park'.' This park, which is depicted in various early maps with its pale and its deer within,2 is still largely owned by the Crown and used by the Ministry of Defence for various military activities. It was probably only used as a deer park for about a century after its foundation and little now survives of the park bank. However, the site of the bank can be seen on the ground, particularly beside the track that leads north-east from the west side of St. Martin's Church, and beyond this in the area south of the Dean and Chapter's Conduit House.-' The southern boundary of the park ran along the north side of the main Canterbury to Sandwich road as far as the present Golf Clubhouse. It then ran up the west side of the Stodmarsh road (now the edge of the Golf Course), until it turned north-westwards probably along the line of the old boundary of the County Borough of Canterbury. Turrolt 1 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xiii, II and see M. Sparks, 'St. Augustine's Palace and the King's Park' in The Parish of St. Martin and St. Paul. Canterbury (1980), 57-9. 2 op. cit. supra, 60 - Map 49 in Canterbury Cathedral Archives. 3 T. Tatton-Brown, 'The Precincts Water Supply' in Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle, 77 (1983) 45-52. 115 $,' t'LS 0 Fig. 1. Three Deer-parks East of Canterbury. FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY Wood (and perhaps part of Chequer's Wood) were within the park. On the north-west the boundary of the park appears to have run along the side of the Canterbury to Sturry road; the pale is shown here in a bird's-eye view map of Canterbury of c. 1600.• The whole park must therefore have covered an area of nearly 500 acres with its northern extremity a low-lying marshy area. At the centre of the park is Old Park farm, which in origin was probably the park-keeper's house, built in c. 1540. The second park is a much smaller affair. It was situated immediately south of the King's Park and belonged to St. Augustine's Abbey; it probably ceased to exist as a park in 1538 just when the new park to the north was being set up. In the bird's-eye view of c. 160􀁠 mentioned above, it is called the 'Old Park' and appears in this view still to have its pale around it and a house in the middle. From the eighteenth century at least, this house was called Stone House, and sadly the house was demolished a few years ago. To the west of this house was built in the late nineteenth century the City's Lunatic Asylum and this survives today as St. Martin's Hospital with its grounds covering exactly those of the old park. Only at the extreme north-west corner has the modern Warwick Road just cut into the corner of the park where it joins the Canterbury-Sandwich road. The third, and in many ways the most interesting, park is Trenley Park. This is certainly the oldest documented deer park in Kent, as well as one of the oldest in England. The park is first mentioned in a charter dating from 1071-82, and a little later it is one of only two parks in Kent mentioned in Domesday book, where it is mentioned four times.1 The charter of 1071-82 was also noticed at an early date" and it occurs in Sir Christopher Hatton's Book of Seals where the unique seal (now lost) of Odo of Bayeux is first depicted along with a facsimile of the charter which is in Latin and Anglo-Saxon.9 The charter was also published in the very first volume of Archaeologia in 1770,10 and since then this early mention of a park at Wickham- ' C.E. Woodruff, A History of the Town and Port of Fordwich (1895), 103. ' op. cit. supra, note 4. 6 British Library, Cotton Chart XVI 31, now badly damaged by fire. 7 Under Wickham, Littleboume, Garrington and Leeds. The other park in Kent is at Chart Sutton, see H.C. Darby and E.M.J. Campbell (Eds.) The Domesday Geography of South-East England (1971), 555. 8 It was copied by Dugdale c. 1640. 9 L.C. Loyd and D.M. Stenton (Eds.), 'Sir Christopher Hatton's Book of Seals', no. 431 in Northants Ree. Soc., xv (1950), 301 and plate VIII. For the seal, see T.A. Heslop, 'English Seals from the mid-ninth century to 1100' in J. B.A .A., cxxxiii (1980), 10-11. •• Archaeologia, i (1770), 335-346. 117 (breaux) has been published in various other places.11 It is surprising therefore that nobody has attempted to locate the site of the park on the ground though Hasted clearly knew of its location. 12 From Odo's charter and Domesday book we know that the park, or deor falde was part of Wickham (later Wickhambreaux) and that Odo gave Christ Church, Canterbury, four dens in exchange for 25 acres contained within the park. He had also given land at Garrington (in Littlebourne nearby) to the Abbot of St. Augustine's in exchange for part of his park which was in Littleboume, as well as half a sulung in Leeds also in exchange for more land in the park. All of this indicates that Odo had (probably in the late 1070s) carved out for himself a park and that the land used was mostly in the abbot's manor of Littlebourne but that it also included 25 acres belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury. If one now looks at the boundaries of the parishes in this area as shown on the tithe maps (c. 1840), this is precisely what we find.1 ' Trenley Park is a detached portion of Wickhambreaux, within Littlebourne parish but adjoining lands on the north-west in Fordwich which before the Dissolution belonged to Christ Church Priory. These lands were in part drained marshes (later called the prior's marshes), and it is surely no coincidence that the northern part of Trenley Park as shown on the tithe map is almost exactly 25 acres (25a.-3r.-37p.) of pasture in drained marshland. Sadly most of this area is now covered by lakes after gravel digging in the 1970s. Apart from this, however, most of the other boundaries of the park can still be traced on the ground, though within the park (now largely sweet chestnut coppices with standards) a lot of gravel and sand digging has taken place within the last thirty years. The shape of the park is typical of a medieval deer park with rounded corners, and in many places the remains of the park bank with an external ditch can still be seen. Apart from on the south-west, where the park adjoins the County Borough of Canterbury, 1 • the boundaries of the park must have been exactly the same as those for the detached portion of the parish of Wickhambreaux. The tithe map also tells us that the total area of the park was just less than 300 acres (296a.-3r.- 28p.). If we assume that the sulung is about 200 acres,15 this fits well 11 e.g. O.G.S. Crawford, Archaeology in the Field (1953), 191, or J.T. White, The Parklands of Kent, (1975), 90. 12 E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, ix (1800) 162-4. 13 Tithe map in Canterbury Cathedral library. 14 In _this_ area there is a narrow strip of 6 acres outside the park part of Wyke or Moat belongmg m 1840 to Earl Cowper. All the area within the Park belongs at this time to the Denne family except for Park Houses and the pasture on the north. '5 op. cit. supra, note 7, 503. 118 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY with the various amounts mentioned in the Odo charter and Domesday book, i.e. 25 acres+½ sulung at Leeds + ½ sulung and 42 acres at Garrington = 267 acres. Hasted tells us that it had ceased to be enclosed park by the early fifteenth century when 200 acres of wood belonging to the last Earl of March, who died in 1425 (and was Lord of the Manor of Wickham), are mentioned. Hasted also mentions a dispute in the early fourteenth century when an attempt was made to close the Canterbury to Stodmarsh road, which runs along the ridge through the middle of the park. The Sheriff with a posse comitatus was however ordered to open it again, as it was 'an ancient and allowed high road'. As with the King's Park further west, most of the land within the park is on poor quality sands and gravels (Thanet Sands, Brickearth and the middle third gravel terrace). To the north the park runs down to the marshes while in the centre it rises to a ridge nearly 130 ft. above sea-level along which runs the Stodmarsh road. South-east of this it drops down again to the Lampen stream, just below 50 ft. above sea-level. The area around the stream is called the Upper and Lower Moors on the tithe map, and beyond this along the southern and eastern edges of the park is East Wood, though much of this area has been turned into arable within the last century. The bank and outer ditch along these sides are still however very clear except in the south-east corner. TIM TATTON-BROWN 119 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY 2. Earthwork remains in lffin Wood (Fig. 2.) Introduction Iffin Wood lies 4 km. (2½ miles) south of Canterbury and 1 km. (! mile) west of Heppington. It is just to the west of Stone Street and lies betwen 100 and 110 m. (325-350 ft.) above sea-level on Claywith- flints over Upper Chalk. The wood is partly in three parishes, Petham (to the south), Lower Hardres (formerly Nackington) and Thanington Without (to the north). On the boundary of the latter two parishes but mostly now in Lower Hardres (Nackington) is a large earthwork site which consists of at least four distinct enclosures (centring on N.G.R. TR 1357 5397). These earthworks have long been known and have been roughly described by Hasted," the 17 E. Hasted, History of Kent, iii (1790), 728. 119 Victoria County History, 18 Crawford 19 and the Ordnance Survey20 among others .. The earthworks are also depicted on the 1838 Tithe Map and caLled 'Iffin Castle', and Hasted also describes the remains of a ruined chapel at the site. These remains are mostly in coppice woodland, though the western side is just cut into by dense coniferous woodland, planted about twenty years ago, and the present owner is seeking permission to bulldoze them and the coppiced area and turn the land into arable. No part of lffin Wood is a scheduled Ancient Monument, though apart from the earthworks mentioned above, the wood contains two round barrows,21 at least two deneholes, several 'dewponds' and many small banks and ditches (probably earlier field-systems). The main earthwork system is almost certainly the remains of the medieval manor of Iffin which is mentioned in many documents, particularly the Cartulary of St. Gregory's Priory, Canterbury ,22 between c. 1086 and 1465. This manor, the chapel of which (dedicated to St. Leonard) is mentioned in 1185, was originally part of Thanington, and it is very likely that the undefined boundary that is shown on the Ordnance Survey maps (and the Tithe Map) is wrong. The boundary now passes through the north-western side of the earthworks, but, from the alignment further north, it can be suggested that originally this boundary went along the eastern and southern sides of the earthworks putting them all into Thanington. Thanington Manor was clearly one large estate in origin, but sometime before 1086, it had been subdivided with sub-manors on the west (Tonford) and the south (lffin). The main earthworks were surveyed and described by A.S. Phillips on the Ordnance Survey record card,23 and though he quotes from Hasted he failed to record Hasted's description of the chapel which is as follows: 'At the north corner of this camp are the remains of an oblong square building of stone, the length of it standing east and west. At the east end is a square rise against the wall, seemingly for an altar, and a hollow in the wall on one side. The foot of the pedestal of a seemingly gothic pillar, such as were made for churches, was some years ago found among the rubbish in it. '24 This chapel, which 18 V.C.H. (Kent), i (1908), 399. •• Arch. Cant., xlvi (1934), 61-2. 20 A.S. Phillips, one of their field officers, visited the site in 1965. 21 The northern one was excavated in 1842, see Archaeologia, xxx (1844), 57-61 and Arch. Cant., lxxiv (1960), 55. 22 A.M. Woodcock (Ed.), Cartulary of the Priory of St. Gregory, Canterbury (1956). 23 Thanington Without / Lower Hardres, TR 15SW6. 24 E. Hasted, History of Kent (2nd ed.), ix (1800) 291-2. 120 IFFIN MANOR - STONE BUILDING 1983 r ..... "'"'"·- Ma 0 !50 tJ[hHHEFIIEE--3=3=>=e---;-.==<:= F\ 0 fi3ABHH Sca\nbtMCUON M'""" OS==<:::>=SCECJ=C:::E===";ae;==;;s===C:========::::i .::·􀀍-- ; -,􀀎Ill _...-;:P"[ ___i""'""--- . : ----- ---- J- , ___ j ...... - --'-.::=------ - '""°""""""''"'"'" "'" '"'"" '·""'"'"'"-"'"'"'""'"""""''"'."."'......' ..- .............,,''< :.;::1,:"' -􀀄:;:7 PB.IR&JB Fig. 2. Iffin Manor. FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY has probably now been relocated, is in a separate small enclosure at the south-west corner of the site. Hasted's 'north' is clearly wrong,25 and it seems very likely that the flint-walled building, which is described below, is the c. twelfth-century chapel of St. Leonard. The three larger enclosures to the east of the small chapel enclosure are similar in many ways to a moated site and presumably contained the other, timber-framed buildings of Iffin Manor. To the south the enclosure is double-ditched and of about ½ acre, having a raised central platform. This may well be the site of the principal manor house. In the middle is a large enclosure of just over 2 acres (perhaps the main stockyard, surrounded by small buildings) and to the north is another enclosure of just less than an acre. The manor appears not to have been mentioned after the fifteenth century and this is presumably the period of desertion. Hasted2• suggests that the manor was 'deserted when this part of the country was depopulated by the contests between the houses of Yark and Lancaster.' At the end of the eighteenth century a new Iffin Farm was built on Stone Street § kilometre north-east of the earthwork site. This farm now owns the northern part of the old manor while the southern part (i.e. Iffin and Hand Woods) belongs to Wincheap Farm. Most medieval manorial sites in Kent have post-medieval and modern houses and farm-yards on them, so it seems particularly important that this site is scheduled as an Ancient Monument and preserved. If the conversion of the land to arable is, however, allowed to take place, the main earthwork site should either be left unploughed or fully area-excavated. No medieval manorial site in Kent has been completely excavated. TIM TATION-BROWN The trial excavation (Fig. 2.) Outside the south-west corner of Iffin Wood earthwork is a hitherto unidentified rectangular ditched enclosure containing a raised mound, with a bowl-shaped depression at the centre. The significance of the mound, which is made up almost entirely of small locally quarried flints, has been consistently mis-interpreted or ignored by twentieth-century archaeologists and surveyors (see above). The 25 He also says a few lines earlier that Nackington is north of Canterbury, when it is in fact south-east. 26 Op. cit. supra, note 8. 121 mound, recently cleared of coppice, but covered by dense undergrowth, had been burrowed into on the north side by a fox or a badger. A brief inspection of this disturbance revealed the remains of a substantial masonry wall, indicating that the mound had been formed by debris from a demolished flint building. Hasted's notes on the Iffin Wood earthworks (see above) include a description of a stone building located, according to him, in the north corner of the 'camp'. As no trace of a building survives in this position today, it is more likely that he mistook its position and was, in fact, referring to the south-west corner of the earthwork and the raised mound under discussion. As the entire earthwork was under imminent threat of destruction (permission was being sought by the farmer to turn the wood into arable), it was necessary to establish as quickly as possible the size, state of preservation and date of the structure. To this end, trenches were cut, in the spring of 1983 to locate the main walls of the building. A north-south trench was cut across the width of the building and later extended south of the south wall to expose part of a projecting foundation (section III). Two east-west trenches (sections I and II) were cut to reveal the east and west walls and a fourth trench was cut to expose a greater length of south wall. The enclosure, defined by shallow ditches, measured internally approximately 25 m. N-S by 37 m. E-W. The raised mound, set at the west end of the enclosure covered a masonry building measuring externally 7.35 m. N-S by 14.40 m. E-W. The walls, on average 0.90 m. wide were built of small, probably locally quarried fresh flints set in a hard yellow mortar on a flint foundation (with a projecting 0.10 m. wide external offset) bonded with an off-white mortar. Traces of external plaster rendering survived on the north, east and south walls. The walls at the west end of the building had been robbed to the level of their footings, with only a few flints set in a hard off-white mortar surviving. Only part of section III was excavated to the natural brickearth. Here the subsoil inside the building had been cut down 0.20-0.25 m. below the level of the main wall foundations and a layer of large flints, chalk lumps and broken tiles, mixed with dark brown silty clay (12), laid at the base of the cutting. As later robber-pits (6, 7 and 8) had removed most of the internal stratigraphy, only one small 'island' of intact deposits (flanked by 6 and 8), was excavated. These layers of redeposited brickearth (11) capped by a second band of flints in dark clay (10), together with the primary layer of flints (12) were either residue from an earlier phase of robbing, or more likely, material laid down as foundation bedding for a floor (set approximately at the level of the external offset for the north wall). 122 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY Two features cut the lowest flint layer (12). A possible beam-slot (13), which had been cut through the primary flint layer into the natural clay, was located parallel to the inside face of the south wall. The slot, filled with carbon and lumps of burnt orange clay, terminated short of the west face of the section and was truncated longitudinally by a later pit (7). This curious feature may have been part of a load-bearing fixture inside the building. The remains of a possible pier foundation (33) was located in the centre of the building. This foundation, which had been largely removed by a later robber pit (6) cut into the natural subsoil to a depth of 0.15 m. (approximately 0.35 m. deeper than the foundations of the main walls) and was packed with small flints, chalk lumps and fragmented peg tiles in a matrix of dirty redeposited brickearth. The levels examined in section III had been extensively disturbed by three robber-pits (6, 7 and 8). Two of the pits (7 and 8) flanking the internal faces of the south and north walls may in fact be trench-shaped quarries, cut to extract re-usable flint. These disturbances were filled with similar deposits of dirty brickearth, spent mortar and discarded flints set in layers of loose, light brown clay or dark brown loam. The third pit (6), which cut the other two, also removed most of the central pier foundation (33), and was backfilled with dark brown clay. The upper fill contained heavy carbon flecking and a thick band of charcoal - possibly residue from the burning of coppice waste. This pit, which contained mortar and only a few flints, may have been a very recent disturbance. Section III was extended to the south to expose part of a projecting foundation built at the same time as the south wall and located mid-way along its length. The foundaton 0.85 m. wide and 2.40 m. long had dressed Caen-stone quoins surviving on the south-east corner overlying a 0.10 m. wide offset foundation set slightly higher than that uncovered on the north wall. This foundation may indicate the position of either a door or a fireplace. The late twelfth-century reference to a chapel of St. Leonard at Iffin taken together with Hasted's description of a stone building on the site, strongly suggests that the foundation was for a south door (and therefore a chapel) since a fireplace foundation would only exist in a secular building. Only a complete excavation of the building will clarify the interpretation. The area outside the building on the line of section III was only excavated to just below offset level. The offsets for both north and south walls must have projected above the level of the contemporary ground surface, and were only covered by debris after the building went into disuse. The lowest level exposed outside the building (15 - to the south; 20 to the north) was a thick layer of peg-tiles mixed with 123 mortar, plaster and dirty brickearth, which may have accumulated slowly during a protracted period of abandonment and decay. Thick deposits of demolition debris sealed the peg-tile horizon to the north (16, 17 and 18) and a thick layer of light brown clay, with many flints (14) sealed the horizon to the south. A similar situation was observed in sections I and II. In section I the peg-tile horizon (27) was sealed by a thick layer of redeposited brickearth (26 and 23) containing at least one well-defined band of peg-tiles (25). A pit containing flint and mortar rubble (24), located at the west end of the section may have been cut from this intermediate horizon or from the surface of the overlying layer of redeposited brickearth (23). A large pit, or robber trench cut from the surface of the redeposited brickearth horizon (23) reduced the west wall to foundation level and was backfilled with redeposited brickearth (21) and mortar (30 and 31). The east wall (section II) was well preserved with no signs of secondary robbing. Deposits of light-brown clay-with-flints (28 and 29) flanked both sides of the wall. No attempt to locate either the external wall foundation offset or internal floor level (which could well survive at the east end) was undertaken. The latest deposit sealing the excavated levels was a layer of dark-brown humus, containing many flints (1). PAUL BENNETT 124 rut o PLAN ,..,.... . fUT .. Fig. 3. Deanery Farmhouse, Chartham. ! ! l - - ------ ---_j ------------J I : I ii I' :: , , I: : :1 --- 3. Deanery Farm, Chartham Introduction Since the history and surviving buildings of this important manor were published in 1974,21 some new work has been done on the buildings which throws important light on the 'Wealden' house in particular. During 1982-83 the 'Wealden' house (Farmhouse on Fig. 3) was very extensively restored and a full survey of the building was carried out by Mr John Bowen of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (see below). At the same time the main house (The Deanery) was put up for sale and the opportunity was taken of re-examining it briefly.211 This revealed that the solar (probably built in 1393-94)29 was 27 M.J. Sparks and E.W. Parkin, 'The Deanery, Chartham', Arch. Cant., lxxxix (1974), 169-82. 28 We are very grateful to Mrs. Day for allowing us to inspect both buildings in detail and for providing many facilities. 29 op. cit. supra (note 27), 171. 124 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY in fact timber-framed and not a masonry building as shown in Mr Parkin's article.30 The moulded tie-beam of the solar roof still had surviving jowled posts on the north-east side and a long mortice hole in the underside of the ends of the tie-beam indicated braces that have now been removed. Concave chamfers still survived on the underside of the central part of the slightly cambered tie-beam. Many of the moulded timbers here are still partly covered in red paint. There was also a fine 'trait-de-Jupiter' scarf in the collar-purlin over the central crown-post, and the collar-purlin had plain flat-stopped chamfers on its underside between the crown-posts; the latter being octagonal and having finely moulded capitals and bases. The most important thing to be discovered at the 'Wealden' house (built soon after 1495 under Prior Goldstone II) was that it did not have a crown-post roof (as Mr Parkin states) but a queen-post roof with clasped side-purlins and wind braces. Although this type of roof is quite often found in major masonry buildings in Canterbury in the later fifteenth century,31 this is a rare example in east Kent of a pre-1500 vernacular roof of this type. This house also has some interesting scarfs and mouldings which are also rarely found as early as this (see detailed description below). Apart from the Deanery and the 'Wealden' house, the only other pre-Dissolution buildings to survive are the shells of some fine early brick buildings built c. 1500. These buildings were perhaps the prior's Great Stable and various lodgings,32 and only the English bond brickwork and Caen-stone quoins of the walls survive. The court wall on the south-east has two large blocked doors in it. The doorways are in brick with four-centred arches over (made of brick and having simple chamfers on them), and traces of blocked-up windows (splayed to the north) were also seen. The north-east range (converted to an oast-house in the nineteenth century) has some fine diaper work (in blue headers) on its south-west side. All the other buildings in the present farmyard are relatively modern. TIM TATTON-BROWN Description of the Wealden House (Fig. 3) The north-east side of this fine 'Wealden' house still retains much of 30 op. cit. supra (note 27), 179 and fig. 3. 31 The north-west transept of the Cathedral, 'Meister Omers', Linacre House, east range of the Archbishop's Palace, etc., 12 op. cit. supra (note 27), 171. 125 its original character. The ground floor is closely studded whilst the upper part is constructed with the more traditional 'Kentish' framing. Three types of windows, two of which are employed elsewhere in the building can best be observed on this side. The large hall window is principally divided by a transom and central mullions, a small rebate surrounds each quadrant. This is further divided by lesser mullions, making eight lights in all. Only the mullions are moulded; the head and transom being simply chamfered and the sill being perfectly flat. Unlike the principal members whose mouldings and chamfers stop either side of their joints the mouldings of the lesser mullions are scribed over the chamfers of the head and transom. There is no visible evidence for glazing. The second type of window lights the upper north chamber. Mortices for three square-sectioned mullions, set diagonally, survive in the eaves plate. The groove for the sliding shutter is visible internally. The upper south chamber was presumably lit by a similar window but due to the retention of a later window during recent renovation work only part of its shutter groove is visible. The third type of window is at once the most interesting and perplexing. The remains of two 'false' tenons survive in the face of the head indicating the presence of a projecting structure, but even the presence of two large peg-holes in the jamb-posts flanking those to the sill member does not make its original appearance any more certain. A detail of the sill to post-joint is shown in Fig. 3. Remains of a similar type of window occur also in the north wall of the upper north chamber. An original four-centred doorway survives at the north (high) end of the hall, its mouldings in character with those in the hall window. The most interesting detail is the narrowing of the chamfer, below the mouldings, in stages, more 6ften seen in buildings of a date well into the sixteenth century. The jamb-posts extend up and meet a narrow horizontal member lapped over an additional stud adjacent to the western jamb-post. Two further studs visible in the partition are re-used. All three studs sit on a timber plate and dwarf wall which abut the western jamb-post of the door. The height of the jamb-posts above the door-head corresponds to the height of those in the screens to service partition doorway (see below) which are clearly in situ. This would suggest that the former doorway at least has been lowered, if not brought from elsewhere. A similar doorway, now blocked, survives in the middle of the 'undershot' screen to service partition. Very little of the screens to hall partition is visible, notably a post, toward the west, with a high mortice (for doorhead) indicating a probable screen with two openings. Floor-joists indicate that access to the upper north chamber was by a stair against the back wall; due to the removal of several joists at the 126 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY south end, however, it is impossible to locate the stair to the upper south chamber more precisely than in the western part. All the joists are chamfered, those on the common joists dying out at each end. These have what Cecil Hewett calls 'The ultimate joist end joint' the bare-faced soffit tenon with diminished haunch (Fig. 3). 33 The remains of an external doorway in the north wall of the upper north chamber was unfortunately not more fully exposed during restoration, but may have led to a small privy hung on the side of the building as at Yardhurst, Daniel's Water.34 The whole building is roofed in six unequal bays with a clasped side-purlin roof hipped at both ends. Wind-braces tenoned into the principal rafters are simply lapped onto the backs of the purlins. The tie-beams whose undersides are exposed are chamfered and have braces to the posts, the braces over the hall are larger. Two types of scarf joint, employed in the construction, survive. Two edge-halfed scarfs with bridled abuttments along the eaves plate and simple open sided mortices and tenons on the purlins. As is usual with this type of building a floor was inserted into the hall together with a large chimney stack against the screens passage, another stack was added to the north wall between the projecting window and possible privy door. During the eighteenth century the building was divided into two. A doorway into the 'hall' cut the main post south of the lowered four-centred doorway and a miniature vertical casement window complete with moulded transom and mullion cut through the close studding south of the 'hall' window. Both these features have unfortunately now been removed. Probably at this time the southern jetty was underbuilt in brick from the screens passage southwards, and the low brick arch to the half-cellar, now filled in, can still be seen. During the nineteenth century the south-east wall was replaced in brick and a new brick fa􀁙ade built at the rear (south-west). JOHN BOWEN 33 C.A. Hewett, English Historic Carpentry (1980), 282. :w S.E. Rigold in Arch. Journ., cxxvi (1969), .267-9. 127 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY 4. Medieval kilns in the Tyler Hill area Over the last forty years sporadic work in the Blean Forest area (particularly around Tyler Hill two miles north of Canterbury) has thrown quite a lot of light on an important group of medieval and later pottery and tile kilns. 127 Work really started in 1942 when bombing near Cheesecourt Gate revealed many medieval pottery wasters. This material was reported on by the late G.C. Dunning,)5 and a little bit of further work was carried out by P .J. Spillett who located other waster heaps nearby of floor- and roofing-tiles as well as of pottery. 36 Between 1956 and 1958 more field work by J. Chappell was undertaken in the area,31 but this work is largely unpublished. Between 1960 and 1966 further field work was carried out by the 'Forest of Blean Research Group' (part of Brian Philp's 'Reculver Group')38 but sadly little of this work has been published either. In 1967 an excavation of a rectangular kiln near Tyler Hill was undertaken.39 With the construction of the new University of Kent (1965-70) more material was found including some kiln debris near Eliot College in 1965 and two kilns under Darwin College (which were hurriedly excavated during foundation digging in 1969-70).'0 In 1971 another kiln was excavated east of Hackington Road; all the work being carried out by the University of Kent Archaeological Society under Gerald Cramp and Duncan Harrington.'1 Unfortunately, these excavations have also only been published in summary form. Some more work was undertaken in 1978 by Gerald Cramp and Mark Horton and they discovered roof- and floor-tiles just east of the Hackington Road near the stream and not far away from the site of the 1967 kiln excavation.'2 Since 1979 Wesley McLachlan has been undertaking more fieldwork in the area. As well as locating new waster/kiln sites, he has been examining the bank and ditch systems which still survive in many of the woods. These may be contemporary with the medieval kilns though some are perhaps associated with small gravel pits that have also been found in the area. Fig. 4 shows what had been located by the summer of 1983 though work in the area is continuing. 0 3s P.J. Spillett, W.P.D. Stebbing and G.C. Dunning, 'A Pottery Kiln Site at Tyler Hill, near Canterbury', Arch. Cant., Iv (1942), 57-64. 36 P .J. Spillett, 'Tyler Hill Pottery Site near Canterbury, a further Note', Arch. Cant. lxii (1949), 149. 37 Very brief note in Med. Arch., i (1957) 1970. 38 B. Philp and J. Swale 'Medieval Kiln Sites in Blean Forest', K.A.R., 10 (1967), 15-16, and J. Swale and M. Last, 'Forest of Blean Research Group', K.A.R., 14 (1968), 17. 39 B. Philp, 'A Medieval Kiln Site, at Tyler Hill, Canterbury', K.A.R., 36 (1974), 175-81. -«> G. Cramp, 'Medieval Kiln', K.A.R., 19 (1970), 26-8, and ibid., 21 (1970), 11-2. 41 D. Harrington, 'The Excavation of a medieval Tile Kiln near Canterbury 1971', K.A.R., 25 (1971), 149-51. 42 Note, unpublished, to the author. 43 This work is entirely carried out by Mr. McLachlan in his spare time. It is 128 · -·-, i " ,'􀀈 􀀉 r I t/ / Ill.Mo \-.􀀌ttYS·, "'(\::'!( ewt.LLC􀀌 0 POr ¥:.A1TtR ·- A""' 􀀅--' A.R.oo"mn ·:tmr..i;v,,OOCI..NC) 5=8M1(5 ,-􀀂 ........... -􀀆-----.......... ------􀀇 "'-S Fig. 4. Tyler Hill, Canterbury 129 . ' ' ·l•TM:,,􀀉􀀊;· .,,, J-IACKINGTON Perhaps the most important of his recent finds (see note below) are of twelth-century wasters which show that pottery making in the area goes back earlier than was previously thought. From the thirteenth century, as well as pottery, roof-tiles, ridge-tiles, drain pipes, chimney pots and many varieties of floor-tiles were made, and though the production of most of these perhaps ceased after the sixteenth century, roof-tiles were still being made in the area until the nineteenth century. The medieval pottery from this area has been found all over east Kent while the floor-tiles extend even further and they have been found on sites over much of the County ... TIM TATTON-BROWN A note on the recent pottery finds The recent discovery of kiln debris and pottery near Brittancourt Farm, north of Tyler Hill village (approx. N.G.R. TR 143618) is an extremely useful addition to the growing number of known and potential kiln sites along the Hackington road, or originally linked to it. Detailed discussion of the pottery is withheld, pending a thorough survey of the material from over 30 sites which, collectively, affirm the continuous production of pottery in the area from the thirteenth century through till, at least, the early fifteenth century. Both visual comparison and laboratory thin-section analyses•s between early medieval eleventh/twelfth century and later medieval thirteenth/fourteenth century sandy wares from City excavations showed that the same London Clay sources were used for early medieval products, as for those of later medieval date - and manufacture in the same·area was implied. Confirmation comes from the present find. It is the first clear evidence for the production of pre-thirteenth century kiln-fired pottery from the Tyler Hill region. Further, it can be dated quite closely. The material includes rims, spouts and body sherds from roulette-decorated pitchers. The rims are deeply collared and internally cupped. The rouletting is external and occurs mostly in paired, occasionally single, spaced horizontal rows on rim-collars and bodies. occasionally helped by Mr. Paul Bennett and other members of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. 44 A.D.F. Streeten, 'Pottery Kilns and Markets in medieval Kent: a preliminary Study' in (Ed.) P.E. Leach, Archaeology in Kent to AD 1500, CBA Research Report no. 48, London 1982, 87-95. •s see A.D.F. Streen (forthcoming) in The Archaeology of Canterbury, iii. 130 FIELDWORK AROUND CANTERBURY Almost identical forms and rouletting were present in both occupation and dump deposits preceding the c. 1160-65 Aula Nova foundations in the Cathedral Precincts in Canterbury.46 The full chronological range of these formal and decorational traits is not yet known, but a date for the present assemblage after c. 1175 is unlikely. A date between c. 1150-70 would be more appropriate, and the evidence from the Au/a Nova means that this kiln was certainly operating between c. ll50-1160/65. NIGEL MACPHERSON-GRANT '6 The Archaeology of Canterbury, iii (forthcoming). 131