Notes on the Contributors

Murray Andrews: is Associate Professor of Numismatics at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Dr Andrews research explores coin use and monetary activity in medieval and early modern north-west Europe, as well as aspects of the archaeology and social history of London and South-East England. His recent book ‘Coin Hoarding in Medieval England and Wales, c.973-1544’ (BAR) was shortlisted for the 2019 Book Prize of the International Association of Professional Numismatists.

Chris Briggs: is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Selwyn College, and a member of the Cambridge Group for the History of Social Structure. His research explores a variety of themes in the economic and social history of later medieval England. 

Anthony Durham, m.a., ph.d.: lives in Greenwich, traditionally inside Kent. A series of unexpected events pushed him into studying local history, which has developed into a decade’s investigation of all 580-plus geographical names known from Roman Britain. Having spent 15 years as a research scientist, in five countries, and 25 years running a computer business, he likes to dig up all relevant evidence and is wary of accepting theories based on unstated assumptions.

Vera W. Gibbons, ariba (dip. arch. canterbury), m.b.a.;

Trevor K. Gibbons, ariba (dip. arch. canterbury): both studied at the Canterbury College of Art, School of Architecture and qualified in 1963 as Chartered Architects. Early in their married life, as residents of Herne, they were founder members of the Herne Society and also participated as volunteers on the Reculver dig in 1965. At this time, Herne Bay librarian, Harold Gough, introduced them to Antoinette (Tony) Powell-Cotton to assist with the Minnis Bay site. Recently they returned to the Powell-Cotton Museum as volunteer researchers with the archaeology collection. Over the last decade they have provided invaluable assistance in bringing the collection up to the standards set by current museum management practice. More recently, they have focused on research to re-evaluate the work undertaken through the mid-twentieth century by Antoinette Powell-Cotton. This has led to a series of in-house research papers detailing the material excavated from Minnis Bay from the Neolithic through to the Medieval period as well as the importance of Antoinette’s role as a field archaeologist at the time.

Christine Grainge, b.a., m.a.:, a primary school teacher for ten years, took her first degree in History at the University of Kent in 1990. She obtained an m.a. from King’s College London in 1991. She has previously published in the Mariner’s Mirror, the Historical Metallurgy Newsletter, the Friends of Rochester Cathedral Report, the Agricultural History Review, as well as previously in Archaeologia Cantiana. Christine died in December 2022 following a short illness.

Oliver Harris, ph.d.: is an independent researcher, with interests centred on antiquarianism in the early modern period, and on the reception and interpretation of the past. He has also followed the antiquaries’ lead into pursuing the study of church monuments.

Tim Haines, b.a..: is a Senior Archaeological Consultant at Stantec working on a broad range of projects across Britain. He has worked in commercial archaeology, initially in fieldwork for several contractors on a diverse range of projects of different periods, before progressing into project management and contracts management. He has particular interests in Roman military equipment and artefacts and in the ephemeral nature of works associated with modern conflicts.

Chris Hayden, ph.d.: is a specialist in European prehistory and the later prehistory of southern England. His ph.d. focused on the Copper Age archaeology of islands in the western Mediterranean. He was a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, and since 2004 has been a member of the post-excavation department at Oxford Archaeology. He has worked on projects ranging from the early Neolithic house at White Horse Stone, to one of the world’s first purpose-built office buildings – Somerset House, London. He is currently managing the publication of the extensive prehistoric and Roman site at Great Western Park, Didcot, Oxfordshire.

Diana Hirst, ph.d: like Elizabeth Bowen, she grew up on Kent’s dramatizable coastline, becoming acutely aware of east Kent’s history and topography from an early age. After retiring in 2008 she began writing poetry about its landscape and by a curious twist of fate rediscovered Bowen’s fiction. A dissertation on Bowen’s novels at Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education led to a ph.d. thesis on Bowen’s ‘peculiar aesthetic’ at Canterbury Christ Church University, and she was awarded her degree in 2022.

Richard Hoskins: member of Dover Archaeological Group since 1994, including the Ringlemere excavations of 2002-2006. Worked as a Field Archaeologist with Canterbury Archaeological Trust between 2007 and 2011. After moving to Cornwall in 2015 has worked on various excavations throughout the county including the 2016-2017 excavations at Tintagel. Assisted in cataloguing finds, mainly of flint artefacts, at the Royal Cornwall Museum between 2015 and 2020. Elected Hon. Treasurer of the Cornwall Archaeological Society in 2018.

Alexander J. Kent, ph.d., f.b.cart.s., f.r.g.s., f.r.s.a., f.s.a., s.f.h.e.a.: is Editor of The Cartographic Journal and Honorary Reader in Cartography and Geographic Information Science at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has been researching Thomas Hill’s family of estate surveyors since encountering a 1685 map of Lyminge and has published widely in cartographic history, including contributions to the six-volume History of Cartography project and as co-author of The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World (both University of Chicago Press).

Peter Geoffrey Knowles, b.sc. (hons): is a doctoral research student at Durham University. His research seeks to find answers to long held question on the antiquity of palaeoliths from the east Kent River Stour’s fluvial archive; is there evidence for cultural patterning in these Early and Middle Palaeolithic handaxe technologies? He curates the lithics collection at The Seaside Museum, Herne Bay and works as a consultant archaeologist in the south-east of England, as a Palaeolithic, Geoarchaeology and Lithics specialist.

Avril Leach, ph.d.: is an independent researcher. Her doctoral studies at the University of Kent concerned institutional culture within the seventeenth-century borough corporations of Canterbury and Maidstone. Current research projects include study of first edition copies of William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury, and early modern maps of Canterbury.

Ben Jervis: is Reader in Archaeology at Cardiff University specialising in the later medieval archaeology of southern England. He has undertaken research on the archaeology of the Cinque Ports and their pottery and also worked on the Anglo-Saxon pottery from excavations at Lyminge.

Julian Luxford: is a Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews. He wrote the current English Heritage Red Guide for St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (published in 2017), and is author of an article on the Findon gate at the same abbey (‘The Great Gate of St Augustine’s Abbey: Architecture and Context’, in Canterbury: Art and Architecture after 1220, ed. A. Bovey, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 35, Leeds, 261-75).

Gillian M. Metcalfe, b.a.(hons), m.a., dip.eur.hum.: followed a varied career before opening an independent bookshop in west London. She gained an Open University degree and subsequently an m.a. in Medieval Studies from Kent University, her specialist research being the twelfth-century lead font at Brookland. She later achieved an m.a. in Fine Arts. She recently assisted Dr Gerald Cramp in his study of early encaustic floor tiles. Gill is currently researching the ambitions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Kent and Sussex women. 

Simon Pratt, b.a. (hons), m.a. (cantab): is a Project Officer at the Canterbury Archaeo-logical Trust.

Keith Robinson, b.a. (hons): is a native of north Kent, a founding member of the Faversham Society Archaeological Research Group., a Trustee of the Friends of Milton Regis Court Hall and a member of the KAS Marshes Group. His major interest is the north Kent marshes, specifically Kentish duck decoys, the history of Milton Regis and the life and times of Milton naturalist, artist and writer Denham Jordan – ‘A Son of the Marshes’. His most recent publication is of the North Kent Marshes with Ian Jackson.

David Score, b.a.: is Head of Fieldwork at Oxford Archaeology, where he has worked as a professional archaeologist since graduating from Reading University in 1996. He has extensive experience of multiple periods in British archaeology and has conducted excavations on a varied range of both rural and urban sites.

Cressida Williams, f.s.a.: is Archives and Library Manager at Canterbury Cathedral. An archivist by profession, she has particular interests in medieval history and ecclesiastical collections.

Jake Wilson, b.a. (hons): is a senior archaeologist for Archaeology South-East and has worked as a field archaeologist for over ten years around East Sussex and Kent. He has been involved in several large projects in Kent including the next phase of the Brisley Farm/Chilmington Green excavations and has recently completed work at New Romney related to the great storm and the parish of Hope All Saints.

Tania Wilson, m.a., m.c.i.f.a.: began her career as a field archaeologist in 1987 working for the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. Moving to York in 2000 to take up a post at the Yorkshire Museum, she then studied for a Master’s degree at the University of York, specializing in field archaeology. Returning to Kent, and to the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, she was a supervisor at the excavation at the Beaney Institute in Canterbury and directed the excavation of a prehistoric site and Anglo-Saxon cemetery at The Meads, Sittingbourne. Most recently, she directed the excavation at the site of the former Slatter’s Hotel in Canterbury and at the site of the new Thanet Parkway railway station.

contributors

contributors