William Matthew Flinders Petrie - the Kentish Years

ArticlesVolume 128

25 Jun

Written By KAS

William Matthew FLINDERS PETRIE – THE KENTISH YEARS

patricia e. knowlden

Flinders Petrie is recognised world wide for his discoveries in Egypt in the late nineteenth century and onwards, and for his development of archaeological techniques that are still in use today. What is not generally realised, however, is that he was a Kentish man, who spent a number of years working in Kent before ever he went to Egypt. And that what began it all was a chance find as a teenager in a bookshop in Lee Green near Blackheath.

In his autobiography Petrie himself described his youth in Bromley as his ‘years of preparation’.¹ At the time he could have had no idea they would lead to world wide recognition and fame, a knighthood, and a professorship at London University; especially as he had no formal education. Being a delicate child he was taught at home. Before he was ten he was reading widely and deeply on mathematics and chemistry and like subjects, but especially on history and significantly, on Egypt and the pyramids built by the pharaohs. Living then at Charlton (where he was born on 3 June 1853) he took to haunting local bookshops. On one expedition in 1866 he discovered ‘Riley’s Curiosity, Antiquity and Mechanic Shop’ at Lee. Riley and he became life-long friends. They frequently went to auctions together. The boy’s mother had inherited some coins that he had often studied, now he discovered he could recognise a Lot with one or two coins which would pay for the whole, and make a profit. These he would sell to the British Museum; and so formed a contact that would prove useful later on.

‘Rummaging around the bookshops’ as he put it, in 1866, he came upon a copy of Charles Piazzi Smyth’s Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1854). Of course, he bought it. He found that Smyth – who was then Astronomer Royal and was, in fact, a friend of his father – did not see the pyramid as the tomb of an Egyptian Pharoah. He believed it to have been erected under divine inspiration, forming through a system of measurements using a special ‘pyramid inch’ of 1.001in., ‘a chronicle of man’s history and future –which, if read aright, would convey God’s message to mankind’. Smyth’s hypothetical measurements and his conclusions convinced the boy’s highly religious father, William Petrie; the teenager needed proof. Together they determined that, one day, they would go to Egypt themselves and make their own measurements.

But first, they needed to understand the methods of the Egyptians, and then, to find a site in Britain to experiment with their own. Flinders Petrie began by seeking comparisons with other ancient countries – was there a common root to their systems of measurement, one that might reduce to 1.001in.? This was a move that was to shape the whole of his life. It would also move archaeology along the way from academic treasure hunting into scientific discipline, and towards an appreciation of the true achievements of the civilisations of antiquity – especially that of Egypt.

Both Petries wanted to get inside the minds of the ancients, beginning with those near at hand, in Britain. They wanted to examine English earthworks to see whether their builders had any ‘perception of the rectangularity and equality of the lines they were laying out’. So they would choose only those ‘unfettered by natural features on the ground’;² but not fortified hilltops following contours such as Oldbury Hill or Maiden Castle in Dorset. The stones and circles of Stonehenge were an obvious choice. And it would help if there were plans already in existence to make comparisons with.

As a very little boy Flinders (known in the family as Willie) was always wanting to know ‘what is this for? Tell me!’ he would demand.³ He was fascinated by measurement, as he said, so his father, who was a civil engineer and surveyor, set him to measure his plate – a book – the weight of an apple – with meticulous accuracy. Somewhat later, in his early teens, he made a plan of ‘a bit of an earthwork’ on Blackheath, another in Charlton Park, and several of nearby churches. At first he used a sextant made of cardboard and a looking glass to measure angles. Then his father allowed him to use his own instruments and taught him the nautical triangulation method of measurement (establishing three fixed points and finding the distance between two by trigonometry). He found that way was the best to use over broken ground, and feasible by one person on his own, as he always preferred to work.

In 1870 Flinders Petrie and his parents moved to Crescent Road in Bromley. Young Petrie found Bromley a good centre from which to range widely, and ever further afield. He knew of more distant earthworks from scattered references in ‘various maps and works on Kent’.⁴ The place-name element bury he recognised as a possible clue to a prehistoric fort. Not a great deal was available on Kent’s antiquities, even counting Archaeologia Cantiana, before Petrie’s time. John Lubbock, who lived at High Elms in Downe and was a friend of Charles Darwin, had published Prehistoric Times in 1863 but it had little on Kent except for a mention of Kit’s Coty House. Thomas Wright’s Wanderings of an Antiquary (1854) contained three chapters on Kent but they were mainly about Roman remains. (The first published list of Kentish ancient monuments appears in the Victoria County History in 1908 – compiled by Bromley antiquarian, George Clinch.) Ordnance Survey maps were Petrie’s main source. These he marked, carried – together with notebook and pencil, sextant, rods and measuring tape, and kept as a record. When levelling a site he used a short rigid pendulum with a mirror in a glass tube to shelter it from wind. He was for ever adapting and improving instruments to achieve greater accuracy. A new measuring chain with longer links was to prove useful when eventually he and his father got to Stonehenge. He acquired new instruments on his weekly walking trips back to see Riley at Lee Green.

The study of his mother Anne’s collection of coins, and of fossils, was light relief; it was knowledge that would be invaluable to him one day. But roaming round the countryside was his joy. He explored Chislehurst, the Crays, Bexley, Greenwich and round to Hayes. And found some sort of earthwork on which to practice measuring in all these places.

Exploration in North-West Kent

Throughout the 1870s young Petrie records in his Journals⁵ his work within walking distance all round the north-west part of Kent. In July 1874 he measured the tower of Bromley Parish Church and made a (measured) drawing of the window. The same sheet shows Hayes Church’s windows and ‘blocked doorway’ with measurements, and a capital; and queries the ‘modern’ brasses. The dimensions of medieval churches could, he hoped, lead back to more ancient units of measure – so long as they remained unaltered. He drew a roadside well in Hayes, apparently Hussey’s Well in Pickhurst Lane, suggesting that this had been altered – ‘if a restoration has taken place then the distance between the supports is worth nothing!’ – not to his purpose. He began to survey and make plans of Hayes Common earthworks, the complications of which occupied him on and off for several years, and which he came to consider were ‘the finest in Kent, for extent, preservation, and the number of pit-dwellings’.⁶ At Chislehurst, he had doubts about some banks that had been reported to him but surveyed them anyway. A visit to Cudham church resulted only in a sketch plan made ‘from memory’ that evening; but he managed two pages of foolscap description. He did measure the piscina, three shields, and a memorial tablet.

Preparatory reading and study of works already written on the pyramid of Cheops resulted in 1874 in the publication of his own booklet, Researches on the Great Pyramid, or Fresh Connections. In 1874 he came of age and immediately applied for a ticket to the Reading Room of the British Museum, where he had already spent many hours studying the ancient exhibits. He says he searched there for references to Stonehenge and other ancient monuments but found no recent plans of any British antiquities that he and his father could use for making comparisons. Nevertheless, without any, he went on to measure well over 100 earthworks of southern England by 1880.⁷ Together he and his father began their survey of Stonehenge in 1874. It took another week’s visit in 1877 to complete, using a theodolite he had re-adjusted himself as well as the new chain, except for a midsummer observation in 1880 as the sun rose: in late 1880 Flinders Petrie’s Stonehenge: Plans, Description and Theories was published. This is still regarded as the most accurate plan to date.

Dated 27 March 1875, a surviving page of foolscap notes describes one of his days walking and surveying around north west Kent, a rare and detailed contemporary account:⁸

St. Mary Cray Church, 10.5 to 10.30’ [and shows highly detailed measure-ments of tower, buttresses and N. window] – ‘end of St. Mary Cray as most of the rest has been so much patched and altered to be uncertain as to its original exactness. I then walked on to Dartford. Could not find any remains of a cross at Laytons Cross on Dartford Heath; looked at Dartford Priory and saw it was inaccessible – private gardens, and then went down to Dartford Church and got in the Church by the Vestry Gate which was open. Dartford Church 12.25 – 12.55 ~ measured buttresses, string moulding over Vestry door, windows, tower. Noted octagonal font now used as flower pot’.

[Not wasting any time…] I then walked to Stone Church – found on south side of chancel a gigantic new stained glass window just stuck in filling up the whole space between buttresses, and old stone tracery thrown out. 1.40 – 2.0 ~ N. door moulding deep relief – probably re-used. Two Roman tiles in S. wall thick 2” long 11.7 and 12.0 long [sic] non-metrical. Many fragments of tile among the flints of the walls. I then walked past Ingress Abbey but the neatness of the railings and grounds, and the lodge, all showed evidence that it was occupied as a residence.

Then went to Swanscombe Church, found it had just been restored about two months ago and hardly any old stone was to be seen; the Church arch had been rebuilt and the whole re-roofed. Three brasses had been removed at the time; there were two little arches in the west side of the chancel wall facing down the church with figures of St. Peter and St.Paul – patron saints – but they were all filled up again. In the S. side of the tower is a round-headed window built of Roman tiles. Swanscombe Church 3 –3.30 made notes, included door to Rood Loft. In passing Weston Cross I saw two blocks of stone at the roadside much like parts of steps, etc. and several others in a farmyard nearby.

Later that year he spent a week in Dorset. He returned to Bromley and drew twelve plans of West Country monuments, and added his first version of the earthworks on Hayes Common. Petrie records showing the plans he had drawn to the then Archaeological Institute in London that June. Here he met the somewhat older Dr Flaxman Spurrell –‘very retiring but became a close friend’ – and also met Col Augustus Lane Fox (better known today by the name he was to adopt shortly afterwards, Pitt-Rivers). It was he who introduced the young man to new ideas in archaeological techniques and the importance of careful finds recording and of stratigraphy. These were principles that in due course Petrie was to pass on to generations of his own students; thirty years later he would publish his own manual of typology entitled Methods and Aims in Archaeology.

Before he handed his first plans to the British Museum, he wrote at Bromley dated March 1876 in explaining his findings that: ‘I have examined many works that I have not surveyed, but only made notes upon; and the Ordnance Survey maps prepared for their examination are a tolerably complete index to all the remains of the South of England’.

From the middle of that year Petrie’s day-by-day activities are recorded on the foolscap sheets he called his journals.⁹ Most mornings he went up to London and went to Sotheby’s ‘for coins’, visited the British Museum or the Public Record Office. Later in the day he worked on improvements to a compass or other instruments. On the 31st he ‘wrote thoughts on Church Music for the Bromley Magazine’.

Exploration further afield

After a visit to friends in Surrey he began to extend his explorations of antiquities into Sussex (easily reached by train), so that in August he was plotting the hillside ridges he found on Mount Caburn, near Lewes, followed by earthworks at Farley and Saxonby. Early in September he went on another week’s walking and surveying trip in Dorset, covering about 20 miles every day, ending in a village for the night. Used 1in. OS maps, carried his equipment and some food in a knapsack. He came home with a sore heel which kept him inactive for three or four weeks. He used the time to work on a book he had in mind, which would be titled Inductive Metrology: the recovery of Ancient Measurements from the Monuments, ‘an attempt to determine the ancient linear standards of measure from the measurements’ (of ancient civilisations), i.e. whether Smyth’s ‘pyramid inch’ of 1.001in. was a reality.¹⁰ The notion that ancient measurements continued into current systems was not new then, and has never been disproved. The Persian measurements, Turkish, Asian, etc., taken from exhibits in the British Museum, saw him busily working through his notes throughout October and November. On 22 December he wrote the Introduction. On New Year’s Day 1877 he ‘finished the first part of Metrology’.

A visit to Sussex in February resulted in a badly wrenched knee, but he could finish writing Metrology by the end of the month. Having drawn up tables of examples, none of which achieved even a mean of 1.001in., his only conclusion was that the project urgently needed a great deal more research. Another man might have abandoned it at this stage. But it drew a great deal of interest when it was published by Blackwood’s later that year. Through the summer he was still working on drawings of various crosses, of Knowlton Rings [Dorset], of Mount Caburn, and others. And he continued to work on the new chain of longer links.

The early months of 1878 seem to have been occupied locally – with more work on Hayes Common earthworks, mentioning especially ‘plotting all the westernmost hill’, by which he means those on West Wickham Common; walking to Blackheath to look at a hole that fell in the middle of the heath, estimating it to be around 10ft by 15, and 30ft deep – but commented in later Notes how the tumulus there had been ‘mangled’, dug over, planted and enclosed by an iron railing; to Greenwich, where he surveyed the group of 23 tumuli. The next day he ‘calculated and plotted Greenwich before breakfast – one of the quickest plans I ever did’ was his comment. He found the ‘Hayes’ surveys needed two sheets of carefully aligned paper to cover the whole area. Another day in May he visited St Paul’s Cray Common to record the banks there, which seem to have puzzled him. Then St Mary Cray and up to Berens Wood by Kevington, for earthworks mentioned by Spurrell; ‘I suppose I did find them but they look far more like modern banks around a copse or spinney. Surveyed it roughly by pacing and compass then back to the hill above St Mary Cray Station, ate some biscuits I got in the village, and enjoyed the view for half an hour’. A rare moment of relaxation.

Early in June he walked up to Keston and found Holwood Park gate open so went in, walked all over the Iron Age camp – ‘then out to Temple Field [Warbank] and down to the chalk pit to see if they had any flints for me as I had ordered 2 years ago: one put by, very good with [illegible] ring. Gave man 6d’. Hayes again; and arranging for trips to east Kent later in the month. He was away from 17-21 and from 27 June to 8 July – we are told to ‘see Journal of that’ separately, but most unfortunately it has separated itself from his other papers. However, a file of ‘Drawings and Measurements’ tells where he went and what he found, beginning at Castle Hill camp, outside Folkestone.¹¹ This had recently been investigated by Pitt-Rivers, but Petrie wanted his own record. He described the site as lying on a somewhat isolated hill, connected by a plateau on the north side with a ridge. Having established his base point he extended lines of measurement over the banks and other features, which enabled him to lay out the measured drawing on his return and the simplified version that eventually evolved. At Lyminge Church he measured the length and width, including the chancel at first, until he found ‘they would not agree, and looking back saw that there were two chancels, which means the nave is eleventh century’. He also visited other east Kent sites; notes about them accompany the plans he deposited with the British Museum in 1879 and they are listed in Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii, 1880. Eynsford Castle and Eltham Palace bridge also occur, on separate but undated documents.

On the second round trip he made surveys at Richborough, where he found both worked and un-worked stone blocks outside Richborough Farm; Ash Church – with only a sixteenth-century tablet of interest to him; at Woodnesborough, Sandwich and Walmer he drew the Norman doorways; ‘Kowlean Castle’ (surely Cooling) where he surveyed a blocked archway. At Stone [by Dartford] he ‘minutely measured the church’, altar, and chancel which he thought were possibly Roman although ‘the dimensions do not work with Roman feet’. At Malling Abbey the west front had the date of 1848 on it! The stones of Coldrum, which he had previously discussed with Spurrell who had done some work there, had separate attention later. It is unlikely that he knew of Rev. Beale Poste’s plans of some 30 years before.

The day after his return he began work – ‘calculated Addington … on 11th onwards plotted the kerbstones of Addington tumulus, a circle east of Chilham, Coldred, Barham Down, Lyminge ~ and earthworks round Shottenden mill near Selling; Stockbury, banks in the water-meadows at Queenborough and Newenden; enclosure at Temple Ewell; Castle Rough by Sittingbourne, Julliberrie’s Grave and the Giant’s Grave overlooking the Stour valley.¹² These all had to be plotted and fair plans made of each. His working method was to record meticulous measurements in the field to transfer to draft plans at home; these are now at the Society of Antiquaries, and should be of great interest to archaeologists today, 150 years on. The fair copies he then drew and later deposited with the British Museum¹³ had on them only a few representative figures, although the points of measurement, as on the Addington plan, are marked with miniscule red circles. The line drawings later published in Archaeologia Cantiana give no indication of the amount of detailed work involved. On 17 July he went ‘to Wrotham – walked [from station] up through village, measured arch under church tower … Coldrum (a very close hot day) laid down points, cleared undergrowth’, which on his first visit had been hiding many of the stones. A week later he surveyed fragments of banks and terraces above a sand quarry at Charlton.

Petrie and the Kent Archaeological Society

Petrie addressed the Kent Archaeological Society at their 1878 AGM (31 July) in Bromley on ‘Fifty Ancient Monuments in Kent’. The previous evening he hired a fly to take his plans to spread out in a temporary museum in the upper room at the Drill Hall in East Street. After the business meeting and dinner, Petrie described the occasion thus: ‘there were no original papers out of 1,100 members! They put me on first to read the notes on earthworks then Spurrell impromptu on Crayford and Eltham pits. Then [Dr] Beeby (an old paper ?)’.

August 1st to Orpington, Priory about 11.30, met the party [KAS] went over Priory and church. Then walked quietly to Holwood having a bite in Farnborough on the way. Party came at about four and Roach Smith told them he believed Holwood to be British, and sundry things about camps which were true but not new…not one walked back to Bromley to see the Hayes earthworks, though Spurrell had urged them to do so last evening… So walked back solo, not caring to go down to West Wickham, as it was only another church and mansion.

Next afternoon also he joined KAS on a visit to dene holes at Crayford and Eltham. Flaxman Spurrell offered him a lift afterwards but he ‘preferred to take his way quietly over the old pit villages enjoying the deliciously ironical sight of carriage loads of Archaeologists driving through the unique remains of the district with the comfortable idea that they were ‘doing’ the antiquities’ … he later suggested to the Society there should be a splinter group of working members to discuss remains in situ, ‘away from the luncheon-seeking fashionables’. Petrie did not care for this sort of junketing – ‘I would rather do a week’s hard work than assist in a day’s pleasure!’ But today he would be the first to concede that KAS, with its training digs and lecture programmes, has come a long way since his time.

After this, the notes Petrie had used for his talk to Kent Archaeological Society had to be worked up for publication in Archaeologia Cantiana. This forms the first published overview of (then known) Kent archaeological sites, fourteen of them illustrated by the simple line drawings of plans. All his life he was meticulous in re-writing his rough notes. ‘My duty was as a salvage man’ he said in his autobiography, ‘to be written up when I was 60’ … which rather conveniently happened to coincide with the cessation of digging activities with the outbreak of war in 1914.

The following June, in 1879, Petrie received a letter from Dr Beeby saying the Hayes tumulus (i.e. the mound on Wickham Common) was to be opened on the next Friday. Accordingly he arrived at 9.30, where he ‘found two men digging in, and George Clinch looking on’.¹⁴ This is the only record that these two ever met, although Petrie’s work on Hayes Common clearly had a great effect on the younger man. ‘Dr.Beeby and Mr. Brent came up soon and watched the work. Nothing was found, but then two trenches caved in as soon as the bottom was reached…we dug also into a slight mound nearby and into a mound and two pit dwellings on the Common, but nothing whatever was found’. They could have hoped to find, if not anything more spectacular, a few potsherds or some flint tools. Archaeological digs in this area in the twentieth century have come up with little more than they did.¹⁵ This in 1879, when the importance of tools made from worked flints, such as George Clinch was finding in the fields below Wickham Common, was only then being recognised. An early reference in Archaeologia Cantiana to ‘several flints of great beauty lately discovered at Milton next Sittingbourne’ dates to 1874.

Petrie’s report on the Monuments of Southern England

That December Petrie presented his Temporary Statement on Earthworks in manuscript, with most of the rest of the plans which had occupied him for so long, to the British Museum Map Library.¹⁶ Another 40 were added a year later, and all are now bound together into one impressive volume with the first twelve. The Kent entries then went a long way towards forming the first gazetteer of Kentish ancient monuments, and are Petrie’s legacy to his native county.

In his introduction he describes his ‘various interesting results’ from the Southern Counties, dividing them into the categories of Defensive(38), Agricultural (21), Pastoral (2), Domestic (7), and Sepulchral or Religious (19); plus Stone Remains (16) and Uncertain (27). The Ordnance Survey maps he prepared for their examination would be a useful index to all the remains of the South of England which he visited.¹⁷ In his notes he comments how some remains show relative ages; those which show geometry and mensuration are perhaps the most important – none of the defensive works with perhaps a couple of exceptions show any signs of intellect – forming circles and ovals; rectangles are more difficult. He seems to have come to no conclusion on relative measurements – ‘postpone the question of measure for now’.

To Egypt at last

With the conclusion of this report and his survey of the monuments of southern England – at least, those which he considered relevant to his quest for the truth about Smyth’s Pyramid Inch – Petrie could turn his mind to the next step. He began to prepare for the visit to Egypt with his father. Unfortunately William Petrie found one reason and then another not to leave home. Flinders Petrie filled the time with a trip to Cornwall where he surveyed a number of west country monuments. He made a point of discussing with Dr Samuel Birch of the British Museum what he should do in Egypt – besides measuring the Great Pyramid. He had spent many hours studying the pots and other finds which had already come to the Museum. It eventually became evident to him that they showed chronological progression in their design and technology: examples of pottery, even the smallest sherds – which had always been thrown aside – could be used to date the context in which they were found. ‘Settle the pottery and the Key is in our hands’, he wrote in his autobiography: not for nothing was he known in later years as the ‘Father of Pots’. Only immaculate recording of layers scraped away inch by inch would yield the maximum information from an excavation. From this realisation the science of dating from stratification was developed. Other artefacts such as beads could be used in dating as well. Petrie remembered his horror, at the age of eight years old, on hearing of the wholesale digging out of a Roman villa on the Isle of Wight. So he arranged with Dr. Birch that he should bring back specimens for the Museum, for which he was offered £5 for transport costs. To do this Petrie would need a permit from the Egyptian authorities.

On 27 November 1880, aged 27, and solely financed at this time by two or three small family legacies, Flinders Petrie left on the 8.07 morning train from Bromley, and took ship at Liverpool for Egypt. He left alone after all, though his father was supposed to follow. He never did. In Egypt Petrie spent the rest of the winter and the following spring surveying and measuring pyramids and other monuments. There were difficulties to surmount, new techniques to invent. In the end, he found Smith’s measurements, on which he had based his extraordinary theory, were quite inaccurate. He had ‘reached the ugly little fact which killed the beautiful theory’. There could be no such thing as a pyramid inch. The theory was dead.

This conclusion came to Petrie only by degrees, so it was without a great deal of difficulty that he was able to adjust to the new situation. And Egypt itself, and the challenge of excavation as opposed to purely recording visible remains, and the discoveries he made, had shown him where, now, his work would lead him. By the end of another season’s digging, in April 1882, he was convinced his future lay in Egypt – ‘Egypt was like a fire so great was the destruction going on, my duty was as a salvage man, to search for knowledge as much as for specimens’.

For the following decade Flinders Petrie spent the winters excavating in Egypt, and the summers writing up his finds and notes in his study in Bromley and preparing for an exhibition in the autumn. In 1892 his mother died and the link with Bromley slackened, especially when his father re-married. By that time Petrie’s renown had grown and a chair in Egyptology had been created at University College, London; so he took rooms nearby in Bloomsbury; though by this time Bromley was beginning to appreciate his fame and the Bromley Record devoted a page to him in 1898.18 Although, when in 1897 Petrie married Hilda Urlin, his bride was received in Crescent Road somewhat coolly, a few years later William Petrie welcomed his new grandson John warmly – ‘a sweet memory’ recorded his son, for the old man died soon afterwards. Flinders Petrie returned to Bromley to sort out papers, including his mother’s, among which one could assume were those Journals he had sent home to her from his journeyings. These are now safely deposited in UCL’s ‘Petrie Museum’, along with other archival material (and artefacts from his later excavations). The Manuscript department of the British Library contains his Preliminary Statement on Earthworks and some correspondence, and the library of the Society of Antiquaries of London holds his manuscript plans. Copies of some of this material have been deposited in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

From all this, together with his autobiography, one can follow the progression of the young Petrie from the small boy fascinated by the measurement of space and volume, through his meeting with Smyth’s grand idea and its disillusionment, to the innovatory explorer of the past whose name is famous in the world of archaeology, though perhaps less known for his work in his native county.

acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Mr Bernard Nurse, Librarian of the Society of Antiquaries of London, for his help and for permission to reproduce plans from the Petrie Folder in the Library. Also Mr Clifford Watkins for photographing these, and Mary Hinkley of University College, London, for photography at the Petrie Museum. The KAS kindly made a grant towards the cost of the illustrations.

endnotes

¹ William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Seventy Years in Archaeology (1930).

² Introductory notes to Plans of Earthworks, Stone Circles etc. in the South of England, British Library Add. Ms.31333.

³ Margaret Drower, Flinders Petrie: a life in Archaeology (1985).

⁴ ‘Notes on Kentish Earthworks’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii (1880), 8.

⁵ University College of London, Petrie Museum, Petrie’s Journal 1876-1885, ref. WFP1 16/3/2.

⁶ Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii (1880), 13.

⁷ Plans of Earthworks, Stone Circles etc. in the South of England.

⁸ Petrie Museum, Petrie File P1.15/7/1 – loose sheet.

⁹ Petrie’s Journal, 1876.

¹⁰ The book was published in 1877 – copy in British Museum, Anthropology Library.

¹¹ Drawings and Measurements, in File W.F.P1 15/7/1, University College of London.

¹² Draft plans from field measurements are in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Petrie Folder of Manuscript Plans.

¹³ Fair copies are those in Add. Ms. 31333, British Library.

¹⁴ Then aged 19. In Antiquarian Jottings of Bromley and Around (1889), Clinch recalls a trench of 2 x 8 x 30 [ft] being opened by ‘several gentlemen’. George Clinch went on to work in the Library of the British Museum and later became the first Librarian at the Society of Antiquaries.

¹⁵ E.g. B.J. Philp, Excavations in West Kent 1960-70.

¹⁶ See Plans of Earthworks. Moved to Manuscript Dept. in 1881.

¹⁷ Not found.

¹⁸ Bromley Record, monthly newspaper, December 1898, p. 149. Bound copies in Bromley Library.

addenda

Petrie’s Notes from Plans deposited at the British Museum, now British Library, Add. 31.333 (scale 1:500)

41 Tumuli in Greenwich Park, Kent : these [23] tumuli are situated on the edge of a hill about 300 yards south of the Observatory, which lies on the opposite hill. Twelve other tumuli near these, but not forming part of this group, were destroyed in forming the reservoir in the Park. The tumulus and camp on Blackheath is only 700 yards south of these. Surveyed 13th May 1878.

40 Earthworks on Castle Hill, 1½ miles NW of Folkestone, Kent : this Camp lies on a somewhat isolated hill, connected by a plateau on the north side with a ridge, but falling steeply on the south and east. The southern enclosure is much higher than the remainder. The depth of some pits is entered in inches. Surveyed June 1878.

38 A Group of Stones at Colderham one mile ENE of Trottescliffe, Kent : the greater part of these stones lie on the edge of a field; but those on the eastern side, and some others, have fallen down about 20 feet beside a roadway; apparently owing to their being undermined as the side of the road was cut away. The small red circles on the outlines of the stones show – as usual – the measured points; those stones without any such marks are only sketched into the plan approximately as they are so thickly overgrown as to be scarcely traceable. The arrows show the direction of dip of the stones. The buried parts have only been probed in some cases, owing to accidental difficulties. Surveyed June 1878.

36 St Paul’s Cray – ½ mile SE of Chislehurst, Kent : the banks lie on an open piece of common, their western ends terminating along the side of a slight valley that runs southwards; the ground also falls slightly to the east. It is strange that, although the ditch is outside the main ridge, yet by the form of the side banks they seem to have been successively southwards, and if so their ditches are inside. Surveyed May 1878.

33 Fragment of an entrenchment ½ mile NE of Charlton, Kent : this fragment lies on a high hill that has been quite cut away on the NE and NW sides for sand and gravel; a valley runs along the SW side; and on the SE of the camp; the hill continues on a slightly lower level. This camp was never very wide; probably not much more than ½ as much as the length of the remaining fragment. The inner bank has been formed on the SW by throwing the earth downwards, there being no bank whatever at the edge of the plateau (marked [on the plan] by a line), and both the banks at the NW end form simply terraces without any distinct ditch. There are two or three faint ditches, like those within the camp (which are very faint) in a field on the SE. Surveyed 29 July 1878.

32 Tumulus and Fragment of a Camp on Blackheath, Kent : the whole ground has been so much disturbed by the digging for gravel that the remainder of the camp is entirely destroyed. Some pits in it may be ancient, but this is very uncertain, as all the ground inside the curves has been dug out some feet lower than that outside it. The Tumulus appears to be later than the camp as its slight ditch is very plain on the side where the bank would have joined it; if coeval with the camp it would have been placed symmetrically on the bank. The upper edge of the tumulus has been mangled by the Metropolitan Board of Works, who have dug it over, planted it, and enclosed it with iron railing. A way still exists, now partly a footpath, direct from this camp to that at Holwood Park, Keston. Surveyed 1876.

30 A group of stones ½ mile N of Addington, Kent : a long mound of earth, about 5 feet high occupies the ground between these two lines of stones, the stones having apparently been leaned against the sides of the mound. The arrows show the direction of dip of each stone. The notes of thickness [?] are in inches. The red figure beside each stone, shows its rise on a base of 10.

The brown shading only extends over the parts above ground, the rest of the stone was found by probing; and though not quite so accurate as the visible part it sufficiently shows how imperfect any plan is that merely represents the visible parts. The dotted outline of some of the stones shows that the edge was not reached by probing, and consequently the measured parts only show a minimum. This has hitherto erroneously been called a circle. It seems to have consisted of a cromlech at the end of a large long mound (as Kit’s Coty was in Stukeley’s time) with a row of stones leaning against the sides, and perhaps a slight ditch beyond them. The red pencil lines show what are probably the original lines of the stones. Surveyed June 1878.

13 At one mile SSE of Hayes there is an oval earthwork being later than, and using, an earlier square work; both of them being earlier than the pit dwellings around. December 1875.

Note: Numbers on List bound into Volume are correct if one is added i.e. Hayes becomes 13. The loose list does not tie in with contents. Some plans are not listed.

Other plans of Kent monuments but without extra information include: Ash, Bexley, Coldred, Charlton, Chilham, Chislehurst, Eynsford, Farn-borough, Gillingham, Greenwich, Keston, Kingston, Newenden, Milton, Queenborough, St Paul’s Cray, Selling, Wye.

Petrie’s Notes on drawings in ‘Monuments in Kent’, in Petrie Musum, 115/15/7 (2)

Cudham Church – July 1874. Measured piscina. Sketch plan and notes from memory.

Bromley Parish Church – 10.7.74. Tower. Drew window in tower.

Hayes Roadside well [Husseys] – suggests alterations – if a restoration has taken place then the distance between the supports is worth nothing!

St Mary Cray Church – 27.3.75 page foolscap. Measurements tower, buttresses, N. window … end of St. M. C. as most of the rest has been so much patched and altered to be uncertain as to its original exactness.

Dartford Church – 27.3.75. Measured buttresses, moulding over Vestry door.

Stone Church – 27.3.75. N. door moulding, deep relief probably re-used. Two Roman tiles in S. wall thick 2” long 11.7 (sic) and 12.0 long, non metrical. Large new window, old tracery thrown out.

Swanscombe Church – 27.3.75. Newly restored. Arch rebuilt, re-roofed. Niches filled. Door to rood loft survived.

Wrotham Church – 17.7.78. Measured arch under tower.

Kent tour, 1878

Sandwich, St Clement Church, north door, outline mouldings [only].

Walmer, south doorway.

Lyminge, measured length and width; chancel included at first but they would not agree, and looking back saw that there were two chancels, means the nave 11th century.

Woodnesborough, fine arch to west door.

Fig. 1 Flinders Petrie c.1900, by G.F. Watts.

Fig. 2 Kits Coty House, watercolour by Flinders Petrie (1893), by kind permission of University College London.

Fig. 3 Folkestone earthworks, from ‘Drawings with measurements and triangulations’, by kind permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Fig. 4 Folkestone earthworks, final version, from ‘Plans of Earthworks, Stone Circles, etc., in the South of England’. © The British Library Board. All Rights reserved. BL Ref: 1022251-051. Licence number: ADD 31333.