Canterbury Kiln Site Additional Notes on the Kiln Pottery

( 117 ) NOTE ON THE KILN STRUCTURE. BY E. E. JESSUP, E.S.A. THE kiln, of oval shape and working on the up-draught principle, is of Grimes' Type IV.1 It consisted of a fire tunnel and fire pit, separated from the oven by a floor of clay bars and tiles. The kiln had a domed top of daub and clay mixed with potsherds, which would be renewed at each firing, and on analogy with other more perfect examples, a central opening in the dome by which the draught could be controUed by the use of some sort of covering. The firing tunnel is of rather more than average length, presumably to increase the draught. As Mr. Webster has pointed out above, the oven floor had no support of any land other than the central wall, and we have here a structure precisely similar to that found by the writer in kilns at Hoo Junction, Higham, Springhead and Southfleet,2 in both of which the oven floor was most probably carried on a temporary wooden framework. The framework would disappear in the firing, with a consequent stiffening of the oven floor and its ultimate fusion with the clay walls of the kiln. The Roman level at the time the kiln was built is difficult to ascertain, but it is certain that the firing floor and part of the oven were sunk below ground level in the usual way to provide a good draught, and security against the inadvertent cracking of the dome. The Canterbury Archseological Society, and Mr. Webster and Mr. Higenbottam in particular, are to be congratulated on their examination of this discovery which, but for their immediate interest, would have suffered the unhappy fate of much of the structural material from Roman Canterbury. 1 Castle Lyons Report, Y Cymmrodor, XLI, p. 53. 2 V.C.H. Kent, III, p. 130. 11