Excavations at Landsdowne Road Tonbridge 1972 and 1976

EXCAVATIONS AT LANSDOWNE ROAD, TONBRIDGE, 1972 AND 1976* ANTHONY D. F. STREETEN,_B.A. In 1972, rescue excavations were conducted at two sites on the northwest fringes of the medieval settlement:1 one, 100 m. west of the High Street, a section through the scheduled defences near the east end of F osse Road (TQ 58974685); the other, on the site of 196-208 High Street (TQ 59104690), adjoining the northern entrance to the medieval town. The work was directed by Mr. J. H. Money, M.A., F.S.A. and Dr. R. M. Ogilvie, M.A., F.B.A., F.S.A., and supervised by Messrs. C. B. Giles, A. D. F. Streeten, and A. G. Webster. After the demolition of 210 High Street, the writer was responsible for the excavation of sections through the ditch, in January 1976.2 The records of both excavations have been deposited in the Local History Collection of the Tonbridge Historical Society, at the Public Library, Tonbridge. DOCUMENTARY AND PRINTED SOURCES The course of the medieval ditch and rampart described by W admore (1886)3 is illustrated in the Victoria County History,4 and these defences have traditionally been linked with the licence granted to the Earl of Gloucester, enrolled in. Paris on 20th December, 1259.5 However, Lambarde (1570), the first to record this document, being unable to find traces of a wall, concluded that 'either the Earl did nothing therein, or that which he did is now invisible and came to naught',6 and Thomas Philipott (1776) elaborates: 'the war breaking out not long after this, • This paper is printed with the aid of a grant from the Department of the Environment. 1 The excavation was financed by the Department of the Environment, the Kent Archaeological Society, the former Tonbridge Urban District Council, Tonbridge School, and the Tonbridge Historical Society, and undertaken with the permission of the owners, the Kent County Council and Oldham Estates Ltd. 2 The excavation was financed by the Department of the Environment and undertaken with the permission of the Kent County Council. 3 J. F. Wadmore, 'Tonbridge Castle and Its Lords', Arch. Cant., xvi (1886), 12-57. 4 I. Chalkley Gould, 'Ancient Earthworks', V.C.H. (Kent), London, 1908, I, 424. 5 Cal. P.R., 44 Henry Ill, 108. 6 W. Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent, written in the yeere 1570, 3rd Edn., London, n.d., 464. 105 ANTHONY D. F. STREETEN between the King and Simon de Montfort to whose interest the Earl of Gloucester was by a solemn combination closely united, the grant of the above mentioned king (Henry III) was made ineffectual'.7 However, this licence for Richard Earl of Gloucester and Hertf ord to close his town of Tonebrugg with a wall and to crenellate it ('claudere muro et kernellare'),8 may imply no more than the provision of an earthen rampart, perhaps crenellated with a timber palisade. Indeed, a 'grant for three years at the request of Hugh Daudele, the younger, to the bailiffs and good men of the town ofTunbrugge of murage and pavage, upon all wares for sale brought into their town' 9 was enrolled at Mortlake in 1318, and perhaps it was intended to replace an earlier bank and ditch by a wall. 10 Alternatively, does the bank represent the initial phase of more elaborate and uncompleted thirteenth-century defences,1 1 and was the rampart a hurriedly erected compromise adopted because of the political situation? 12 Or, did the town remain undefended until the fourteenth century, and was the rampart financed by the taxation of 1318-21? There are no visible signs of a wall today, and the historical evidence of murage grants is inconclusive. Likewise, the nature of the medieval north entrance to the town is uncertain. Wadmore's reconstruction 13 depicts an elaborate stone gatehouse; but the evidence for this is insubstantial, and lands mentioned in a thirteenth-century Papal grant to the canons of Tonbridge are merely described as 'juxta barram in villa de Thonebrigge'. 14 King (1782), however, offers more promising evidence while describing the outer earthworks of the castle: 'To the west of the castle, began a bank, that was carried two miles up the country through hills and valleys, to enable those who had the care of the castle to fill the mote, at least 14 feet above the level of the valley in its neighbourhood; ... To the north, in front of the castle, were two other ditches, at a considerable distance: the one dry, the other filled by means of the bank just mentioned; this last was very deep and broad; and passed through the town, only at a 7 T. Philipott, Vi/lare Cantianum, 2nd Edn., Lynn, 1776, 345. 8 Lambarde, op. cit., 463. 9 Cal. P.R., 11 Edward Il, 133. 1° For early ramparts preceding stone walls, see C. Platt (ed.), Excavalion.s in Medieval Southampton 1953-1969, Leicester, 1975, I, 37; and M. W. Barley, 'Medieval town wall, Park Row, Nottingham', Med. Arch., ix (1965), 164-7. 11 For a rampart probably contemporary with stone walls, see P.A. Barker, 'Excavations on the Town Wall, Roushill, Shrewsbury', Med. Arch., v (1961), 183-4 . 11 For a comparable situation In 1274-5 at Sandwich, see H . L. Turner, Town Defences in England and Wales, London, 1971, 163: 'it was ordered that the trenches constructed during the late disturbance in the realm should be filled in and levelled with earth, and that the barbicao and rest of the fortifications to oppose the king should be taken down .. .' J 11 Wadmore, op. clt., 26. 14 Id., Arch. Cant., xxii (1897), 270. For reinterpretation, see G. P. Hoole, 'Ferox Hall, Tonbridge', unpublished, 1970, Ton. Hist. Soc. Local Hist. Coll. 106 EXCAVATIONS AT LANSDOWNE ROAD, TONBRIDGE, 1972 AND 1976 quarter of a mile from the gate of the castle; where (from some piles dug up 40 years ago), there is the strongest reason to believe there was a drawbridge' .15 'This last' is undoubtedly the town ditch, but whether the piles were at the gate of the barbican or the town is not clear; the punctuation suggests the latter, in which case they may have been found near the site of 210 High Street. Isolated deeds from the sixteenth century onwards can be linked with messuages in the north-west sector of the medieval town, 16 and the extent of seventeenth-century development has been discussed by Chalklin (1961).17 It seems probable that, on the west side of the High Street, the northern limit of development within the medieval defences was marked by 'Buckingham's Barn' for about 200 years after its presumed erection early in the sixteenth century;18 whereas the back-land between the High Street and the fosse remained substantially free of building even in the nineteenth century.19 On the High Street frontage, too, the buildings remained well spaced; complaint was made on 5th October 1478, that 'the King's highway is damaged to the hurt of the neighbourhood against the garden of the lord, the Duke of Buckingham, by the overflowing of the ditches there' 20 and, although this cannot be linked with any certainty to the manor lands in this part of the town, 'three messuages, tenements or dwellinghouses (now being used in four several tenements or dwellings)',21 lying between Buckingham's Barn and the 'footway leading to Hilden Green' (Lansdowne Road), are first mentioned in 1706 and probably replaced similar gardens, extending development to the edge of the enclosed area of the former medieval town. Some of these tenements were used as shops and, by 1790, the property included a 'blacksmith's shop, forge and travise' and was bounded to the north by 'certain leasehold messuages belonging to the heirs of George Summerton joining a footway leading to Hilden Green' (presumably 210 High Street). However, the area had greater economic potential, and 'all those five [elsewhere described as six] messuages, tenements or dwellinghouses erected and built by George Children on the site where a blacksmith's 15 King, 'Mr King's Sequel to the Observations on Ancient Castles', Archaeologia, vi (17168 2), 279-80. 17 E.g. K.A.O. U 282 T 37. For discussion, see A. G. Webster (forthcoming). C. W. Chalklin, 'A Seventeenth-Century Market Town: Tonbridge', Arch. Cant., lxx1v8i ( 1961), 152-62. Dating unreliably based on place-name evidence, traditionally linked with the Sta19fford Dukes of Buckingham, the third and last of whom was executed in 1520. The First Edition O.S. Plan, 1866 (50 in.: 1 mile, sheet 50/12/7 NW and 50/12/2 S¥Q1 , shows the grounds of 182 High Street which extended as far west as the earthwork. 21 Brit. Mus. Add. Ch. 23788-23791. Transcript in Ton. Hist. Soc. Local Hist. CoU. Tonbridge Archives A 5 contains the abstract of title for nos. 196-208 with the supporting original documents. See also, G. P. Hoole, '196-208 High Street, Tonbridge', unpublished, 1970, Ton. Hist. Soc. Local Hist. Coll. 107 ANTHONY D. F. STREETEN shop formerly stood' were sold to Thomas Knox in 1817; by 1826, Buckingham's Barn had been demolished and was replaced c. 1836 by three well-built houses known as Rose Place. 22 THE EXCAVATION Medieval Defences The section at Site A (A-B, Figs. 1 and 2) shows that much of the scheduled rampart23 visible before excavation is in fact a recent deposit (1),24 up to 1,2 m. thick, and separated from the earlier defences by a modern refuse layer (2), probably contemporary with the upper fill of the ditch. The outer face of the medieval bank shows no sign of a revetment and a large lump of clay (9) had collapsed on to the slight berm at a time when the ditch was already heavily silted. Whether this was water-filled as implied by King25 remains uncertain. During excavation, it became badly waterlogged, and it can be inferred, from the artificial sealing of yellow clay (4) laid over 'natural' silt (11), from the broad profile, and from pools observed at a late date on the south side of Bordyke and Lansdowne Road, 26 that this ditch must at least have held surface water in the medieval period. Although the absence of a buried turf-line beneath the rampart suggests extensive preparation of the site, 27 it also makes it difficult to determine the precise extent of medieval earth-moving. It was not possible to locate the tail of the rampart, but soil, which had probably been eroded from the gently sloping profile (8), yielded a fourteenthcentury French jetton. The upper part of the bank (12) contained sherds of medieval coarse pottery and a fragment of samian ware. Beneath this was a mixture of clay and brown soil (13), which is presumed to be the initial spoil from the ditch. This implies a height for the bank of only 2-1 m. Alternatively, the underlying clay (14) may also be artificial and not a natural drift deposit, and this would suggest a total height of c. 4•0 m. The latter interpretation would provide a more formidable defence, but the stratification on the outer edge of the ditch makes this unlikely. By contrast, the machine-cut rampart section on Site B (E-F, Figs. 1 and 2) shows a clear turf line (17), c. 5-25 cm. thick, containing much charcoal presumably associated with undergrowth clearance, and 22 Tonbridge Archives A 25 (Catalogue). 23 List of Ancient Monuments in England, H.M.S.O., 1972, 128, no. 136. 24 Numerals in brackets refer to layers, numbered separately for Sites A and B; see Fiit.2. 'ls See n. 15. 26 Letter from H. McGill, dated 8th December 1922, Ton. Hist. Soc. Local Hist. Coll. 27 As implied at Shrewsbury; see note 11. 108 .... 0 \0 Fig. I. Location Plan. Crown Copyright Reserved. .... \0 , N > z 0 .... .... 0 A C 0 0 LANSDOWNE ROAD TONBRIDGE \ ·@, '··. \A'.􀀔􀀕·)0/-􀀖 -::􀀗:is::-i:.-,\Jt 5 􀀅--· 2 4 6 10 20 feet (D TOPSOM @ Sanely )