Discovering Perry Woods Archaeological Project

Perry Wood covers the slopes of three hills on the downland between Selling and Shottenden west of Canterbury. The Discovering Perry Wood project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and managed as a Countryside Partnership by the Mid Kent Downs Project and Swale Borough Council who own the wood. The project’s aim is to help the local community to explore the natural and historic environment of Perry Wood and to develop a better understanding of the value of the woods to the Kent Downs landscape. The project is also interested in recording more recent memories from people who have experiences of living, working and relaxing in the woods and exploring the archaeological aspects of the woods.

The Archaeological Project

The archaeological project was launched in October 2008 at a ‘Ghosts and Memories’ event organised by the Discovering Perry Wood project at Selling. Volunteers from the local community were encouraged to join a research group to take on documentary research and field work, with the support of professional archaeologists from the Trust for Thanet Archaeology. An exhibition and talk from the Trust gave background information on the archaeological sites in Perry Wood and displayed maps of the area that show how the topography and geology has shaped settlement and the location of the archaeological sites in Perry Wood. The first meeting of the research group was held in January 2009 where the volunteers decided to carry out an earthwork survey on one of the most important sites in the wood.

TOP: Walking the earthworks.

ABOVE: Exposition of the earthworks to volunteers.

RIGHT: Instruction on using survey equipment.

OPPOSITE: Study area: shaded relief and composite earthwork.

The earthwork survey project

The principal archaeological discoveries made in Perry Wood are two sites where important Mesolithic flintwork has been found in quantity and an earthwork enclosure located in the north-west area of the woods on Windmill Hill, which was also known in the past as Shottenden Hill. The research group is concentrating on exploring the earthwork for its first field work project.

The earliest description we have of the earthwork at Shottenden Hill is by Edward Hasted in his History of Kent. Hasted suggested that the enclosure was most likely to be the remains of a Roman summer camp or exploratory fort, possibly associated with the remains of a larger fort that he had seen as earthworks at Sellingham Wood, two miles to the south-east. Hasted noted the commanding view from the Shottenden Hill site over the county of Kent, reaching along the English Channel to the south and east as far as the North Foreland at the eastern tip of the Isle of Thanet. To the west and north the Essex coast and the North Sea could be observed. An early drawing of the earthworks at Shottenden Hill, as well as the Mill that gave it its later name, was published in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1786. Zechariah Cozens took a ramble up Shottenden Hill inspired by an interest in an Admiralty semaphore station that was built on the platform at the top of the hill near the Mill. He was soon intrigued by ditches and banks that surrounded the hill. Cozens suggested that the requirements of military technology linked the choice of the site for both the Roman and more recent signal tower structures.

In later years the camp at Shottenden Hill continued to be referred to in works such as King's Handbook for Travellers in Kent and Sussex of 1858, but gradually the site was increasingly obscured by the trees and undergrowth. Today the commanding views described by Hasted are difficult to appreciate. In 1880 the ditches were surveyed and drawn by William Flinders Petrie as part of a general survey of earthworks of Kent, and a small scale drawing was reproduced in Archaeologia Cantiana. Petrie's drawing does not show entrances which Hasted had earlier described.

Later in the century the earthworks were examined by O.G.S. Crawford for the Ordnance Survey. Since 1953 only part of the south eastern corner of the enclosure has been drawn on the O.S. maps and recent records have even described the earthworks as having been largely destroyed, which aerial photography and observations on the ground have shown to be far from the truth.

From the Trust's plots of previous surveys and the new aerial photographs it became clear that the earthworks on Shottenden Hill were not well recorded and were poorly dated. Early in February 2009 the volunteers of the archaeological project joined the Trust in a walkover survey of the earthworks, exploring their extent before the bracken that normally obscures them had started to grow. The archaeology research group were keen to get on with surveying the earthworks while they could still be seen. The next stage of the project got under way at an archaeological survey taster day where the Trust gave a hands-on demonstration of archaeological earthwork survey methods. The group were shown how to identify the features of the earthworks and how they would be taking part in the surveying and drawing process that will create the accurate plan the site deserves. A timetable was drawn up for the end of March when, with further training and support from the Trust, small groups of volunteers carried out the survey.

Armed with an accurate plan, the group will have a guide to the priorities for further exploration, possibly leading to a small excavation later in the year. With better information on the earthworks, the wider Discovering Perry Wood project will be able to create a management plan for them. They will also be able to develop resources such as reconstruction drawings that can be used to ensure that this important site is given the status it deserves in Kent's historic environment.

Earthworks at Selling after W.M. Flinders Petrie 1880

RIGHT: Plan of the site.