Discovering Roman Wye
By C. Paul Burnham
Wye Historical Society has always encouraged research into local history and the publication of its findings, most recently in A New History of Wye (2003) and several booklets on aspects. Its recent Dig for History initiative has aimed to use archaeological discoveries to extend the chronological reach of written sources. Initially, we have sought to explore the history of Wye in Roman times, and a booklet entitled Discovering Roman Wye is in the press.
Our predecessors in the nineteenth century were much exercised by bumps and hollows in the landscape. Sadly, most of these tumuli and dykes have been erased by heavy agricultural machinery, including more than two hundred hollows on Wye Downs (around M on the map of the Wye Estate), which Morris in 1842 considered the remains of a village of Druids.
Still, in about 1950, members of a short-lived Wye College Archaeological Society, said to have been accompanied by Mortimer Wheeler, thought Iron Age pottery found there indicated a settlement. In 1996, members of the Wealden Iron Research Group, aware of occurrences of Pliocene ironstone on the summit plateau of the Downs between Lenham and Folkestone, concluded that the pits worked sand or sandstone, as they only found one piece of iron slag. But in the New History of Wye, I clarified that the ironstone found in the subsoil was taken to Wye for smelting. Jim Bradshaw had already shown that iron smelting was an essential industry in Wye, which started a few years before the Roman invasion.
Thus, soon after landing, the invading Romans would first encounter iron smelters at Wye, important to them both in peace and war. Iron ore was nearby to the east, and woodland producing charcoal in what is now King’s Wood to the west. As a bonus, the ironworks (A) was surrounded by several hundred hectares of high- quality agricultural land, capable of yielding profitable cereal yields almost every year for centuries.
Moreover, a road was probably already being constructed, linking Wye to Canterbury and important ports. So, the Wye area would have been an obvious candidate for nationalisation as an Imperial Estate.
However, they found a problem in that the source of the iron ore was on a hilltop and difficult to access. Moreover, on Wye Downs, the ironstone chunks were only sparingly dispersed in the subsoil. A richer source was already known about five kilometres east at Staple Lees, near the later village of Hastingleigh. Only an Imperial Estate could call upon military engineers and slave labourers to build a road from Wye suitable for laden ox carts. As motorists sail up Wye Downs from Coldhabour to the Nature Reserve on a perfectly graded incline, we probably benefit from their work. The medieval coach road from Wye to Dover ran north through Hassell Street. The surviving road (presumably Roman) was only re-metalled for use by the Parish Surveyor in 1736, as recorded in a surviving Vestry minute book.
The ore was roasted at Staple Lees and brought down to a stockyard in Wye (E), where the modern Havillands Estate stands. The nearest smelter was where a thin sliver of woodland adjoins the railway about four hundred metres to the northeast. Charcoal would come down White Hill by the ancient ‘sunk lane’ from King’s Wood, which continued to belong to the Wye Estate in medieval times. Some of the ore was carted from the Wye stockyard along the main Roman road to a smelter at Westhawk Farm. This was thoroughly studied during a recent excavation. Embedded in one of the pieces of ore found was a piece of flint, proving its origin from the North Downs and not from the Weald. There was also a Roman smelter at Westwell, located on the High-Speed railway line, but this may have been supplied from a source on Charing Hill.
The main smelter in Wye (A) was investigated by Jim Bradshaw in 1970. He found the bowl-shaped bases of the amazingly small ‘bloomery’ smelting furnaces.
They had to be small because they needed to be blown with a hand bellows continually for about 24 hours. Then the furnace was broken open, and the red hot ‘bloom’ transferred to a nearby building to be hammered free of excess slag. It is not surprising that the Romans used slaves for such tasks! Close supervision was essential, so it is not surprising that the ‘Ironmaster’s’ house was also alongside the smelters at Wye. The ‘Ironmaster’ was very well paid. Abundant fragments of costly glass and ‘Samian’ ceramic vessels were found, and some coins. Notably, a bronze stylus handle was found, showing that he was literate and could keep the records needed to manage an Imperial Estate. Fortunately, some small finds from this ‘dig,’ though not any documentation, were deposited with the Canterbury Archaeological Trust.
Heading the general management of the Estate would also warrant a well-rewarded official. The probable site of his house (K) is also known, but it was partly destroyed by the construction of the railway in 1845/6, and the remainder is occupied by an intensively planted and managed nursery and is inaccessible to excavation. Fortuitously, Samian pottery and coins have been found, including silver denarii from the beginning of the second century and bronze coins from the middle of the fourth century.
Iron smelting at the Westhawk settlement continued until about 250 AD and use of the Wye stockyard also ceased at about this time. The latter half of the third century was also a time of great political turmoil, with a new Emperor or local usurper almost yearly! It has been noted elsewhere in Britain that much imperial land was sold into private ownership during this period. Often, the new owners built luxurious villas, but what happened at Wye is still uncertain.
During the third century, the focus of the estate moved to the area between the Harville farmhouse and the river. Two early Roman buildings at C, on the riverbank, have been partially excavated, although the results were incompletely recorded. This site is very damp, liable to frequent flooding and unsuitable for a high-class residence. There are indications, however, of a complex of buildings higher up the field (D), possibly again partly destroyed by the railway, which may be a third-century villa.
Fig 6: Bronze stylus handle found during excavation of the Ironmaster’s House (CAT)
Fig 7a: Hadrian denarius 120-121 AD (Dr Geoffrey Chapman); 7b: Hadrian coin; 7c: Trajan coin; 7d: Trajan rev
Fig 8: Plan of Bircholt Roman tile kiln (CAT)
In the wooded area southwest of Wye, Jim Bradshaw excavated a small tile kiln north of Bircholt Court, which operated briefly later in the third century. This may have been constructed to supply the builders of a large high-status building complex at Wye. Such need would be episodic, for most of the buildings on the Wye estate had walls of wood or wattle and daub with thatched roofs, which is true of the central settlement (B), which was coterminous with the Churchfield estate.
One of the riverside buildings (C1), excavated by Bradshaw in 1972, was built in the first century, when it seems to have been partly residential and partly warehousing, mainly of ceramics. Substantial amounts of pottery, sometimes scores of the same kind of vessel, have been dredged from the river, only twenty metres away. This suggests that, before the erection of about ten weirs for water mills and heavy depletion of river flow by groundwater abstraction, the Stour was navigable by Roman river barges, which were like very long punts that could carry ten tons with a draft of only fifty centimetres.
When built in the first century, this building had a domestic hypocaust, which was converted to industrial use in the third century. A complete mortarium of the mid-third century was found in the enlarged flue. A second, larger hypocaust was added to the south end of the building, also in the third century. It could have served as a dual-purpose corn drier and malt kiln. Large-scale cereal production had replaced iron smelting as the principal money- making activity of the estate.
Nearby, another Roman building (C2) was partly excavated by Dr Paul Wilkinson and Kent Archaeological Field School students in 2019. Water was supplied to it by a leat, but no iron spindle or millstones were found. It was a brewery.
On a riverside knoll about half a kilometre upstream from here (at J), a hamlet called Brunesford existed in medieval times, which dwindled to the single farmstead called White House Farm, demolished about 1900. Here, around 380 to 400 AD, lived a distinct small community.
They lived with some luxuries, such as expensive pottery, but in flimsy houses, which have left little archaeological trace. The only evidence yet encountered was the filling of a rubbish pit revealed in trenches for drainage pipes. This was excavated by Jim Bradshaw and volunteers from the Ashford Archaeological Society in 1973 and reported by Sonia Hawkes in the journal Britannia. Tightly packed round with domestic rubbish was a military-style bronze buckle with adhering traces of a leather belt, a 16 cm long dagger, and a hoard of fifty-two coins that had probably been contained in a cloth bag. The oldest was a worn Carausius; the remainder ranged from 323 to 378. These objects were buried to conceal evidence of a crime, perhaps the murder of some authoritative figure. This find should be followed up. Unfortunately, a soil resistance survey showed only the remains of a Tudor farmstead, and metal detection yielded only a comparatively modern horseshoe!
It is hoped that members of the KAS can help by enabling a geomagnetic survey that might yield the position of another rubbish pit or a hut site. Similar equipment would allow further investigation of sites connected with the iron smelting industry.
Information about purchasing the ‘Discovering Roman Wye’ booklet will be posted on the Wye Historical Society website in December 2023. It will be unusual to describe an important Roman estate where the position and nature of the main residential villa remains uncertain. A challenge for the future!
The indispensable help of Mrs Maureen de Saxe in editing the text and producing the key map showing Roman sites in the whole Wye area is warmly acknowledged, as is the encouragement and specialist advice given by Dr Steven Willis.
Guide to Geophysical Survey |
C 1 = site of ‘Bradshaw’ building |
C 2 = the ‘Wilkinson’ building [Site ‘C’ on map inside front cover] |
D = unexcavated building complex [Site ‘D’ on map inside front cover] |