St Mildred’s Tannery, Canterbury
Since co-writing a desk assessment in 1998, St Mildred’s Tannery (TR 145577) has taken up more of my time than can possibly be healthy, and it’s not over yet. It was soon clear that large scale excavation was neither feasible nor necessary. Most of the 3.5 hectare site lies just west of the intramural branch of the Great Stour, where the water table is very high: perfect for organic remains but difficult and expensive to excavate, even in areas cleared of tanning waste, and no basements or underground carparks are being built. Preservation in situ has been preferred, with engineers and architects designing around and above the archaeology where possible and minimising impact where not.
Between earlier excavations, evaluation trenching, auguring, probing, geophysics and ongoing watching briefs on de-contamination and construction work, we can show much of the site west of the river was built on by the first half of the first century, following Watling Street and side roads. A possible watermill projected into the river upstream, forcing the Stour to run faster and cut deeper. This may not have pleased the new suburb as Watling Street probably crossed it at a ford (though traffic would have taken a different route, via Biggles). The final phase of a building excavated in 1987 was apparently razed in the third century, perhaps because downstream riverside developments were causing flooding. Most of the surrounding area was also probably abandoned, though one large (public?) building, with walls over a metre wide and solid oak piles over half a metre square, might have continued in use. Demolition material may have found its way into the town wall, built about the same time, crossing the isle’s southern-western end.
St. acres, granted as a refuge to the nuns of Lyminge in 804, were bounded by the river to one side and the wall to the other. The third side of the plot probably ran along Watling Street: a ditch was cut along its crest where the road was still on dry land and a brushwood trackway continued its line across the marshland which had developed closer to the river. This trackway, like a later one on another line, led to an island of drier ground formed by the oak-piled Roman building: two mid-Saxon bronze pins were recovered from the final surface within its walls. Another brushwood trackway, which continued across a wide watercourse as a stilted causeway, may relate to partly early medieval re-occupation of the site.
Excavation at St Mildred's Tannery
LEFT:
The wall of the large Roman building revealed in a new sewer trench.
ABOVE:
'Under starters orders.' Team GSB with GPR and resistivity rigs.
site but, from the thirteenth century, the neighbouring Franciscan Friary gradually turned the land west of the river into a huge farm, providing food for the city’s poor. Though a few small buildings have been identified, this area remained open until the Tannery expanded from its origins on Stour Street in the mid-nineteenth century.
Sincere thanks are due of course to the developers, Bellway Homes, and their various contractors and consultants, but most especially to the gallant field crew contending with foul weather, flooding trenches and contaminated ground: may your respirators never leak.