Ted Connell
The Christopher St John Breen Roman and Medieval Pottery Archive
The late Christopher St John Breen (1943-1988) led members of Dartford District Archaeological Group (D.D.A.G.) in collecting sherds of pottery from dumps of soil fly-tipped by lorries clearing the former site of Billingsgate Lorry Park, London in 1984. A small segment of the site had been the subject of an archaeological excavation, but the rest was just machined out and added into lorries. There seemed to be little control of the dumping of the soil, and soon about forty lorry loads of soil were found fly-tipped by a member of the D.D.A.G. on Dartford Heath. Chris soon recognised the importance of collecting as much as possible of the pottery. News of many more dumps of soil at the site of a disused factory in Dagenham saw members of the Group travelling there on a number of occasions to collect pottery.
Many thousands of sherds of all dates, were collected and taken to the D.D.A.G.’s Research Centre, Lowfield Street, Dartford where they were washed and sorted. This sorting exercise led to pottery specialists from the Department of Urban Archaeology at the Museum of London travelling down to Dartford to view the collection. Really rare or important pieces were taken away to London, but many of the remaining individual sherds were identified and became the core of the Pottery Archive formed by Christopher St John Breen.
Chris set up a system of plastic boxes, each holding fifteen small trays measuring 2.5 x 5.75 inches, containing examples of Roman and Medieval pottery sherds identified by the visiting specialists. The K.A.S. Fieldwork Committee kindly made a grant towards this work.
Seven of these boxes, containing examples of samian pottery from Southern, Central and Eastern Gaul, had an outing in November 2007 to Harlow Museum, where a samian training day was being held for local amateur archaeologists. D.D.A.G. was represented by Adrian Herbert. The day started with a talk by Gladys Montrell, formerly of the Dept of Urban Archaeology London, but now working at Nottingham University, on the origins and decline of the samian pottery industry. She explained how this distinctive ware spread throughout Roman Britain from the time of the Roman Conquest up until the decline of the industry in the mid-third century. She was followed by Roy Friendship-Taylor giving examples of local pottery influenced by the shapes and styles of samian pottery forms. Gilbert Burroughs then spoke about his workmaking reproduction samian ware.
Throughout the day the boxes of samian ware from D.D.A.G. were on display, giving the opportunity for amateur archaeologists to see and handle samples of pottery. The individual trays of sherds were dated and typed but in addition there were A4 size boxes of loose sherds which people were invited to identify and sort into the various samian forms. Much fun was had when people were confronted with a pile of sherds of Dr27/31s to sort into separate piles.
At the end of the day everybody agreed that they had learnt a tremendous amount about samian ware and that the reference collection from Dartford had been most useful.
The Archive gives the opportunity for amateur archaeologists to see and handle samples of pottery from the Roman and Medieval Period common in the London area.
The collection is now housed at the Group’s Research Centre at the Dartford Campus of the University of Greenwich.
BELOW: Boxes of samian sherds for sorting into form types.