KCC Community Archaeology Round Up

by Andrew Mayfield

www.facebook.com/archaeologyinkent and @ArchaeologyKent on Twitter

It has been another archaeology-packed year for the Shorne Woods Archaeology Group (SWAG) and the North Downs Young Archaeologists Club (YAC).

Woodland Wildlife Hidden Histories Project

At Perry Wood we helped the Trust for Thanet Archaeology and students from the University of Kent investigate a multi-period archaeological site, alongside both Kent YAC branches. Beginning as a prehistoric enclosure, the site had been re-used as an Admiralty signalling station and as the location of a post medieval windmill.

Keycol

This spring we found the well preserved remains of a Roman bread oven and an associated pebbled surface, buried by a possible lynchet feature.

LiDAR works

Back at Shorne Woods Country Park, the home base of SWAG, we have continued to investigate the fantastic archaeology of the Park. This has included a series of boundary banks and lynchets as well as identifying a new lithic site that may date back to the late Palaeolithic period.

Randall Manor 2015

It felt only right that we should celebrate the tenth year of excavations at Randall Manor.

On the SW corner of the aisled hall we have excavated a possible second garderobe structure, with its own drain feeding into our main drainage ditch. We have also identified a sequence of occupation focused around the ornate chimney added to the back of the aisled hall.

In the SE corner of the site we quickly established the line of the north wall of the building first uncovered in 2014. Working with 3 schools this year we demonstrated that the building was quite narrow and long, with a mixed flint, chalk and reused dressed stone foundation acting as a plinth for a timber structure. In the centre of the north wall we have recorded an exterior pebbled surface. At the SE corner of this building, we uncovered a far more substantial building foundation. This seemed to suggest a full height stone end to our timber building, complete with passage way and partition wall.

At present we propose that the tenants who looked after Randall Manor during its dotage. The building has a hearth built against the south wall, unlike any feature identified in the main building complex. After 10 years, ably assisted by local schools and YACs, the Manor continues to reveal its secrets…and provides us with more questions.

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to SWAG and to my colleague Richard Taylor for all their help this year!

Finally, 2015 has seen a huge change to the leadership of the North Downs YACs with Lyn Palmer and Malcolm & Kate Kersey stepping down from their roles as Leaders. We would like to thank them all for their hard work and dedication. Lyn founded and headed up the North Downs YACs for many years and will be dearly missed as our leader and guiding light.