A new project for Faversham’s community archaeologists
If you have read earlier articles on the activities of the Faversham Society Archaeological Research Group (FSARG), you will know that our research area is the town itself and its immediate surrounds. We take one piece at a time and seek answers to the most important research questions for that section. Our latest project focuses on Preston Next Faversham, an odd and ancient parish, nowadays mostly merged into Faversham town.
For most of its history, Preston was a rural parish with a number of manors such as Macknade and Westwood. In AD822 it was given to the Archbishop of Canterbury, hence the name Priests town. Preston has a very ancient and intriguing church, St Catherine’s, which will be central to our work in 2014, but this year our interest has been in finding evidence for medieval activity along the line of Preston Street and the Mall. This forms a north-south line connecting central Faversham with Roman Watling Street and marks the western boundary of Preston Within. Some very striking finds of Roman and early Saxon material have been made along this line but all of them are historic - no modern archaeology has taken place here apart from an evaluation during alterations at the Fleur De Lis Heritage Centre in AD2000.
In 2013, investigations took place in six locations along this north-south line, all of which yielded substantial medieval material. This article, however, concentrates on the largest excavation which was in the garden of the Old Wine Vaults pub. On Saturday 21st July it contributed to a festival day, ‘Faversham in the Making’, involving lively re-enactors and hands-on activities manned by FSARG members. During the week that the Old Wine Vaults trench was open, we talked to around a thousand visitors, some of whom returned repeatedly and many of whom were people who would never normally visit a museum. This was very enjoyable and the kind of community involvement for which FSARG was founded.
The trench, initially 4 x 1 metres, was located towards the back of the pub garden, across a former pub garden boundary wall visible in parch marks, geo-resistivity readings and on maps. Beyond the wall had been a cottage, identifiable in the 1840 tithe map but long gone. The wall itself remained standing until the 1960s. Our plan was to expose contrasting deposits either side of the wall foundation with the expectation that underlying the contrasting cottage demolition and pub garden contexts would be a medieval level.
This did indeed prove to be the case, although on the former cottage side of the wall two pipes, running east-west, meant that only a small area between them was undisturbed. This tiny triangle was taken down to a depth of 1.2 metres. On the pub side, once large paving slabs under the grass had been removed, trowelling was much easier and a layer yielding only medieval pottery was reached from 62cm downwards. This pottery included not only our old friend Tyler Hill pottery, the commonest kind of medieval pottery found in Faversham, but also earlier North Kent shelly ware. The earlier pottery consisted of many small abraded sherds and was found associated with many small bone and shell fragments - classic midden scatter. The later medieval sherds were larger and fresh-edged, implying a transition on the site from agriculture to settlement in the late medieval. This fits with what is known about the Old Wine Vaults building itself, thought to date from around AD1450.
For the modern period the memories of local people were invaluable, giving us, for example, the demolition date for the cottage. We also had one of those memorable ‘treasure trove’ moments when a lady turned up with two albums of 1920s-30s photographs of the pub and its then huge garden: her grandfather had been the licensee. Irene has donated these unique photos to the Faversham Society. We knew from the HER that Roman finds had been made next door in 1934 when the Argosy Cinema (now itself long gone) was being built, but never dreamed we would see a photograph of them. If you have any idea as to who these two men are, by the way, we would love to know.
At the end of the week we were tidying up the trench prior to back filling and cleaning down a small surface at the eastern end beyond a small brick border to the slabs. Almost instantly a curious scalloped stone edge appeared, looking to our bemused eyes very much like a section of a classic temple pillar of huge proportions. Joking aside, this had to be investigated. It turned out to be a large toothed/fluted crushing wheel which had been set into a courtyard surface of stone fragments and can be seen exposed in Fig 1. This surface clearly pre-dated the slab and brick surface found earlier. In the central square hole rested three large, smooth, egg shaped stones of serpentine and granite. We have seen boulders like this before in Faversham gardens and have been assuming they are ships ballast, but are now having second thoughts about this. The overall effect, in the words of several of our younger visitors, was ‘awesome’. Its original use is still unknown: although it is of a type commonly used in initial apple crushing for cider, Faversham has had many other industries that involve crushing. It was placed in the courtyard around AD1800. Investigations continue.
A detailed report on the Old Wine Vaults trench should be on the FSARG website, www.community-archaeology.org.uk by Christmas 2013, along with the other five 2013 locations, in the section devoted to Preston: a most Peculiar Parish. Many thanks to Nuala Brenchley Sayers, landlady of the Old Wine Vaults, who invited us to dig in the garden.
By Dr Pat Reid
