Shorne Woods and community archaeology further afield… from the marsh to the commons
By Andrew Mayfield
Welcome to the Kent County Council community archaeology roundup of 2020! Within days of setting pen to paper in issue 112, the world changed profoundly. By the middle of March, we had shut down all community archaeology activities, be they at the Park, on the Marsh or across Sevenoaks Commons.
Projects were rejigged and programmes re-written as we came to terms with how to run outreach and engagement work during a pandemic. For those first few difficult months, work took place online, through email rings and social media, digital engagement ruled! After a thorough risk assessment review, we were able to restart on the ground activities in late July and have been busy ever since. As I write this, we have entered a second lockdown, but have hope to be back outdoors again before Christmas. Before
I update you on the work that has taken place this year, I would like to thank everyone who has engaged with, supported, followed, liked, walked, excavated and surveyed sites during 2020. Your support for all things community archaeology in the County is hugely appreciated. Without you, there would be little to say!
Shorne Woods Country Park
Work continues to understand both the RAF dispersed camp in the Park and the remains of the twentieth-century clay works. Up until the first lockdown we had focused on walkover surveys of the sites, plotting where features of interest could be seen and research. We were lucky to have access to a wide variety of maps of the clay works and oral history testimonies. For the RAF camp, we had a war department map.
During the lockdown, we continued our research on the site and made plans for a return to outdoor work. A volunteers WhatsApp group proved invaluable for people’s morale.
With all activities risk assessed, a new COVID protocol in place and extra hygiene measures, work recommenced. Sites investigated include the clay works’ narrow gauge railway engine shed, work on the wider rail infrastructure and main wash plant and the large concrete reservoir and pipe network. Closer to the A2 we have
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Fig 1: Shorne Woods volunteer working on the valve pit for the clayworks reservoir
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Fig 2: Long lost large brick conduit found at Cobham Hall
Cobham Hall
We returned briefly to Cobham Hall at the end of July, to complete work on the Repton pond site. When we left the site at the end of 2019, we thought we had uncovered evidence of a lost reservoir, behind the pond. With the benefit of an excavator, we were able to cut a series of deeper trenches this year, which revealed that the reservoir was instead a long-lost brick conduit. This appeared to be part of a post-medieval water system for the gardens. The Cobham Hall Heritage Trust once again funded the work. In the future, we hope to
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Fig 3: Fifth Continent Volunteer working on a geophys survey Fig 4: Sevenoaks Greensand Commons volunteers measuring a feature at Crockham Hill
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Fig 5: Fifth Continent volunteers surveying Snave graveyard Fig 6: Cobham Landscape Detectives booklet cover put together a bid to investigate the more expansive water management systems at the Hall, with a focus from the Roman period onwards!
The Fifth Continent project on Romney Marsh
A full year of lottery-funded community archaeology activities had to be redesigned this Spring. For the first few months, we focused on research from home and remote finds processing from one of our digs last Autumn. From August onwards we have tried to play catch up with a year’s worth of activities. With COVID protocols in place, we have run a series of surveys with small teams of volunteers. We were starting with a site at the edge of New Romney, before moving to a vast field at Old Romney. At both sites, we were looking for evidence of the lost Saxon port. At Old Romney, in the field next to a moated enclosure, we puzzled over a whole host of features from our magnetometry survey. Some are old drainage channels, but others could indicate areas of settlement. We hope to return to the field in 2021.
At a third site on the edge of the Warren, east of New Romney, our geophys revealed two large buried circular enclosures. These have resulted in much head-scratching. The marsh drains seem to respect them, which could make them of some age? We hope that a small trench might provide some answers in 2021. At the end of October, we completed a graveyard survey of Snave Church. This work builds on the transcriptions that can be found on the KAS website! Three Marsh graveyards have now been resurveyed as part of the project.
Sevenoaks Greensand Commons
Our planned work on the Commons also had to be adapted this Spring.
We did have a secret weapon in the shape of the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme LiDAR portal! This enabled the Commons heritage volunteers to view the LiDAR data for the Commons from home and start to identify and flag up features of interest. We hope that in 2021 we will also have the Medway Valley
LiDAR data on the portal, so that you will be able to search through the LiDAR data for both river valleys.
By early Autumn we could finally get out and about on the Commons to start ground-truthing the LiDAR data. We have spent three days at Crockham Hill so far and identified quarries, boundary banks, building platforms, slit trenches and just possibly two pillow mounds for rabbits! Work continues on this Lottery funded project through 2021, with some of the identified sites subject to trial excavations.
To get involved with our projects, from Cobham and Shorne, to Romney Marsh or Sevenoaks Commons do contact me directly at andrew.mayfield@kent.gov.uk, phone 07920 548906, have a look at our website www.shornewoodsarchaeology. co.uk, our Facebook page ArchaeologyinKent or on Twitter at @ArchaeologyKent. Our booklet on the Cobham Landscape Detectives project is also now available as both a PDF and a paper copy.