The Davington Mysteries: a community archaeology project
Dr Pat Reid, Community Archaeologist for the Faversham Society, Director FSARG
The Davington plateau lies just westwards of old Faversham, beyond the Westbrook. For many years rumours have circulated about Late Iron Age pottery up on the plateau, and speculation about a hill fort. There had also been speculation about a medieval roadway and possibly a small village in front of Davington Priory (founded cAD1154). Confusion also reigned over the exact location of Davington Manor, demolished around AD1650 according to Hasted. For 2010, the Faversham Society Archaeological Research Group (FSARG) designed a one-year research project to test these ideas. This brief report outlines the main findings: details are on our website www.community-archaeology.org.uk.
Firstly, the Iron Age. On our first day of fieldwork in April 2010, flint tempered ‘Belgic’ pottery was found on the side of Dark Hill, the cutting which goes through the plateau east to west. This was joined by many more sherds, some from ‘foraging’ and keyhole excavations in the gardens of Stephens Close and others from one-day trenches in Davington cricket field. Analysis showed that some sherds were middle and even early Iron Age; others were early Romano British (with a few tiny sherds of Samian ware).
A major geo-resistivity survey of the Cricket Pitch suggested important features and although one of our twelve-hour trenches was disappointing (the curved concentric ditch and bank turned out to be a hedge clearance trench filled with building rubble), the other revealed a flint floored trackway running across the pitch, bordered by a small V shaped ditch to the west. We returned to this feature in 2011 and will be reporting on our findings in spring 2012. At present we are seeing this as a late Iron Age/Romano-British track.
The search for the ‘real’ Davington Manor was also successful. When Stephens Close was built in the early 1960s, rescue archaeology was almost unknown, all seemingly swept away except for a 17th century brick and re-used medieval stone wall with two gateways in Mannerist style. One of these gates has a plaque with the date 1624. Locally, this wall has been seen as a kitchen garden wall, a belief I have always found implausible, and made even more unlikely by the presence of an unrecorded substantial medieval stone wall and 13th century gateway tucked away in Stephens Close, inside the area enclosed by the 17th century wall.
Using the medieval wall as a starting point, a number of small scale excavations were carried out and yielded demolition dumps, underground structures, clearance dumps, flint wall foundations and courtyard/pebbled floor surfaces. Not only had we found the site of the actual manor as featured in documents, but the demolition material (decorative pantiles, glazed bricks, 17th century glazed floor tiles) suggested that the stone medieval house had been considerably refurbished in the late Tudor-early Jacobean periods. In all, we identified at least 4 demolition/conversion phases for this unfortunate mansion. The main one in the 1650s was only a generation or so after the refurbishment - perhaps provoked by the rapid growth of the gunpowder manufacturing right on their doorstep in the Westbrook valley.
Finally for our project, we were given three days access to Davington Priory, now the private residence of Bob Geldof. Exhaustive geo resistivity and metal detecting surveys were carried out. The metal detecting team produced a lively collection of artefacts from the Davington Fetes held on the Paddock over the years but were disappointed to find no medieval. Apart from a possible circular dove cote near the house, the geo resistivity also failed to produce any clear cut evidence for medieval road or settlement.
What the resistivity survey did show, however, was a strongly marked collection of features in the north part of the Paddock - concentric circles and radiating ditches which are almost certainly prehistoric. Abundant evidence for prehistoric occupation on the Davington plateau was found in nearly all of the sites investigated. The finds were mostly Mesolithic and included a tranchet adze and many blades, but there were also finds from most other post-glacial periods. The prehistoric finds will contribute to an Arch. Cant. paper on the prehistory of the Westbrook valley.
In October 2010 we held a one-day conference which brought a happy end to a rewarding year. In April 2011, an exhibition at the Fleur de Lis Heritage Centre included highly successful hands-on Saturday sessions for families. All excavation reports are now on our website.
We are, of course, always extremely grateful to Faversham folk for their support and interest - without this there would be little point in what we do. But after this particular year, I think that the folk I need to congratulate are the FSARG team. The sheer hard work and professionalism (and the sense of fun) are hard to beat: I am a very lucky Director!