New Roman Villa at Sheldwich
On the weekend of 9th and 10th of September this year, members of the Kent Archaeological Society, along with members of the Faversham Society, carried out a programme of fieldwork on a site near Sheldwich, just south of Faversham. The site had come to notice back in 2004 when metal detectorist David Button located a scatter of Roman coinage of the 2nd to 4th centuries in a field he had obtained permission to search. Along with his colleague Gill Davies he recovered about 60 coins across an area of about 100 square metres. He also noticed large quantities of tile and brick across this area. This discovery led to a preliminary resistivity survey, carried out by the author under the supervision of Ted Connell; subsequently a 2m x 1m trench dug by the author located a pit containing large quantities of Roman pottery, tile and animal bone, as well as some fragments of painted wall plaster.
Since it seemed probable that a substantial, hitherto unknown, Roman building was present on the site, it was decided by the KAS Fieldwork Committee to undertake this September’s programme of fieldwork, with the aim of confirming this and assessing the scale and state of preservation of the site. Brian and Carole McNaughton led a resistivity survey, surveying an impressive sixteen 20m x 20m grid squares over the two days. The results suggest considerable activity across the survey area, and possibly indicate the presence of a large ranged structure approximately 80m across. At the same time, the author led the excavation of a second trial trench across a very strong result located in the previous resistivity survey. This revealed part of a hypocausted Roman building. The floor of this structure had been removed, along with most of the hypocaust stacks that were visible in the trench, and the underfloor area, which had a concrete base, had been backfilled with compact rubble which probably represents a demolition deposit. This layer was overlain by two deposits, the lower of which contained significant quantities of mortar lumps and ceramic building material as well as fragments of painted wall plaster. Cutting through both these layers was a shallow ditch or elongated pit containing amounts of carbonised wood, animal bone, and pottery and tile. The pottery included a sherd of Rhenish fineware and a large sherd of Oxfordshire Ware. In addition, the upper level of the ditch contained a bronze coin (pinpointed by David Button’s detector) minted between AD 364 and 378. In all, it seems clear from the work carried out thus far that this site can be added to the corpus of villas known from east Kent.
Andrew Richardson
Chair, KAS Fieldwork Committee
ABOVE: Trench 2 from the south, showing the excavated wall and hypocaust system.
Below: Detail of above; note the patch of plaster on the base of the wall, and section of Opus Signinum floor on the top of the brick.