Keith Parfitt, Field Officer, Canterbury Archaeological Trust; KAS Field Work Committee member; (New Director of KAS Minster villa excavation)
Ten years have passed since the discovery and excavation of the Dover Bronze Age Boat. The conservation process and construction of its award-winning gallery were lengthy – in total contrast to the allotted ten-scale of recovery. Keith Parfitt was faced with the monumental task of retrieval; it seems fitting that an archaeologist born and bred in Dover should have done so. He talked to me about the excavation and a career which led to being in the right place at an opportune time.
Keith's interest in the past had crystalized his vocational pathway while in the sixth form at Peel Grammar School; he recalls learning about ‘pit dwellings’ in the Iron Age (‘those with pointy roofs – how interpretations have changed!’) and modelling ‘our own cave, with people and a fire’ for a town carnival project. The numerous archaeology books and club friends of today did not exist in the 60s – Keith found it difficult to find contacts to further his interest. However, with appropriate parents and an A level in Ancient History amongst others, he went on to read Archaeology at Cardiff from 1975-78.
Volunteering during vacations with KARU at the excavations of the Classis Britannica fort and Roman Painted House in Dover led to full-time work with the Trust from 1978 until 1990, when Keith joined Canterbury Archaeological Trust. A Dover sub-office of CAT was subsequently formed as a direct result of the A20 project, and Keith, Barry Corke and Barry’s wife, Elizabeth, now fit snugly into their seafront offices. The team spends roughly half their time out on site, weather dependent, ‘the bikes upstairs we use as an alternative – if we’re going out they know it’s going to rain!’
No archaeologist in prehistoric reports had been prepared in advance of the A20 project, so Keith and his team were literally ‘flying by the contract’ around the eleventh hour as work progressed. They booked a site on 26 sites, from 20th-century pillboxes to Iron Age settlements. Part of the project required the construction of an underpass at Bench Street off the Market Square. A deep shaft here, sunk for the installation of a water pumping unit, cut down through ancient fillings of the old harbour estuary; Dr. Martin Bates was keen to collect some Pleistocene items and was escorted down by Keith during the workmen’s lunch break. ‘A bone end, Keith poked around the mud and found some wood. It was handheld wood and U-shaped, which at first sight looked ‘like a door handle’ but is now known to be one of the cleats of the Dover Boat. Frantic clearing back over the next hour led to Keith discovering one more and a twisted yew ship’s peg. He had read about the Bronze Age Ferriby boat being sewn together with twisted yew when he was at college, ‘I couldn’t visualize it – it sounded doubtful’ – but realization hit as to what he might have found.
The workmen were in awe, a dash was made to fetch the senior engineer to the site and all gathered to look. The whole A20 project was eyewitness behind schedule at this point; the town was working around it, Victorian buildings were shifting uneasily and gas mains needed moving. It is to their credit that Keith stresses the cooperation of the contractors – Mott Macdonald and Norwest Holst; he was given the rest of the day to explore the shaft.
By 3:30 pm a copy of the Ferriby Boat report (Proc.Prehist.Soc.) was brought to the site. Keith stood in the hole, turning the pages. As he finally ticked off, one by one, constituent features, the similarity was obvious – this was definitely a boat, and distributed into. Martin Bates had now confirmed the age of the sediment. At this time they had been quietly exposing further remains, like sweet digestive biscuits in the wet ground.
By midday next the Ministry of Transport had been informed, it had been planted and penalty clauses forfeited on behalf of the contractors had been squared. ‘If ever there was a place not to find a Bronze Age boat of international significance, it was that pit’. Many agencies swung into action to help – English Heritage, Dover District Council, Dover Harbour Board and the contractors’ department. Two days after the discovery the media descended, an opening of a hindrance to Keith and his team spending 13 hours each day in a cold, wet, 7m-deep hole with no time to answer questions. He describes the dig as a series of sharp intakes of breath – exciting, but with many experts hovering.
Keith Parfitt in the task at Square underpass, probably standing over the excavation end.
The boat's excavation was brought to a farther day’s – it took another 3 days to retrieve the southern end, in total 32 pieces. The northern end was never excavated – if existing still, it is under the Edwardian wall, with Roman harbour wall timbers above it (‘after all, the Roman engineers may have moved it – anyway, any longer and it wouldn’t fit in the display gallery’) and probably lies buried beneath the concrete floor of the underpass.
Aside from this singular excavation, Keith recalls other memorable sites, such as the Buckland Anglo-Saxon cemetery of some 250 graves which he is currently writing up, and the Faversham St Roman union of 1150-1300 at Tanners’ Street, Dover, excavated in 1996. This has been interpreted as the ship house of the Men of the Cinque Ports, ordinary men who provided ships as a service to the king – but known from other sites. He will continue work at Ringwould, where the Gold Cup was recently found and where the BBC staged some filming in the hope of further excitement, ‘as long as I get to hold my end of the day I love that’, he says.
His enthusiasm does not extend, however, to some of the processes within his subject, ‘we see endless reports on what gets found – and why it is there. They need to preserve it – weekends see Keith involved with the voluntary Dover Archaeological Group. ‘Last weekend we packed those things and stuffing!’
Some would say that Keith has had his fair share of interesting stuff – discovering and lifting a 3,500-year-old boat has fate fairly highly; whatever comes his way next, I am sure my sense of humor will make for a wry evaluation:
The Editor