Victoria
County History of Kent Vol. 3
1932 - Romano-British
Kent - Country Houses - Page 103
of most of them ends with the Constantinian period, but at Boxted and
Chatham there was nothing after the second century, while at Boughton
Monchelsea the latest coin is Valens, at Darenth the most recent is
Gratian, and at Aylesford, Hartlip and Greenwich (two of these being
possible shrines) the series ends with Honorius.
The indications (such as they are) show, then, that the
inhabitants of Kent began to build houses soon after the invasion, and
especially along the road and up the Darenth and the Medway valley, and
that the occupation, for the most part, ceased by the middle of the fourth
century. The evidence, however, is not really sufficient to warrant any
definite conclusions.
The details of the buildings are given below; they have been
arranged in alphabetical order and usually are to be found under the name
of the parish in which they occur.
1. ALLINGT0N.—Roman bricks and other remains have
been noticed at various times close to the site of Allington Castle, a
mile north of Maidstone, on the western bank of the Medway, and about 50
ft. above it. In particular, four large tiles from a pillar of a
hypocaust, with soot adhering to them, were dug up west of the Castle in
1844.; tiles and other objects have been picked up under parts of the
Castle, in the road leading to it and in the moat, and the Kent Arch. Soc.’s
Museum and Maidstone Museum have wall-plaster, antefixes and common
potsherds, as well as coins and brooches of the first half of the first
century A.D.—a cemetery of the immediate pre-Roman period to which no
doubt also belongs the curious baked clay tomb (see Topographical Index).
Sir Martin Conway has suggested that as Allington is the nearest point on
a waterway where Kentish rag can be quarried, it was from this
neighbourhood that the stones for London’s Wall were obtained.5 For
a road connecting the site with Buckland, see roads, p. 138.
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Fig 21 Plan of Foundations at Ash near
Wrotham
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2. ASH NEAR WROTHAM.—The building shown
on fig. 21 was found in June 1914 in clearing woodland for an orchard on
Mr. G. Day’s farm, near the track from North Ash to Ash Church, on high
land to the east of the Darenth valley.6 The flint
foundations of a rectangular Walled inclosure measured 104. ft. by
53 ft.; a series of rooms at the end opposite the entrance probably formed
the dwelling-house, which included a sunk bath, 7 ft. square, lined
with plaster. A deep
5 For the 1844 find see Brit.
Arch. Assoc. Journ. ii (1847), 88; hence very briefly Arch.
Cant. i, 156; xv, 73. For other finds, 6-inch Ord. Sur. Map,
sheet xxxi S.E. and xlii N.W. and name-books at Southampton; for early
finds, J. P. Bushe-Fox, The Late Celtic Urnfield at Swarling (Soc. of
Antiq. Research Rep. 192 5), pp. 19, 20; Arch. lii, 350.
6 F. Haverfield, Roman Britain in 1914
(Oxford, 1915) p. 25. Letter from Mr. James Kirk.
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