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15. CRUNDALE.—Remains of Roman foundations were found about 1908 in
digging graves in the churchyard.21
16. CUXTON.—Here on a high chalk hill, 400 yds. west of the Medway,
Roman remains
have been noted at various times—a wall 3 ft. thick in the rectory
garden, and ‘much debris of a
Roman building’ in the churchyard west of the rectory. Roman burials
have also been found a
quarter of a mile to the north-east on lower ground, on the site of the
White Hart Inn.22
17 and 18. DARENTH.—(a) A large and important Structure covering some 3
acres on the gently sloping eastern bank of the River Darenth was
uncovered by Mr. George Payne and others in 1894 and 1895. It is in fact
the only large building in Kent which has been adequately examined. The
site lies ¼ mile south of Darenth Church and 2½ miles south of Dartford
(p. 88) A detailed account with plan was published by Mr. Payne in Arch.
Cantiana, xxii (1896), 49ff., but no attempt was made to give a
history of the various reconstructions observed. This was provided by Mr.
George Fox, who in Archaeologia, lix, 218—232, describes the
building in its later phases as a fulling establishment.
The plan (fig. 27) taken from Mr. Fox’s account (which is based on Mr.
Payne’s) shows a group of buildings consisting of a central block (A)
connected on each side with two other blocks (B) and (C), and facing it, a
courtyard with an entrance opposite the central block. Outbuildings and
barns, etc., carried on the lines of the two wings and were connected at
their ends by a wall, as frequently in Romano-British villas, thus
enclosing a quadrangle. (For illustrations of buildings see Plates XVIII,
XIX, XX.)
According to Mr. Fox the buildings in the first period included blocks (A)
and (B) with outbuildings facing on to an enclosed yard or garden with
arched entrance at (12). Block (A) was a house of a very usual type
consisting of a row of rooms (divided by timber partitions faced on each
side with mortar plastered and painted), some of them paved with
tessellated floors edged with a red cement moulding, lying between two
corridors or verandahs, and expanding at each end into more rooms. At the
east end one room contained a pillared hypocaust from which a Y-shaped
channel lined with flints conducted the smoke and perhaps heat under the
floor towards the north external wall. The arrangements at the west end
are not clear in this period. Block (B) is thought to have been originally
another corridor house, with a set of baths at the north-west corner,
containing a hypocaust in no. 8 (with a furnace on the north), three
baths, apparently for cold water, paved with red tesserae, and perhaps a
hypocaust room to the south.
In the second period this block (B) was converted into a fulling
establishment, the floors of the three baths being raised to make shallow
tanks, and in front of them a raised floor of chalk (9, 1) was built,
while in the north-east corner a tank was inserted with a covered drain
(m) leading first north and then west to the river. The greatest
structural change in the second period, however, took place in the western
rooms of block (A). A large and shallow tank or trough with a floor
sloping from the sides to the centre was inserted in (14) with a tank in
the north alcove (i) and another larger and shallower tank at the south
end (g), while a bench or working platform was built along the south end
of the western side (30). These arrangements Mr. Fox considered were made
to convert the building into the main treading tank of the fullonica.
A small room on the south (15) connected this treading tank with a
great tank(16) in block (D), which was built in the second period and
which was entered by three steps at the eastern end and probably also at
the western end from block (B). The remainder of block (A) continued to be
a dwelling-house during period II. Block (C) is thought to have been a
drying compartment for the establishment built in period II. The hypocaust
of room (21) was heated by a furnace in (22) which also heated rooms (20),
(23) and (24), but the most remarkable hypocaust was that in no. 27, where
a series of transverse channels constructed of chalk were cut into two by
a wide channel down the centre. The floor above was only 8 in. thick and
one may surmise, therefore, that the room was meant to be heated by hot
air rather than by radiation. In type it resembles the substructures of
kilns, and no doubt, like them, it was meant to provide a high degree of
heat. The furnace in (29) and (28) also heated the pillared hypocaust of
(26), while (29) was in addition a store for fuel. Along the west side of
the internal corridor or verandah of this block a water-channel was found
which pierced the south wall and entered a tank in the furnace room (29).
Lastly, in this period a corridor was extended (18) along the whole
length of block (A) and served to connect the two side wings with the
central block. The water, which was essential for a fulling establishment,
was provided by a well (13) opposite (and outside) the original entrance
and was connected with a tank (17) 28 ft. long and 10 ft.
wide with a gangway down each side, which was now built in front of
the gateway, across the courtyard dividing it into two. The gateway (12)
was closed and was converted into a semicircular cistern, or tank, into
which a tile-pipe led from the east, and a narrow outlet probably for a
lead pipe on the west. It was thought that the long tank was probably
roofed over.
21 Ex. inf the late Sir W. St. John Hope.
22 Arch. Cant. xxv, p. lxvii;
Topographical. Index s.v. Cuxton.
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