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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Romano-British Kent - Country Houses - Page 114

1926); the bath was filled in with concrete, but part of the corridor walls were removed and re-erected in the Central Park, Dartford.
   22 and 23. FOLKESTONE.—(a) A villa at the Warren (East Cliff) in front of Martello Tower No. 2, was excavated for the Folkestone Corporation by Mr. S. E. Winbolt in 1924. The site is on the edge of the cliff—here grey gault clay—which is rapidly crumbling into East Wear Bay; it faces south-east by east looking across the Channel towards Boulogne. It consisted of two blocks. Block A, the more important, some 212 ft. long, consists of a row of rooms between two corridors, or verandahs, with projecting wings at each end, and a set of baths inserted in the south-west end of the back corridor. Though slight reconstructions are apparent (P1. XXI) there was never any material alteration to the plan. The entrance into Block A appears to have been on the seaward side by steps into the corridor and gave on to the best room in the centre (40), which was paved with a good geometric tessellated pavement. Of the rooms to the north those with tessellated pavements and tile fireplaces (43, 45, as also had no. 37) must have been the chief living-rooms, the bedrooms, perhaps, being in the wings. The baths show evident signs of reconstruction: in the first period, no. 27 contained a hypocaust heated from a furnace in no. 28, which served also, it was thought, as kitchen, having two tiled hearths. The hypocaust was filled up in the second period and the kitchen was provided with another hearth in the south-east corner, while a hot-water tank was built in the opposite corner near to the furnace of the two hypocausts to the west (29, 30). It would appear that in the second period two hot baths were inserted (32, 33), and a cold bath (36) was added to the room adjoining (35). No. 34 contained a stone basin. The building was not completely excavated to the south-west nor was the west end of block (B) finished. What survived of block (B) (for its eastern end had gone over the cliff) also contained a row of rooms between two corridors ending in a set of baths. Of the rooms, no. 12 was thought to have been a hypocaust 20 ft. square (heated from the furnace in no. 11), its floor resting on twelve stone piers, and heated by radiation from the floor; no. 10 is a latrine. Between it and the bath-building to the south a very elaborate set of drains with side-drains joining it at different levels apparently emptied on to the cliff. Room no. 7, with its apsed adjunct, contained a hypocaust heated by a furnace in the centre of the apse at a higher level than the drains. The apse appears to have been lined with marble and the walls of the room decorated with fresco; it was probably the tepidarium, no. 6A, which showed signs of drainage, being perhaps the frigidarium. Nos. 2 to 4 were also heated from a furnace at no. i and probably formed the sudatorium and hot bath.
   The walls of the two periods were differently constructed, those of the first being of calcareous tufa on flint and ironstone foundations, those of the later of grey sand-ragstone on chalk and sea pebble foundation with, for the furnace arches and drains, re-used tufa blocks and tiles, some with the stamp of the Classis Britannica (P1. XXII, no. 2). How they came to be used here it is impossible to guess. They may have come from a building at Dover, or some structure close by in connection with a small harbour or, just possibly, the house may have been an official dwelling. The coins range from Domitian (2), Trajan (denarius), Hadrian (21), Commodus, Severus Alexander, Phillip I, Gallienus, Aurelian, Theodora, Constantine I (7), Crispus, Constans, Constantius II, and Magnentius (2). The Samian ware, mostly from the central and eastern Gaulish factories, includes the stamps Aestivus, Albinus, Anaillus, Attius, Avitus, Borillus, Catullus, Cinnamus, Condius, Criciro, Cucillus, Doeccus, Licinius, Martius, Musicus, Quintus and Sacroticus; the decorated ware is also mostly of the Hadrian-Antonine period.
   The reconstructed Block A is of the same date as Block B, which is thought to have been built about A.D. 100, but the evidence suggests a somewhat later date in the 2nd century. The original building is probably of the late 1st century. The plan of the building in Period II is common enough, cf., for instance, Ashtead, in Surrey (Journ. of R. Stud. xix, 1929). The site on which the villa was built had been occupied in the pre-Roman period; seven British urns dating to the first half of the 1st century A.D. were found between two corridor walls, but below the wall footings. No doubt they belonged to a pre-Roman cemetery which was unknown to the builders of the villa.27
   (b) A small group of foundations has come to light, principally in 1869—75, in the east end of Folkestone, immediately east of the Harbour branch of the railway and between that and the Folly, on a comparatively level strip of ground, close to a little stream, and sheltered from north and east by the hill. It is about 6o yds. S.W. of the villa described above (a). The group comprises five separate items: (1) In 1875 the construction of a reservoir for the Folkestone Cement Company revealed a pillared hypocaust measuring about 12 ft. by 16 ft. (A on plan), and adjoining it on the north a part of another chamber (B), apparently a hexagon, 16 ft. across, floored with concrete at a rather lower level than the floor of the hypocaust, and having in the centre a hole 3 ft. in diameter, filled with
   27   Winbolt, Roman Folkestone (Methuen, 1925); Borough of Folkestone Guide; Arch. Cant. xxxvii, 209, xxxviii, 45, hence P1. XXI; Journ. Roman Studies, Xiv, 242, 246; most of the finds are in Folkestone Museum. For the pre-Roman cemetery see Antiq. Journ. v, 65. Other burials of the same date were found in Radnor Park in 1918. See also for them, Bushe-Fox, Swarling Report (Soc. Antiq. Researh Report, 1925), p. 20.

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