|
The building K measured 70 ft. by 50 ft.
with apparently buttresses to support the roof. This is not an unusual
feature. It was found recently in a bath-building uncovered at North
Warnborough, 8 miles from Silchester, and a good example was found lately
in Cologne (Bonner Jahrbücher, Heft 135 (1930), 114). It
suggests that the whole building was under one roof, and it may have been
either a barn or a simple type of ‘barn-house’; a similar structure
has been found at Bignor, in Sussex (see also for this R. G. Collingwood, Arch.
of R. Britain, 1930, p. 132—4). From the baths a ditch or drain ran
south-westwards, on the south side of which a large building (N) is shown
but is not described. .
The next group, L—M, appears to be part of a house; it was
originally opened in the 18th century and in the course of 100 years had
been much destroyed. But the walls were well built of flint and rubble
with tile courses and quoins (apparently against an earth bank), the upper
part having been repaired with inferior work. The walls had been plastered
and coloured and the floors cemented with lime and pounded tile; along one
wall was a ‘kind of settle or bench.’ The most interesting discovery
was a cellar consisting apparently of two rooms, though this is not clear
from the account It had been made by excavating the chalk for a depth of
about 4 ft., filling up the crevices with broken tile and plastering and
painting the walls—white in the passage and red in the rooms. It was
entered by a flight of steps, each step being made of three rows of tiles.
Nothing was found in it in 1848, but in the 18th century ‘several
bushels of wheat’ and some tares were discovered, some quite burnt and
some scorched.
Cellars are frequently found in houses in north-east Gaul and
in Germany, and are supposed to have been used for the storage of wine. In
this country they are rare; a subterranean room was found at Burham (see
p. 109), but not apparently connected with a house; one at Brading, in the
Isle of Wight, has not been opened; the only satisfactory example was
discovered recently (1930) under a house at Verulamium; it had been dug
out in much the same way as the Hartlip one.
The other buildings shown on the plan are not described; the
earth about P was impregnated with animal and vegetable matter. Short of
excavation, it is not possible to restore the plan of this house. Possibly
it is of the type of working farm resembling that found in the Thames
valley at Hambleden (Arch. lxxi, 141 ff.). It was occupied
apparently from about the close of the 1st century down to the end of the
Roman period.
The small objects include the following : coins, a ‘second
brass’ each of Claudius and Nero, a ‘first brass’ of Pius, and
others of Vespasian, Hadrian, Gallienus, Tetricus, Carausius, Allectus,
Constantine, Valens and Honorius; bronze, a thin plate with a
Nereid holding garlands (P1. XX IV), a small folding balance, part of a
scale-beam, 4 fibulae (two of one piece of metal and probably early), a
‘toilet set,’ pins, a hairpin ornamented with spiral silver wire, and
a needle; in iron, sickle, knives of all kinds, an adze, keys, a
stylus; in speculum metal, a perforated stud or brooch; a bone spindle
whorl; in glass, pieces of window glass, a fragment of a ‘sports’
(gladiators and chariot-race) cup or bowl in green glass, not of the usual
straight-sided type, but globular, with a rolled rim, and the decoration
in two bands with the inscriptions at the top of each : MEN
CRESCEM in the upper part above a chariot race; MES
HERMVS above the gladiators. The two first probably stand for the
charioteers MENA or MENOPHILA
and CRESCENS, and the others for the
gladiators CLEMENS and HERMES.
These moulded cups, which are dated to some period between the 2nd and the
early 4th century, record the names and feats of popular charioteers and
gladiators. They were probably made on the Rhine or in North-east Gaul.
The bottom of a glass bottle with a diagonal stamp was also found. In
pottery the most notable fragment is part of a decorated Samian jug of
unusual form stamped SABINIM dated to
the Nero-Vespasian period. The following stamps occurred: MARTIALIS,
MR, [R]VFFI.M (shape 33), BITVRIX.
F (shape 27), L.R.SECVN (shape
33). A Samian inkpot and some ‘Upchurch’ ware and other coarse ware,
and two stamped flue-tiles, one with an unusual rosette pattern, the other
similar to one found at Frindsbury (see above, p. 115) complete the list
of the more notable objects. A Roman sarcophagus found several years ago
has two palm branches carved on it.36
29. HARTY (east end of Sheppey Isle).—Many roofing tiles, a
piece of Samian and coins of Constantine found in Ferry Fields, behind
Ferry House, and a quern from the marshes below Mockett’s Farm, a little
to the west,37 seem to indicate the site of a house.
36 The chief account is given
by C. R. Smith in Coll. Antiqua, ii, 1—24, with illustrations;
briefer accounts, also apparently by him, are in Brit. Arch, Assoc.
Journ. 1 (1845), 314; iv, 398; v, 370. The 18th-century discovery is
described by Hasted, Hist. of Kent (1782), ii, 540 ; hence Brayley
and Britton, Beauties of England, viii (1808), 687. For the
sarcophagus see Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xli, 54. Most of the
objects are in Kent Arch. Soc. Museum, to which they were presented about
186o—see Arch. Cant. iii, p. xlviii; xix, pp. 7, 13 f. For the
glass bowl, see Corpus Inscr. Lat. vii, 1274; Schuerman’s ‘Verres
à course de Chars’ in Annales de la Soc. Arch. de Namur, xx,
1893, p. 22, (no. 9) ; Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum (1908), iii, pp.
734, 967 (no. 308) ; Morin-Jean, La verrerie en Garde (1913), p.
190-3. For the Samian, Oswald and Pryce, Terra Sigillata (1920),
pp. 59, 27 5—6, p1. lxxxv, no. 2.
37 Payne, Coll. Cant. (1893), 97, 98.
For a lime-kiln, see p. 128.
|