30. HAYES.—The foundations of a building about 4 ft. below the surface were found by probing about 1854 in a field near Baston or Boston Court, due north of the discoveries at Keston.³⁸
   Also about 3 ft. below the surface under Hayes Church, remains of a Roman building, including a floor of opus signinum, have been found, while Roman tiles are built into the church tower.³⁹
   31. ICKHAM.—Roman remains were discovered in 1863, half a mile east of Ickham church, and about halfway between that and Britton Farm, in a field or hop garden of Ickham Court Farm called Church Ure or Oare. These remains consisted of ‘walls of solid concrete,’ 2½ ft. to 3 ft. thick, flue and roof tiles, coloured wall-plaster, much pottery, including amphora, a quern, and bones of sheep and cattle. Some thirty years later, in 1895, steam ploughing revealed ‘Roman material in a field near Britton Farm,’ and this doubtless belongs to the same house as the earlier finds.⁴⁰  Church or Chapel Field, or the like, is a common name for the site of Roman buildings.
   32. IGHTHAM.—Foundations of Roman buildings, Samian and black ware and many, perhaps some hundreds, of Roman third brass coins are said to have been found, previous to 1859, mostly about 1840, within a few yards of the south wall of Ightham churchyard. In 1852 and 1893 three archways built of tiles, 18 ft. and 7 ft. apart respectively, the last about 3 ft. smaller than the other two, were exposed between the church and the Town House. They formed part of a continuous passage, drain or flue, probably the latter, as they bore evidence of intense heat. Coins, but no potsherds, were found. Mr. Geo. Payne thought the structure was medieval, but in Mr. Harrison’s sketch it does not look so. A burial—an urn with burnt bones and a Samian saucer (DIVIXI, Divixti) reversed over it to form a lid—dug up a third of a mile away, near Ightham Court Lodge, may be too distant to belong to these buildings, but no other house is known to which it can be referred.⁴¹
   33. KESTON.—The remains of several buildings have been discovered in a field called Lower Warbank Field, about one-third mile north-west of Keston Court Farm, and to the west of a road encircling Holwood Hill. They stand on the slope, somewhat steep in part, of Holwood Hill, which is fortified by the Early Iron Age earthwork called ‘Ceasar’s Camp.’ The remains include three groups of buildings (fig. 28): first, parts of a dwelling-house, near and partly under the north-west hedge of the field; secondly, part of a structure perhaps of the same house, a little to the south of it in the middle of the field; thirdly, on a raised bank in the north-east side of the field and nearest to the road, a circular building, and in a line north-west of it a small square building containing a stone coffin and two other graves. They were excavated first by Mr. A. J. Kempe in 1828 and again by Mr. G. A. Corner in 1854, the latter being more concerned with the house than with the other remains.
   (a) The first building, 60½ ft. long and 32⅔ ft. wide, running north-west and south-west, was complete in itself—a corridor house with the corridor running round two sides with four or five rooms behind it. The walls were 4 ft. high and 2 ft. thick, of flint and mortar with a tile course and tile quoins, resting on a 6 in. flint foundation built on the chalk. No sign of a tessellated floor appeared, but much red fresco and many ridge, flue and drain tiles. Much pottery was found, including a little Samian; ‘scoriae of iron and copper,’ ‘charcoal and traces of fire,’ and many animal bones and coins (one each) of Victorinus, Claudius Gothicus, Carausius, Allectus, and two of Constantine I (PLN) and Valens.
   (b) No. 2 lay 100 ft. to the north, partly under the hedge, and in line with it, and therefore at right angles to No.1. The part of the structure opened in 1854 and two years previously, was about 78 ft. long, and included three rooms; other walls stretched towards building No. 1, as shown in the map (fig. 28). A flint pavement resting on a cement bed, and a concrete floor as well as tesserae, tiles, nails, potsherds, a fibula, animal bones and charcoal were found. The plan is too fragmentary to form any idea of the type of the house.
   (c) The third group, built on a mound, 30 yds. long, overlooking the field to the north-east, was excavated in 1828. The circular building measured 30 ft. in diameter externally and 24 ft. internally, and had six external buttresses or platforms for columns or pilasters, measuring 3 ft. by 4 ft. An entrance about 3 ft. wide existed in the east side. The 3 ft. thick walls were built of flint with double course of tiles which did not go right through the wall; externally it had been plastered (three coats of lime and tile cement were found) and painted dark red; many tiles were found near the buttresses. A trench across the centre of the interior revealed neither floor nor burial, but potsherds, charcoal
   ³⁸  Arch. xxxvi, 124; 6 in. O.S. map, xvi, S.W. See Keston, no. 33.
   ³⁹  G. Clinch, Antiq. Jottings (1889), 97.
   ⁴⁰  John Brent, Gent. Mag. 1863, i, 354; O.S. 6 inch, xlvii, N.W; Kentish Observer, 28 June, and Kentish Argus, 6 July, 1895; very brief references in Arch. Cant. xiv, 139, XV, 355 ; Antiq. xxxi, 195, 201.
   ⁴¹  For foundations see Payne, Oldbury and its surroundings (Maidstone and Mid-Kent Nat. Hut, and Phil. Soc. 1888), p. 6, from C. R. Smith’s MS. notebook for 1840 (xv, 48) ; information from the late Mr. Benjamin Harrison of Ightham. For coins and burial see Arch. Cant. ii, 8; hence Arch. Journ. xxxv, 289. The urn and saucer are in Maidstone Museum. F. J. Bennett, Ightham (1907), pp. 54, 55. Sir E. R. Harrison, Harrison of Ightham (1928), p. 36. Two or three cemeteries have been found within a radius of 2 miles of Ightham, and Roman pottery has been picked up in various places in the parish; for these see p. 157 Topographical Index.