here, and to the west of the road: coloured fresco, hypocaust tiles, etc., were found, and a brooch said to be of the 1st century. Much Roman and pre-Roman pottery has been found close by.⁴⁵
   37. NORTHFLEET—A building was excavated by the Dartford District Antiquarian Society between 1909—1911 in Bakers Hole (or Southfleet Quarry), a chalk quarry due south of Northfleet Station. The walls uncovered appear from the plan to represent an industrial building rather than a dwelling-house, but they probably belong to more than one building and are of various ages. The pottery included Samian and ‘Upchurch’ and Castor ware, and there were found red brick tesserae, iron shears, roofing tiles and imbrices, and coins of Titus, Septimus Severus, Constantine I, Constantine II, Valens, and several others illegible.⁴⁶
   38. ORPINGTON.—A cement floor and other traces of a structure exist by the eastern entrance to the drive leading from Crofton Road to the Bromley R.D.C. office, south-west of Orpington Railway Station. Tesserae and tiles were found when the drive was being made or the offices built.⁴⁶
   39. OTFORD.—Parts of a building were discovered in 1926 in making an orchard near a farm ‘called ‘Progress,’ on the slope of a chalk hill overlooking the upper Darenth valley, 93 yds. south of the Pilgrim’s Way, and one furlong east of Otford Station on the Southern Railway. It was excavated for the Sevenoaks Society in 1927 and 1928 by Mr. Bertram Pearce. The structures consisted of
   (a) A corridor about 8 ft. wide running north-west and south-east, built at one end of ironstone slabs and at the other of flint in horizontal layers, with an entrance in the middle of the south-west wall. A line of holes under the walls were probably post-holes. The walls had been covered with fresco, including fragments showing a man brandishing a spear and the letters BINA MANU (P1. XXV), a quotation from the Aeneid (i, 313, or xii, 165, or vii, 688). The corridor was connected with other rooms not opened, and buildings were thought to extend on the south. A rubbish pit with 1st century Samian ware lay between it and the next.
   (b) Some 50 ft. north-east of (1) was a courtyard about 64 ft. by 40 ft. enclosed by a wall of flints resting on a foundation of flint and chalk rubble. Both within and without it were remains of flint floors and irregular holes in the chalk mostly filled with black earth, others (mostly outside) lined with flints, about 1 ft. 10 in. in diameter and 2½ ft. deep. A large stone resting on flints and a soakaway were also found. Lastly, parallel to the south-east wall and about 5 ft. outside it, a short piece of ‘a sloping bank’ was found faced with rammed gravel, formed in levelling operations when the courtyard was built. Both wall and bank had been breached by ‘a deep excavation,’ entry into which had been obtained by a series of three steps from the middle of the courtyard—perhaps a cellar. It had been filled up later.
   (c) A horseshoe-shaped and niched kiln, about 6 ft. to 7 ft. long, of somewhat unusual type, with a roof supported by ironstone pillars, had been built in a hole or trench in the chalk. About two dozen two-handled flagons of reddish clay, and poor quality, and dating to about 90 to 100 A.D., were found in and about it.
   It would. appear that the corridor (No.1), with the rubbish pit, floors to the north-east of it, the courtyard and a little later the kiln, were built in the second half of the 1st century and in use in the 2nd century; possibly the floors and holes belong to a pre-house period. Later, towards the end of the 2nd century, the house was burnt down, but the courtyard with cellar was used as a cattle refuge, the whole area being filled up and levelled in some post-Roman period. Obviously much remains to be discovered on this site which appears to be that of a house.
   The coins range from Agrippa, Claudius I, Domitian, Pius, etc., to Constantius II and Magnentius, the last being found at the bottom of the cellar; the fibulae included a La Tène I—II, and a 1st-century T-shaped brooch with coil spring and solid catch-plate; other objects were a 3rd-century ring, a fish-hook, a silver signet ring, two lead weights, two iron hooks of a steelyard, knives, beads, etc.; the bulk of the Samian ware is ‘fairly late,’ but some is earlier. Much Castor ware, some New Forest ware and other ware of the 2nd and 3rd and 4th centuries, mortaria stamped ALPIN.FE (probably the late-1st-early-2nd-century potter Albinus), M (or N) IALLA (cf. B.M. Catal. R. Pottery No. M. 2827), etc.⁴⁸  The greater part of the pottery was of the 3rd and 4th centuries.
   40. PLAXTOL.—The site of this villa is about a mile south-east of Plaxtol village and a little south of Allen’s Farm, on the side of a hill which slopes gently westwards to the Bourne rivulet, some 200 ft. above sea-level. Here in former years the plough often turned up Roman remains, and in 1857, when the spot was converted from ploughland into a hop field, discoveries were
   ⁴⁵  Journ. of R. Studies, xiv, 240.
   ⁴⁶  W. H. Steadman, ‘Excavations on a Roman site at Northfleet,’ in The Dartford Antiq. vol. i (1913). See also The Times, 6 Mar. 1910 and below, Industries, p. 128.      ⁴⁷  Journ. of R. Studies, xvii, 209.
   ⁴⁸  A full account is published in . Arch. Cant. xlii, 157; interim accounts appeared in Arch. Cant. xxxix, 153 ff; Report of the Excav. Committee of the Sevenoaks Soc. (Ashford, 192 8—9), with plan and figs. Hence Journ. of R. Studies, xvi, 238, 24.4, xvii, 209, xviii, 208. Some of the pottery, including a flagon, is in the British Museum. The remainder is in Maidstone Museum. For the kiln see also W. F. Grimes Holt, Denbighshire ( Y Commrodor xli, 1930), p. 72, no. 41 and below, p. 131, no. 6.