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found at Dymchurch, and at the same time reference was
made to pottery (exhibited at a Congress of the British Archaeological
Association at Canterbury in 1845) which was thought to have been made at
Dymchurch. There is also record of an uncertain Red Hills site there.19
(4) Remains of a kiln were found in 1926 in the gravel pit at
Hoo Junction, a mile north-west of Higham Station, but just within the
parish of Shorne; the pit is indicated as the site of a Roman pottery on
the 6-in. O.S. map, sheet No. xi, N.W. The fireplace of the kiln was set
below ground level, and remains of the clay-oven floor were found; it
appears that the kiln had finally been used as a rubbish pit, and under
the weight of the superimposed rubbish the oven floor (probably in the
first place supported by a wooden framework) gave way, allowing pieces of
wasters and kiln bars to fall through into the fireplace below. One pot,
apparently a 2nd-century type, was reconstructed, but the remaining
fragments were dispersed.20
In Maidstone Museum is a clay setter, or pottery support,
found in the same pit, and Charles Roach Smith mentioned that certain
vessels in the Teanby Collection (part of which is now in Gravesend Public
Library) found near the North Kent Railway line at Higham . . . . were of
local manufacture.21 F. C. J. Spurrell, in one of his
papers, says that the Roman potteries at Higham covered the land for about
3 miles along the edge of the marsh. The pottery was of great variety, but
mostly black, and he had seen more than 100 unbroken vessels at one time.22
Two layers of potsherds, evidently waste from a kiln, from 12
to 18 in. thick and spread over an area 10 ft. by 6 ft.., were found in
the pit about 1898. The layers of debris were said to resemble others
frequently met with in the Upchurch Marshes; portions of all varieties of
vessels were found, but the pottery, which was well fired and blue-black
in colour, was not so highly finished as the Upchurch ware. Similar layers
were stated to have been found during the preceding twelve years23
and it is said that fragments were found in such immense quantities that
in places the railway embankment was made of them.24 A
great deal of the pottery in Mr. G. M. Arnold’s collection, now in
Maidstone Museum and in Gravesend Public Library, was found in ‘Lower
Shorne gravel pit,’ and this can hardly be any other than the pit at Hoo
Junction; Spurrell, indeed, calls this pit ‘Shorne Gravel Pit’ and
perhaps much of the Arnold pottery marked ‘Shorne Gravel Pit’ came
from the Hoo Junction pit and not from the small pit near Shorne Mill as
is usually supposed. The predominant variety of pottery is of a hard,
fine-grained and well-fired clay, ranging in colour from slate grey to
bluish black and seldom polished. This must probably be regarded as the
local product, and it is noteworthy that many fragments of the ware were
found in the kiln described above.
(5) A curious structure, described as a tile tomb, but more
likely to be a pottery kiln, was discovered by Teanby at Higham, probably
near Hoo Junction; it was illustrated in 1877 by Roach Smith25 from
a sketch left by
19 Journ. Brit. Arch.
Assoc. ii, 137; Arch. Journ. vii, 70.
20 Rochester Naturalist, No. 13!,
vol. vi, 106. The kiln was probably a round or oval one of Grime’s type
iv; see W. F. Grimes, r Cymmrodor, xli, 56, 72.
21 Arch. Cant. Xl, 113-120.
22 22 Arch. Journ. xlii, 277.
23 Arch. Cant. xxiii, 22.
24 Arch. Journ. xlii, 277.
25 Arch. Cant. xi, 113. See below
Topographical Index, s.v. Shorne.
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