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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Romano-British Kent - Topographical Index - Page 147

few pieces of very fine glass, a glass pin, some small bits of iron with traces of gold on them, and some fragments of small bronze ornaments. In the largest barrow, a pavement of large coarse red tiles bordered with flint stones slanted down from the exterior towards the centre. The pottery suggests a Roman date for the barrow, or secondary burial in a mound of earlier date. [Arch. Cant. xv, 311 ; V.C.H. Kent, i, 331 ; Proc. Soc. Antiq. 2nd series, ix, 163. For similar barrows, see p. 77, and R. Comm. on Hist. Mons. Essex, i, pp. xxiv, 4.] One and a quarter miles north-east of this, on the opposite of the Roman road, in excavations for a lake in Bourne Park in 1846, a broken Samian saucer was found with necks of jars, two spurs, a curious key, and a dagger with a blade 6½ in. long and black wood handle inlaid with gold, apparently medieval. Later distinctly Roman interments occurred at the same depth, but a little distance away, including a large urn 12 to 14 in. in height containing ashes, several smaller vessels, and a Samian stamped DOV . . . CCVS (DOECCUS). Within a few yards were a light green glass bottle with 2 handles, and fragments of another, a red-brown Castor-ware flagon ornamented with white scroll pattern, and an earthen urn with white pattern on a dark ground. Near by, a third deposit at the same depth (10 to 13 ft.) included three skeletons with long nails near the shoulders, hands and feet, one nail being driven right through the shoulder. Several coins of all ages were found, including medieval, and a few Roman, which were illegible, but one was distinguished as a Carausius. The two latter interments were thought to be the contents of a barrow, since moved. [Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. iii (1848), 47, and Proc. Soc. Ant. 2nd series, II (1850), 79, 80, 94.] Two Saxon graves had been opened in 1844 in Bourne Park. [Dunkin, Canterbury Meeting of British Arch. Assoc. 1844, p.97.]
   BLACKHEATH.—Harris mentions three tumuli to the south and four to the north of the road between the east corner of Greenwich Park and its junction with the road from Lee, from which urns and bones were dug out. Another authority records that many urns were found on Blackheath in 1710; one, with a girth of 6¼ ft., was inscribed MARCVS AVRELIVS in rudely scratched letters near the rim, while another, of curious cylindrical shape and 18 in. long, contained six or seven coins, including two of Claudius and Gallienus, but from the account it is not clear whether these did not come from Newington, near Sittingbourne, q.v. These two accounts may possibly refer to the same discovery, or the latter may be concerned with relics from one of the barrows opened in Greenwich Park. [Harris, Hist. Kent, 138; R. Gale’s Essay in Hearne’s Leland’s Itinerary (1711), vi, 103; hence A. D. Webster, Hist. Greenwich Park (1902), 68; Corpus. Inscr. Lat. vii, 1331.] Webster Dp. cit. p. 67] also mentions remains in Westcombe Park. In 1802, three urns, including one of Upchurch ware, the largest of which contained burnt bones, were found together with a vase, a flagon, and a saucer, 2 ft. below the surface in the Earl of Dartmouth’s garden at the south-west corner of Blackheath. [MS. Minutes Soc. Antiq. 3 Feb. 1803, xxix, 391; Arch. xv, 392, plate xxxix; hence Hasted, Hist. Kent, i, 375, and Arch. xviii, 330; British Mus.] The three brooches found here are not Roman. [MS. Minutes Soc. Antiq. 2 Feb. 1725—6, i, 183; hence Hasted, Hist. Kent, i, 27,1 and Gough, Camden Britannia (1806), i, 326.] A Roman camp marked on the 6-inch O.S. map, Sheet No. I, S.E., is probably not of that period. For London Road, see p. 138.
    BOLEY HILL (ROCHESTER).—See p. 87.
   BORDEN.—Sittingbourne, p. 98 (9). Villa at Sutton Baron, p. 105. Roman tiles have been noticed in the church. [Hasted, Hist. Kent, vi, 69.] See also TUNSTALL.
   BOROUGH GREEN.—In a field west of Borough Green and south of the road to Ightham, cinerary urns were found about 1839, but buried again elsewhere. [Arch. Cant. ii, 7, 8; hence Bennett, Ightham (1907), 55.] A quarter of a mile away, in the clay and sand pit just north of Borough Green Station, groups of pottery were frequently dug up. More especially in Oct. 1899, the deposits occurred in lines about 6 ft. apart, and about 2 ft. from the surface. They included three cinerary urns, 12 in. high, containing calcined bones, and a fourth much broken, 5 Samian dishes (one of form 35 or 36), a Samian cup, 2 Upchurch vases, 6 and 4 in. high, ornamented with the dot pattern, 2 other fragments, parts of 2 red jugs with handles, and parts of much earlier and much ruder cinerary urns with calcined bones. [Arch. Cant. xxiv, proc. p. lviii. In Rochester Museum.] The Kent Archaeologica1 Society has two lamps from graves at Borough Green; one is stamped FORTIS on the bottom, the other, stamped PRO BVS, bearing the head of Jupiter on the discus. The potter FORTIS had a factory, possibly at Mutina in Northern Italy, before A.D. 79, but his stamp seems to have been freely adopted by other potters in the northern provinces at a later date. In Maidstone Museum are two further lamps from Borough Green; the first has a rounded nozzle flanked on either side by a volute, and the discus bearing figures of Castor and Pollux (1st century A.D.); the other has a raised rim round the discus, a longitudinal groove on the nozzle, and is stamped COMVNI (probably about A.D. 70—120).
   1 References to Hasted are to the second 8vo edition of 1797.

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