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Hasted1 was perhaps
a late persistence of its name. It can surely be none other than the
settlement which on archaeological evidence is known to have existed
near Old King's Farm on the riverward slopes of a spread of gravel in
the neighbourhood of the modern Hoo Junction. In the gravel workings
have been found many relics of Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, Roman and
Saxon occupation, and in particular a small but well-furnished Saxon
cemetery.2 This cemetery and another
2¼ miles north-eastwards3 can be dated
by their grave-goods in the early part of the sixth century. No one
would begin to suggest that there was a continued occupation of the site
from the days of the early cemeteries, which probably represent at the
best a temporary rather than a prolonged residence, until the grant to
Canterbury, but the prominent geographical advantages of the site must
always have appealed quickly to any people who made a landfall on the
southern side of the Thames.
There are still many problems to be solved in the early
history of this piece of riverside country, and it is in the hope that
someone may be led to undertake the necessary field and library work
that these notes are published. The roadways have already received
attention in past years.4 |
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The Causeway to the important ferry at Higham, by
which travellers came to the famous Councils of Hoo and by which the
people of Higham went to their marshlands in Essex, is but little known
apart from one tantalising reference in the Crown Pleas for the Hundred
of Shamele, 21 Ed. I., and the small piece of its course yet remaining.
A complete study of the Saxon land charters of the Hundred of Hoo would
amply repay the long time which would need to be spent upon it. As a
footnote it may be added that the large mound known as Barrow Hill is a
naturally weathered mass of Thanet Sand. It was dug into in the lifetime
of Mr. George Payne, and the scars of his excavation may still be seen.
(I should like to express my best thanks to Dr. Gordon Ward
for help in preparing this note, and for so readily giving me access to
his own MSS. when my own notebooks and library had been destroyed.)
1 Hasted, op. cit., III, 444.
2 Arch. Cant., XXIII (1898), 22;
XXVIII (1909), xc-xcii; Jessup, Arch. Kent. (1930), 257.
3 Arch. Cant., XIII (1880), 562.
4 Arch. Cant., XIII (1880), 494;
XXIV (1900), 90. |