(c) Tyler Hill Ware
One sherd. of a strap handle, P.P.16 (not illustrated) in
fine sand-tempered ware, with grey core, orange brown surfaces, patchy
olive green glaze, is exactly like the material produced at the Tyler Hill
kilns, near Canterbury, which has a distribution mainly in east Kent.12
Although little of this ware was found at Eynsford, its discovery at
Dartford is not unexpected.
AQUAMANILE P.P.17 (Fig.
2)
Large sherd of the rear part of an animal body with simple
rod legs. The fabric, unknown at Eynsford, is a buff-grey, fine
sand-tempered ware with pink surfaces. There is a good quality yellow
green external glaze which is darker in patches and some glaze has run
inside the body. The body appears to have been thrown on a wheel, the legs
added in the same way as many jug handles: by being pushed through a hole
in the body and smoothed over internally and externally. There are raised
vertical lines running down the body, no doubt a stylised version of hair
or bristles. The rear view shows an external scar where a tail, which may
have continued up the body to form a handle running along the back, has
been broken away.
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STONE MORTAR
The ditch-filling, P.P., also contained
half of the lower part of a globose mortar (Fig. 5) in fine grey calcareous
sandstone with sparse crumbled fossil shells of ostrea and cardium
type, perhaps a superb bed of Kent Rag. It has a base-roll and traces of
lugs, in the general fashion of mortars from c. 1300 in Caen stone,13
Burr stone14 and other materials (as distinct from
the Purbeck mortars, which tend to be conical rather than globose and
usually without the base-roll). The dressing is fairly fine on the exterior,
with a claw-tool effect, horizontal on the body, vertical on the roll. it is
ground smooth inside, neither towards the centre nor the sides but
eccentrically, so that the base slopes from 45 to 30 mm. in thickness, and
was broken before it wore through.
For pictures of the
stone mortar click here
Mr. L. C. Dale also reports an iron tripod.
12 Arch. Cant., lv
(1942), 57-64. Surface finds from the site in the Royal Museum,
Canterbury.
13 J.B.A.A., 3rd
series, xxxili (1969), 82-4 (from Dover).
14 Med. Arch., v (1961), 279-84 (from
Northolt, Middx.).
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