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The Roman Pottery of Kent
by Dr Richard J. Pollard  -  Chapter 4  page 39
Doctoral thesis completed in 1982, published 1988

have had much impact outside of the towns until perhaps as late as the early second century. The Mediterranean(?) ‘Pompeian Red’ ware (Peacock 1977c, Fabrics 1 and 2) also ceased to be imported in the early Flavian period (ibid., 159). The Canterbury and Brockley Hill industries both expanded in the early Flavian period, supplying between them most of Kent with, flagons as well as mortarium, bowl and jar forms (see below, and Fig. 22 particularly). The Eccles production, which as has been said may never have supplied more than the immediate vicinity and perhaps merely the nascent villa-estate itself, evidently ceased during the Neronian period (Detsicas 1977a, 28—9). It is possible that, during much of Vespasian’s reign (A.D. 69—79) samian pottery held a virtual monopoly of fine wares in Britain, flagons apart, until the emergence of various grey, red and white wares in the mid-Flavian period (see below).

2. The Coarse Wares of West Kent

The problem of distinguishing pre- from early post-Conquest coarse pottery in Kent has been highlighted (in Chapter 3.IV). Champion (1976, 71) has proposed that ‘Patch Grove’ ware (Pollard 1987, Fabric 73; nos. 17—21 here) originated in the post-Conquest period on the grounds of associations with certain brooch types. Certainly, positive evidence for a pre-Conquest origin is not forthcoming. However, the fabric does occur in pit deposits at West Wickham North Pole Lane that are entirely devoid of characteristic ‘Romano-British’ sandy wares and of samian ware (Philp 1973, 71), a situation that is indicative of an emergence early on in the sequence of ceramic development in the first century in west Kent. The early forms include bead-rim and everted rim jars, the latter often with finger-tip or slashed decoration (nos. 20 and 21 here). The carinated-shoulder jar (no. 19) appears to be a late first-century

development, however. The ware is uncommon along the Thames estuary east of the Darent, for example at Springhead and Rochester (Appendix 5), but is one of the more abundant in western districts (Philp 1973) and also in the interior of central-western Kent (Philp 1963a) in the mid-late first century. The distribution extends into Surrey (Fig. 31), but finds in London, Southwark and Chariton appear to be confined to storage jars, from which it may be inferred that these sites lay outside the main area of usage.
   ‘Patch Grove’ ware is one of a variety of fabrics indigenous to west Kent in the Conquest period. These include shell-, sand-and-shell- and sand-tempered fabrics, all of which exhibit similar formal and technological traits. Hand-forming is predominant, with some trueing-up of the rims on a turntable. The dominant forms are the wide-mouth bead-rim jar or bowl and the everted rim ‘S’ jar, the former often provided with a groove on the rim thought to have been designed to take a lid. Localised production is probable: the large group of pottery from the Gas Board’s pipe trench at Cooling (Pollard forthcoming, b) in sand-tempered ware with sparse shell inclusions is one unit that can be isolated (nos. 1—9 here), with a distribution confined in the main to the Medway valley and Medway/Swale estuaries (Fig. 20). This fabric may span the Conquest, as may other localised wares in eastern Kent and the Medway estuary (see below). Philp’s ‘Native (local) burnished Wares’ (1973, 71) may represent another minor west Kent production unit; although a pre-Conquest date is favoured by the excavator, some sherds are associated with late first/early second century samian (ibid.). The published forms include bead-rim necked jars and bowls, sometimes cordoned, and a bag-shape beaker (ibid., fig. 34, no. 306).
   The ‘most common wares are, however, shell- and shell-sand- tempered (nos. 11—16 here). It

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