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I. INTRODUCTION
An exhaustive gazetteer of production sites in Roman Britain lists 67 sites
in Kent (Swan 1984, 387-421). Twenty-four of these lay in the Upchurch
Marshes, mostly poorly recorded by nineteenth- and twentieth-century
antiquaries. A further ten sites are known along the southern fringes of the
Medway estuary, nine on the Cliffe peninsula and Isle of Grain, and 12 along
the floodplain of the Thames between Swanscombe in the west and Higham in
the east. Canterbury is ringed by seven sites, the only other east Kent
location being at Preston-near-Wingham, above the mouth of the Little Stour.
Two sites at Ash-cum-Ridley (New Ash Green, between the rivers Darent and
Medway), and one each at Otford (near Sevenoaks, south-west Kent) and Eccles
(in the Medway valley) complete the picture. Two hypothesized kiln sites, at
Joyden's Wood, Bexley, and at Stone Wood, Stone near Dartford, are
discredited, whilst a third at Dymchurch (Wheeler 1932) fails to merit even
a dismissal.
The studies of the distribution of pottery wasters and of wares
can add some generalized areas of production to the sites catalogued by Swan
(see below, 5.IV and 6.III.2). It is to be expected that in a county whose
Iron Age traditions
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of potting were as strong as those in Kent, pottery manufacture was a
widespread, though by no means ubiquitous activity. Two regions stand out,
however: that between Swanscombe and the Upchurch Marshes, and the environs
of Canterbury.
II. THE POTTERY INDUSTRY OF NORTH KENT:
THAMESIDE, THE CLIFFE PENINSULA AND
THE MEDWAY MARSHES
1. Background
The southern marshes of the Medway estuary, around Rainham and Upchurch,
were the scene of some of the earliest searches for Roman pottery in
Britain. The sea level has risen since the Roman period, inundating the
second-century and later sites (Evans 1953), and areas such as Otterham
Creek, Rainham, formerly one of the richest 'veins' of pottery, are now
practically sterile. The antiquarian collectors have left little record of
their finds (Monaghan 1987, 242-3), even the pots themselves often having
been lost or separated from indications of their
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