Victoria
County History of Kent Vol. 3
1932 - Romano-British
Kent - Country Houses - Page 106
the south and west was full of debris of potsherds and charcoal ashes, but
no actual foundations seem to have been noticed.
The miscellaneous remains found in and near the building
include embossed and other Samian pottery, a small crucible, part of a
terra-cotta female figure of a common Gaulish type, fragments of a large
glass bottle, window-glass—two bits of which (we are told) were painted
red—some bronze fibulae, a bronze pin, iron nails and other bits of
iron, and the bones of boar, ox, and sheep. The following coins were also
noted, some in 1841 and some earlier
1 silver and 5 copper, British and Gaulish
coins 1 denarius of Severus
2 ‘second brass’ of
Claudius
3 ‘third brass’ of Gallienus
1 ‘second brass ‘ of
Nero
5 small copper Constantine I
1 ‘second brass’ of
Pius
2 small copper Constantinopolis type
1 ‘first brass’ of
Pius
5 small copper Urbs Roma
1 ‘first brass ‘ of
Commodus
1 Constantine II
1 Valens
The plan of the building is that of a bath-house, with
hot-air chambers, a smaller room of lower temperature, and another
containing a small apsidal bath, apparently for cold water. The character
of the site agrees with the plan. It is sloping and cramped; its one
advantage is the nearness of water, and it was clearly chosen for this
reason in preference to more level and spacious spots around it. As a
bath-house, it may have served one or other of two purposes. Those who saw
the remains took it to be the bath of a large wooden or mud-walled
dwelling adjoining its eastern side, It might also have stood detached as
the common bath-house of some neighbouring hamlet, now vanished. Similar
isolated bath-houses occur elsewhere, as at Chipping Warden and Borough
Hill in Northamptonshire.13 In each
case the building is
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Fig 23 Plan of House at Boxted
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structurally capable of standing alone, and further
investigation is needed to show where and what were the dwellings of those
who used the baths. The Boughton bath seems to have been first wrecked and
then burnt, and the coins suggest that this happened near the end of the
4th century.
In 1834 a human skeleton, two burial urns and a flat dish
were found near the eastern end of the field. A walled cemetery containing
large monuments existed about one-third of a mile north, in Joy Wood, near
Lockham (see Top. Index, p 158).14
10. BOXTED.—Extensive traces of a house have been found on
the edge of Upchurch parish and to the east of Boxted Farm, about
three-quarters of a mile to the south of the village of Lower Halstow and
one mile north-west of Newington. The site occupies the end of a low hill,
some 50 ft. above sea-level, where high ground sinks to the Upchurch
marshes. Here the plough has often turned up debris of buildings, and part
of the remains was excavated in the autumn of 1882.
13 V.C.H. Northants,
i, 195, 200. Compare the bath-house at Chastres in Belgium, which
stands on the edge of a rectangular area, enclosed by a ditch, and the
only other building on the site is a capacious barn in the middle of the
enclosure. (Anna/es de la Société archéologique de Namur, XX1V,
27.)
14 C. T. Smythe, Arch. xxix, 414—419;
for coins see also Numis. Chron. iv (1842), Proc. pp. 17, 49,and C.
R. Smith, Coli. Ant. i, 5, plates v, vi. Maidstone Museum
has window glass, 10 fibulae (1 in one piece, of Celtic type) and other
bronze bits, a Samian saucer of shape 31, stamped GIM .
. SVS and some rude ware.. The building itself seems to have been
mostly demolished in 1841. See also Topographical Index. s.v.
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