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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


Fig 23  Plan of House at Boxted

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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