in this parish on the left bank of the Ebbsfleet, in a bend of the stream
south-west of Northfleet Church. This church itself contains Roman
material in its walls, and Romano-British pottery has occurred in one of
the many artificial caves round here, and coins are found all over North
fleet parish.57
45. TESTON.—Here a villa stood on the top of the
gently sloping bank of the Medway, looking over the river, a mile from the
Barming villa (no. 6), and four miles west of Maidstone. Part was
excavated about 1872 (fig. 30). The discoveries included two small rooms
with pillared hypocausts, an adjoining room or passage built above what
may have been a ‘walled’ hypocaust, and a larger flagged apartment
with a furnace or flue in it. One of the hypocausts had attached to it an
apsidal chamber with a pipe at the bottom for letting out water. A broad
flue led from the hypocausts through solid masonry eastwards, presumably
either to a furnace or to other hot rooms, and walls were found to extend
some distance beyond this. Plainly we here have hot rooms and baths,
belonging perhaps to a fairly large house. But they have been too
imperfectly explored and their drains and flues too negligently recorded,
to justify further conjectures. The smaller finds comprised Upchurch and
Castor ware, many coins, and the bones of animals.58
46. THORNHAM.(THURNHAM) —Traces of a ’considerable
mansion ‘were noticed here in 1833, on ‘a damp clayey’ site just
north-west of the church, and three miles south-east of Kit’s Coty (p.
104, 36b). The remains comprised foundations, pavements,
wall-plaster painted red with borders of green and white, flue tiles,
charcoal and vitrified flints at one end of the building (i.e. the
furnace), many potsherds, animals’ bones, including deer and boar, and a
few coins—a base silver of Pius, a ‘first brass’ of the younger
Faustina, and some Constantinian coins. The foundations were removed and
no plan made.59
47. WINGHAM.—Abundant vestiges of Roman buildings have been
noticed, and in part examined, behind Wingham Court, in the field called
‘The Vineyards’ and around, on a pleasant site that faces south-east
and enjoys a good water supply, not very far from the Roman road
connecting Canterbury with Richborough. In 1881-2 excavations were made in
the north-east corner of these vestiges and revealed a structure some 60
ft. in length, which somewhat resembled a bath-house or the bathrooms of a
villa. Three small rooms at the east end contained tessellated floors with
plain geometrical patterns (squares, diamonds, and the like) in black (or
dark grey) and white. In the southernmost room, not only the floor, but
also the walls were tessellated, an unusual feature which recurs in the
baths at Silchester and Wroxeter.60 This room lay at a
somewhat lower level (15 in.) than the adjacent rooms, and the
drain in the corner suggests a bath. West of these rooms stretched a long
room, or more probably a long row of rooms, warmed by channelled and
columned hypocausts, expanding on the south into an apse. These ended to
the west in some imperfectly preserved rooms which contained two small
concrete baths, 46 in. long and 19 in. deep, stated to have had no
outlets. There was some evidence that the western part of the building was
built after the eastern rooms.
The smaller finds included a little Samian, much Upchurch,
and plenty of ruder potsherds, a few objects of glass, bone, and metal,
some millstones, and the bones of ox, pig, and deer. For coins we have one
‘first brass’ of Pius, bored with a hole and doubtless used long after
its date of issue as an ornament, 1 Victorinus, 1 Tetricus, 5 Constantinian,
and 1 Magnentius, all indicating an occupation in the first half of the
4th century.
Other foundations were traceable south-west of this, and some
digging at a distance of 100 yds. in this direction yielded rude walling,
red and blue tesserae, tiles, Samian and Upchurch potsherds, and the like.
These imperfect results indicate very plainly civilized occupation, though
they do not reveal the precise relation of the various rooms and remains.61
We may connect with these finds a ‘chest or coffin of large
black stones’ containing black ashes, found in 1710 in the Vineyard
field.62 A fine Samian bowl was found at Twitham Farm in
this parish.58
57 Arch. Cant. xviii,
313, and map (p. 307), no. 47, probably no. 37 of this list. For the cave,
see the Topographical Index, .c.v. Swanscombe p. 171, and
Industries, p. 131.
58 Grover, Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xxix,
45, 71 with plan.
59 Anonymous Brief Hist. account of
Maidstone and its neighbourhood (Maidstone 1834), p. 67; Charles, Arch.
xxx, 536; a saucer of Drag. form 33 stamped SVOBNIM,
probably an Antoine potter (Richborough Report II, 84, no. 111, C.I..L.
xiii, 10010, 1856), rude pottery and quern are all in Maidstone
Museum.
60 Arch. lix, 353.
61 Dowker, Arch. Cant. xiv, 134, xv, 351,
and more briefly Brit. Arch. Assoc. 7ourn. xxxvii, 449. Payne notes
a Samian potter’s mark CARATAI as found at
Wingham (Arch. Cant. xvii, 154), and now in Dover Mus., where we
did not see it, but cf. ‘Preston’ in Topographical Index. Boys, Sandwich,
p. 869, records two British coins (Tasciovanus) inscribed sego, Evans
Coins of the Ancient Britons, Supplement p. 540, pl. viii, no. 11,
as found at Wingham.
62 Hasted, iii, 700, who says the spot was
the Vineyard. Gough, Camden’s Britannia (1806) i, 358, etc.
Harris, 335, who calls the find-spot Trapham, a name that I cannot trace.
62 Arch. Cant. xv, 356.
Morgan, Romano-British Mosaics, p. 151, mentions the site. Burials
at Dearson Farm, Preston, and also a kiln, see Industries, p. 131, no. 10,
and Topographical Index. Arch. Cant. xii, 47f, xx, 49; Arch. xxxvi,
181.
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