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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Romano-British Kent - Country Houses - Page 125

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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