(11) POTTERIES OF THE MEDWAY MARSHES AND
‘UPCHURCH’ POTTERY.
—The Medway Marshes form an important division of the great tracts of
marsh land that are characteristic of the Thames and Medway estuaries.
Though separated from the Thames marshes by the tertiary mass of the
Hundred of Hoo peninsula, they nevertheless have been subjected to the
same geological influences, and there is ample evidence (as there is in
the Thames estuary33) that the level of the land has sunk
considerably since Roman times, and that what is now drowned marsh was
then habitable land. The particular region in which we are interested lies
near Upchurch (the village which has given its name to the pottery), and
Lower Halstow, stretching from Nor Marsh on the west to Stangate Creek on
the east, and including the larger saltings of Motley Hill, Ham Green,
Slay Hills, Burntwick, and Milfordhope.34 The saltings
are separated from the mainland by water, and part of them is submerged at
high tide. The name ‘ Upchurch’ was frequently applied by earlier
antiquaries to a type of fumed grey or black pottery found abundantly on
the marshes near Upchurch; but it is now realized that the distribution of
this particular ware is not by any means confined solely to Kent, nor even
to England, and the term now has no scientific connotation.
For many years past the marshes have yielded Roman pottery in
such large quantities that they have been regarded as the site of an
extensive pottery industry; there are many accounts of the discoveries,
those by C. Roach Smith, F. C. J. Spurrell, and George Payne being the
most valuable, and the following paragraphs summarize the salient points
mentioned by these observers.
Potsherds have been found abundantly round the shores of
Grain and Sheppey, at Sharfleet, Slay Hills, and Milfordhope Saltings, in
Lower Halstow, Funton, Otterham, and Sharfleet Creeks, and on the mud
flats as far west as Chetney Hill.35 At intervals in the
saltings, about 3 ft. below the surface, was a layer 1 ft. to 2 ft. thick
of fragments of various kinds of pottery, and this layer could be seen
especially well, according to Payne,36 on the east bank
of Otterham Creek, and 3 ft. below it were found ten or twelve vessels
lying in a row. Spurrell describes the layers as occurring at various
levels in the saltings, but rarely below 10 ft.;37 he
adds that floors of clay hardened by fire and often covered with pottery
fragments were found from the surface downward, but these, he thought,
were post-Roman. The same observer remarked that the true Roman occupation
level was at a great depth, and few creeks cut deep enough into the
marshes to expose it.
About 1885, in Sharfleet Creek, Mr. Spurrell38 saw
several places about 11 ft. below the surface where potteries stood, and
at one spot he also observed traces of a building of ragstone and gault
bricks, together with much whole pottery and refuse. Otterham Creek has
long been famous for the quantities of pottery found in its banks. Charles
Roach Smith,39 in 1846, recorded a layer of sherds 1 ft.
thick and about 3 ft. below the surface that could be traced for a long
distance and contained vessels of red ware and amphora, in addition to the
usual blue-black ware. An extensive cemetery was found in the Creek about
the same time.
33 Royal Com. Rep. S.E.
Essex, p. 38, hut sites on the foreshore at Tilbury.
34 O.S. 6-in, maps, sheets xx, N.W.; xx,
N.E.; xii, S.E.
35 Arch. Journ. xlii, 277; Coll.
Cant. (1893), p. 72.
36 Coll. Cant. (1893), p.
72. 37 Arch.
,7ourn. xlii, 278. 38 Ibid.
39 Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. II,
133-8; Coll. Ant. vi, 180
|