used in its construction, the timber members being
morticed together. According to the published account, at the base was a
flat stone held in place over a cavity in the earth by six pegs of
chestnut wood, and on the stone was a circle of horse’s teeth. Above
these were five urns of dark, hard-textured pottery, 9 to 11 in. high,
with lattice decoration, one in each corner of the shaft and one in the
middle. The urns contained a ‘white clayey matter,’ probably calcined
bones, the mouth of one being covered with a piece of burnt clay. Then
came a layer of flints, and above it, protected by flints arched over it,
an urn of bluish black clay, 10 in. in height. There were also remains of
a ‘fibrous texture,’ and the shaft, which was kept wet by a spring,
was filled with large flints and the top covered with oak planks. In a
second shaft discovered near by, no timber construction had been used,
but, like the other, it was filled with flints, and at a depth of 15 ft.
were two or three urns and what appeared to be an amphora. Although these
shafts were thought to be burial places, they seem more probably to have
been wells in the first instance; in the first example there is little
doubt that the well was afterwards turned into a burial place, but in the
second example the pots had possibly fallen in accidentally. [ Arch.
Cant. ii, 43; C. R. Smith, Coll. Antiq. vii, 112. For similiar
shafts see below, s.v. Frittenden, and V.C.H. Nor. i, 295.
Timbered well-shafts have been found in the pre-Roman area at Colchester
in 1930.] In Canterbury Museum is a model of the timber structure, some of
the pottery and part of the oak timber. Five or six Roman urns and
fragments of others were dug up in the parish in 1869, but details of the
discovery are lacking. [Arch Cant. viii, proc. p. xlvi.]
BEAMSTONE.—See Eastwell.
BEARSTED.—At Crismill Farm, near Bearsted, a workman
levelling the lawn came upon a burial group consisting of three urns with
cremated bones, a Samian saucer, and other coarse pottery. One urn and a
flagon of early second-century date are in the Maidstone Museum. [Arch.
Cant. xxxix, 45.]
BECKENHAM.—In 1884 some pits in Toot Wood yielded
potsherds, but apparently of pre-Roman date, horse’s teeth, burnt bones,
flints, and much corroded iron. [Proc. Soc. Alntiq. xii, 347.]
BENENDEN.—See Roads and Industries, pp. 128, 140.
BETHERSDEN.—A black saucer and rough pottery from Tuesroad
Farm, 2 miles north-west of Bethersden, are in the Maidstone Museum. A
coin of Faustina was found at Romden, ¾ mile west of this, but in Smarden
parish.
BEXHILL.—See Sittingbourne, p. 96.
BEXLEY.—Building, see p. 104. Pottery has
been found near Bourne House on the road from Bexley to Crayford. Two
miles west of this, on Blendon Hall estate, four urns were found in 1811,
2 to 3 ft. below the surface, placed in a line running east and west, and
so arranged that the two smaller urns were inside and the larger outside.
The largest urn contained burnt bones. [Soc. Antiq. MS. Minutes, 5
December, 1811; Arch. Cant. xviii, 313.] Rough Romano-British
potsherds were found in the square ‘camp’ at Row Hill in Joyden’s
Wood some years ago, but recent excavations in the inner of the two camps
revealed only medieval pottery. [Arch. Journ. xxxviii, 405; Journ.
R. Studies, xv, 245.] For a lead coffin, see Crayford. See also Eltham
and Blackheath.
BIDDENDEN.—Six urns containing burnt bones, possibly Roman,
were found in a railway cutting a mile north of Biddenden.[Arch. Cant. xxvii,
introd. p. lxx.]
BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA.—A cordoned urn of soft grey ware of the
middle of the first century A.D. was found with burnt bones in Epple Bay
Avenue between the railway and the sea in 1904.[Antiq. Journ. iv,
158.] In laying down a drain for a house in Beaconsfield Road (between the
Margate Road and the railway) in 1896, a skeleton lying east and west and
accompanied by a small Roman vase near the skull was found at a depth of
2½ ft. Within a yard was the outline of another grave lying north and
south. [Arch. Cant. xxii, proc. p. lxii.] A gold ring
inscribed FIDES CONSTANTI
was ploughed up in Birchington, perhaps about 1860; it was formerly in the
possession of Mr. J. P. Powell of Quex, but it is not in Major
Powell-Cotton’s museum at Quex Park, and its present whereabouts is not
known. A similar ring was found at Norwich. [Literary Gaz. 1
Sept.1860, p. 166; hence Mowatt, Mem. de Soc. des Antiq. de Ia France, X
(1889), 336, and Arch. Journ. 1, 282; Eph. Ep. ix, 1330.] A
Romano-British urn containing burnt bones, found at Gore End in 1848, is
now in the Mayer Collection in Liverpool Free Public Museum. [Arch.
Journ. 1, 283; Eph. Ep. ix, 1330.] A large urn containing burnt
human bones and a small 2nd century jar were found at Birchington Bay in
1915. [Ramsgate Mus.] See also Westgate.
BISHOPSBOURNE.—In Gorsley Wood, a mile W.S.W. of
Bishopsbourne Station, three barrows were excavated in 1882 or 1883. Their
centres lay in a straight line, and they were of progressive size and
height. They contained stone cists with burnt ashes and bones, and a
little distance away 3 or 4 broken urns, one thought to be of Castor ware,
and another of Upchurch ware, a
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