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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Romano-British Kent - Topographical Index - Page 163

the third was a dish of coarse black ware. [C. R. Smith, Coll. Ant. iv (1857), 173, Plate xl, from Bryan Faussett’s . MSS.] About a hundred interments are said to have been found in two or three acres of land, on Lower Dane Farm, 300 yds. from the Stone Street road, but no other record of them remains. [Payne, Coll. Cant. (1893), p. 197.] See also Garlinge and Industries,p. 128.
   PLAXTOL.—Villa at Allen’s Farm, see p. 122. Near this villa was a shaft, the sides of which were timbered in a similar manner to the shaft found at Beakesbourne (q.v.); the Plaxtol shaft contained nothing but black earth, which emitted an unpleasant odour and must probably be regarded as a well. [Payne, Coll. Cant. (1893), p. 179.] A Roman tumulus was found in the south-west corner of a field, about 100 yds. square, north of Thompson’s or Duck’s Farm, and about a mile north of the villa on Allen’s Farm, but on the western bank of the stream. Apparently it had previously been levelled; the skeleton of a female was found in the centre, with its head to the north-east and a large semicircular stone on the breast, and burial urns and other deposits in groups in a circle round it, on the edge of the mound. Those to the south had been better preserved than those on the north side. Among them was a large urn, 10 in. high and 38 in. circumference, containing a skull, a biscuit-coloured bottle ornamented with dots and circles, a large Samian cup stamped ANNIO3F and two saucers stamped SENTIA.M and OF(?)NEAN (probably a bogus stamp), black, brown and red pottery containing burnt bones, some of animals and birds, a glass lachrymatory and other fragments of fine bottle glass, 2 T-shaped bronze fibulae, and one with a pierced sheath, 2 bronze rings, 2 bronze locks, hinges, clamps, studs and nails—box-mountings—fragments of wood, leather and chipped flints. To the west of these were the foundations of a wall, supposed to have surrounded an enclosure, 100 yds. square, with the barrow in one corner; a paved road, 4 ft. wide, was said to have been seen 20 years previously running from the tumulus in a north-easterly direction, with potsherds on and near it. Patches of blackened soil containing many potsherds, bones and teeth of animals and 2 iron knives were found apparently in 1893 in a hop-garden on Duck’s Farm and 200 yds. to the east a skeleton was said to have been found many years before in a tomb covered with tiles. Perhaps this is the same burial as that found in 1857, and the blackened soil is part of the funeral fires or else a rubbish heap. [Arch. Cant. ii, 6, 7, plan and figs.; Gent’s. Mag. 1857 (2), 201; Payne, Coll. Cant. p. 202.] The Maidstone Museum has glass, the stamped Samian saucers mentioned above, the biscuit-coloured bottle and part of a flagon (Augustan), as well as bronze rings, corner pieces, lock and handle, and large flat-headed nails.
   PLUMSTEAD.—In 1887, a lead coffin containing the skeleton of a young girl was found, 3 to 4 ft. deep, in a field 30 yds. north of the main road from Woolwich over Bexley Heath, and west of Wickham Lane, and due north of East Wickham Church. It lay north and south, and measured 6 ft. long, 15 in. wide, and 12 in. deep; the lead was ⅜ in. to 1 in. thick, and the whole weighed 3 cwt. The lid was 3½ in. larger and was ornamented round the edge with the crossed ‘billet and double ring moulding’ usual on these coffins. Bits of decayed wood were found with it. Three feet away was a second burial consisting of a man’s skull, a red urn with a handle, 6½ in. high, and an Upchurch urn, 7 in. high. [Arch. Cant. xvii, 10; Proc. Soc. of Antiq. xi, 308—9; xii, 6; xiii, 245; Antiq. xv (1887), 165—6; Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xliii, 98. The coffin is now in the Maidstone Museum.] Only a few yards away was a dene hole, 30 ft. long, leading to a cavity in the chalk, some 30 ft. deep and 18 ft. broad. At the bottom of it were found seven or eight Upchurch urns, part of an iron knife, an iron bell with handle and clapper, oyster and snail shells, bits of burnt sticks, and a broken flanged tile. The remainder of the pit was filled with potsherds and human and animal bones, among the latter being some of the polecat, weasel and bos 1ongifrons. The contents, on the whole, seem to have been those of a rubbish pit of the Romano-British period, nothing later being found. [Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xlvii, 88; Proc. Soc. Antiq. xiii, 245; Arch. Cant. xxi, proc. p. xlviii.]
   PRESTON (near FAVERSHAM).—Cemetery, see Faversham, p. 95.   4 or 5 skeletons with nails 7 in. long, and small illegible silver coins were found at Preston Mill in 1860. [Reliq. xiii, 144.]
   PRESTON (near WINGHAM).—In addition to the kiln found here (see p. 131) a cemetery seems to have extended over a considerable area between Dearson Farm (and south-west of it) and Preston Court, particularly in gravel pits. Some of the pottery is of an unusual type. In 1872 several black urns containing burnt bones were found ‘with several Samian paterae,’ on Dearson Farm. [Maidstone Museum; Dover Museum, Arch. Cant. xli, 47; Arch. xxxvi, 181; Proc. Soc. Ant. xvi, 247; see also p. 125, n. 63.] See also Wingham.
   PRESTON HALL.—See Aylesford.
   PUDDING PAN ROCK.—Much plain Samian ware has been dredged from shoals in the Thames estuary off Whitstable and Herne Bay, particularly from the Pan Sand 2½ miles north-east of Herne Bay. The discoveries are regarded as salvage from the wreck of a cargo boat bringing Lezoux pottery from the coast of Gaul to Britain in about 160 A.D. As long ago as 1778, the

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