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Rawreth is apparently devoid of BB2 (Drury 1977, 40).
The loss of long-distance markets, coupled with increasing pressure from
the Alice Holt industry to the west and from the competitive hand-made
grog-tempered ware to the east, evidently proved fatal for the north Kent
potteries. Their decline may well have set in earlier in the third
century, for from then on the kiln sites themselves disappear from the
archaeological record: the latest kiln known of is Kiln A at Oakleigh
Farm, Higham (Catherall 1983), dated to the mid-third century.
III. THE CANTERBURY POTTERY INDUSTRY
1. Introduction
The existence of potters at Canterbury was first demonstrated in 1939,
when a kiln was excavated under salvage conditions during the construction
of a wartime shelter (Webster 1940). Since that time another six
industrial sites around the city have been recorded under salvage or
rescue conditions (Swan 1984, 390—3), from which a history of the
industry can be deduced covering the first 150 years of the province. The
Canterbury potteries are a classic example of an urban industry, but
despite this have received little or no attention in standard works on
Romano-British pottery (e.g. Webster 1976; Swan 1975a).
2. Origins
Two groups of potters can be recognised in pre-Flavian Canterbury.
Salvage excavations to the south of the city at Stuppington Lane (Bennett et
al. 1980) recorded a kiln associated with coarse sandy ware jars and
bowls of essentially late Iron Age inspiration. This ware comprises
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between 5 per cent and 13 per cent of pre-Flavian assemblages from the
Marlowe Car Park sites in Canterbury (Pollard forthcoming, d), but has not
been recognised beyond the city. It may have developed from local ‘Aylesford-Swarling’ grog-tempered ware, kiln sites for which remain undetected. The
latter ware has been found within one kiln, but it cannot be certain that it
was fired therein rather than being incorporated in backfill or even as
baffles (Jenkins 1956a, fig. 8, nos. 27—29, 31—32).
The second group of potters is known to have worked on two
sites, at Reed Avenue (unpublished; noted in Jenkins 1966a; and Swan 1984,
392) and at St. Stephen’s Road, Area II (Jenkins 1956a). The grey wares
and misfired flagons (nos. 47—57) find close parallels in the Gallo-Roman
pottery of the Nord/Pas-de-Calais region of France (Tuffreau-Libre 1980a;
Richardson and Tyers 1984, ‘vases tronconiques’; 4.I.3 above),
but are absent from Camulodunum (cf. Hawkes and Hull, Form 242, however),
and from first-century legionary sites in the Midlands and West, which are
associated with Rhineland-derived forms (Greene 1973; Frere and St. Joseph
1974; Bidwell 1977; Darling 1977). The ‘Hofheim’ flagon (no. 56) is
an exception, being ubiquitous in pre-Flavian Britain and the Rhineland (Gose
1950, Types 362—364; Greene 1973; cf. Hawkes and Hull 1947, Forms 136 and
140). It seems likely that this pottery was produced by craftsmen who
migrated to Kent during the reign of Nero, attracted by the new markets
Canterbury and the military supply base at Richborough (see Pollard
forthcoming, d, for further discussion). They achieved a similar market
share in the city to the Stuppington Lane potters, though their operations
may have extended into the Flavian period, up to c. A.D. 80.
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