Fieldwork KAS Conference 2024 - Recent Archaeological Work in the Darent Valley

Saturday 9th November saw the annual KAS fieldwork conference, held near Maidstone. Organized by the Society’s Archaeology Research Group (formerly the Fieldwork Committee), it was a new venue for this year’s event. After a number of years of being kindly hosted by the University of Kent at Canterbury, the meeting for 2024 was held at The Friars, Aylesford, on banks of the River Medway.

As one of the first Carmelite friaries to be founded in Britain, during 1242, the location was entirely appropriate for our meeting, with the well-known collection of Bronze Age gold work, that has been in the possession of the Society for many years, also having been pulled from the river somewhere in this general vicinity. The theme of the 2024 KAS meeting, however, was not the rich archaeology of the Medway valley but the equally rich archaeology of another Kent valley - that of the River Darent, located some fifteen miles further west.

Around 75 people assembled in a large room named after St Simon Stock, a native of Kent and patron saint of the Carmelite Order, to hear a varied range of talks, describing work undertaken in the Darent valley over the last few years. Proceedings began with an interesting talk by past KAS President and veteran excavator, Dr Gerald Cramp, who reviewed the extensive evidence for Roman villas along the length of the Darent Valley, of which the world-famous Lullingstone villa is but one of more than a dozen such sites.

[fg]jpg|Fig 1. The KAS Fieldwork Conference at Aylesford Priory.|Image[/fg]

[fg]jpg|Fig 2. Community excavations at Lullingstone Roman Villa in West Kent.|Image[/fg]

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Dr Anne Sassin, from the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership next described some relatively small scale, though very informative reinvestigation work recently undertaken at the Lullingstone villa itself (fig 2). She was followed by Kevin Fromings who focussed in on another of the Darent valley villas, that at Otford, where recent excavations have revealed a complex sequence of buildings, most apparently robbed away before the end of the Roman period.

Following a break for lunch, the start of the afternoon session saw us remain at Otford, with Dr Charles Shee from the Archbishops Palace Conservation Trust, who outlined the known history and archaeology of medieval and post-medieval Otford Palace (fig 3). From this it became clear that there is still much to be done in researching all aspects of this massive site.

Next, Nathalie Cohen from the National Trust gave us an update on recent fieldwork and discoveries at St John’s Jerusalem, Sutton-at- Hone – a preceptory of the Knights Hospitaller (fig 4). She was followed by Ann Isenberg, again from the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership, who described recent excavations in the historic gardens at Lullingstone Castle. This most enjoyable day ended at around 4.30 with some closing remarks on the archaeology of the Darent valley and a certain consensus that future fieldwork conferences might follow a similar format, focussing on some specific part of Kent. More on this over the coming months….

See Diary for details on the next Kent Archaeological Society Fieldwork Forum.

[fg]jpg|Fig 3. Otford’s Archbishops’ Palace|Image[/fg]

[fg]jpg|Fig 4. Research at the moated site of St John’s Jerusalem, at Sutton-at-Hone near Dartford by the National Trust.|Image[/fg]