Lees Court Estate Excavations 2025 on Clay and Flints: Badlesmere Park Wood

[fg]jpg|Fig 1 – The replica pots|Image[/fg]

After going potty in 2024 and producing a first series of fired pots from clay found in layers of excavations, the volunteers taking part in the 2025 KAS Lees Court archaeological excavations—this time taking place in Badlesmere Park Wood under the skilled supervision of Keith Parfitt—took experiencing ancient pottery to the next level.

The site is in the North Downs, a formation of Cretaceous Chalk (calcium carbonate) overlapped in places by Lower Greensand (a sand and sandstone layer containing glauconite, giving it a green hue) and Gault Clay (a blue clay layer generally found under the Greensand), all topped by later deposits of clay-with-flints.

[fg]jpg|Fig 2 – Pots after firing|Image[/fg]

Two bucketfuls of natural clay were extracted from one of the test pits and Trench 1 during the excavations, deep within the clay-with-flints layers. Amateur clay experiment organiser Corinne prepared a 300g ball of clay for each willing participant. The clay was darker brown, more malleable, and a purer clay body than that of the previous year.

Making natural clay useable for pottery is a painstaking process involving the removal of impurities, including larger flint fragments, by sifting (dry or wet) and creating a homogeneous body to work with.

11 pots were made with the clay (Fig 2). The bisqued pots (unglazed, fired at about 1000C degrees, so quite close to ancient pit firing, which would have reached around 900C degrees) and tiles were a terracotta/dark orange colour, quite possibly due to the presence of iron deposits (also visible in the colour of some flints, see Fig 5).

On second firing (or the ‘glaze firing’, using commercial glazes and firing in a commercial kiln at 1260C or so), the glazed pots’ clay colour turned maroon (Fig 3).

[fg]jpg|Fig 3 – Glazed pots before painting|Image[/fg]

[fg]jpg|Fig 4 – Medieval pottery sherds recovered during field walking|Image[/fg]

Considering the quality and quantity of the clay present in sublayers of the local soil on the Estate, mostly made of clay-with-flints, it would have been relatively easy for ancient humans to make pottery locally, although no trace of it was found on the site investigated. However, a field walk in nearby Marsham Field revealed a quantity of medieval pottery sherds (Fig 4).

Flints

During the digging of investigation trenches and test pits through the clay-with-flints layers, the volunteers noticed a great variation in the colours of flints, as can be seen in Fig 5, which shows a selection of them. Essentially, the colour variations can be caused by the presence of impurities within the flint body, caused by geological pressures on the soil layers. For example, fire can give flint a chalky white colour and a cracked appearance, which you can see on the ‘pot boilers’ that were found (Fig 5, notice the white fire cracked examples in the bottom left). ‘Pot boilers’ are flints that have been heated up deliberately and then either crushed and added to clay to increase its strength for pottery making, or to use them to generate heat for domestic purposes.

[fg]jpg|Fig 5 – An example of the variety of flint colours|Image[/fg]

[fg]jpg|Fig 6 – Natural flint forms|Image[/fg]

Flint is made of silica, which in its unaltered form doesn’t have much colour. On contact with trace elements, like iron and manganese mostly, different colours are produced in the flint. Manganese and organic materials tend to create hues of dark brown, grey, black or purple, while iron oxides produce shades of orange, yellow or brown. Oxidised iron and reduced iron produce respectively yellow/ green to red hues and brown to grey shades.

Another striking feature of flints is the incredible range of shapes they can take as exemplified by Fig 6, some of them sometimes looking like potential ancient artefacts!

[fg]jpg|Fig 7 – The final product|Image[/fg]

Dr Corinne Montenon is an expert in pottery manufacture with a PhD in History and Theology. Corinne is a keen member of the Kent Archaeological Society and is deeply involved in the project at Lees Court Estate. She is also embarking on the Stringmans Farm History Project.

All images courtesy of the author, 2025.