Discovering Boxley Abbey: Old House Project

Description: This is recording of the talk that KAS hosted in November 2022. The talk discusses the work of SPB at the Old House, Boxley supported by the Historic Buildings Special Interest Group.

Transcript:

thank you very much this is going to be a three-handed talk um I'm Matthew Slocum I'm director of the spab uh with me is Johnny Garlic our special operations officer and Graham keyville too who's uh the society's uh consultant archaeologist at Boxley um I'm really pleased to be here an hour ago I was stuck on the M25 in heavy rain thinking uh it was an impossible task but um a few I've made it and we're all really delighted as well to have the opportunity to speak to you tonight about the sbab's old house project and also our working party and activities at uh nearby Boxley Abbey um these are two separate projects for us but they're neatly dovetailed together if you like um and have proved extremely important to our work over the last three or four years um Central to this too um and all credit due here to Kent archaeological society as well as other archaeological groups who've been our active Partners um along the way in what we're doing um Graham Kiva will say a bit more I'm sure about um the various ways um other archaeologists have been involved in in what we've been up to but I think um it's important to note that um the archeology at boxy has for us been quite a departure from anything we've been uh doing in the past um despite our very long history of over 145 years the sbab and Archeology haven't had a huge amount of overlap but here at boxy the two disciplines building conservation and Archeology have come together really neatly and I think we have gained enormously from that partnership so thank you so much for the help that you've given along the way let me tell you just a little bit first by way of introduction about us the society for the protection of ancient buildings and what where we're up to um some of you I'm sure will have come across us already but if not um we like to claim to be the country's oldest building conservation body founded way back in 1877 by William Morris uh Philip Webb and others around him in the pre-raphaelite movement but designers Architects um but basically just people who loved ancient buildings and wanted to secure their protection today we have quite a wide range of advisory and educational roles uh these include many courses we've been at boxy today for instance uh running a hedge Lang course which has has been really important as a complementary activity to the building work that's going on we also run in the center there a free technical advice service where anyone can ring up on a weekday morning ask us a question about their care or maintenance of old buildings um we suggest Specialists too if they're needed it's just one of our charitable functions um and we have a statutory role within the listed building consent system so local authorities are obliged to notify us of applications that involve a degree of demolition of listed buildings and then we offer advice we don't make the final decision on those applications everything we do is based on the document on the right called the sbab approach which has my name on it but really it's a cumulative product of work over those 145 years and firmly rooted in William Morris's Manifesto of 1877. foreign contains some very straightforward and simple ideas fundamental to everything is understanding what you're dealing with and that's understanding in a technical structural sense but very much too in a historical sense so knowing what you've got and what you're dealing with is the critical starting point for the sbab we then promote the value of good maintenance doing things regularly looking after the small problems to avoid the big ones emerging uh but wire repair is necessary we urge something we call conservative repair that's about doing what's necessary but no more than that and doing it in a way that's honest and expresses the fact that a change has happened as these two examples here illustrate so let's move on then to the old house project this is just a quick introduction from me and then I'll pass on to Johnny to explain about some of the the actual work that's been happening over the last couple of years um so in the past the sbab was the owner and repair of many historic buildings um just one example is that on the left you may well Know It uh extremely well or have passed it on a regular basis it's the weelden Hall Restaurant it's for Larkfield um repaired by us but sold on many years ago and now a thriving restaurant um but in recent decades we've moved away from this kind of activity we focused on advice giving and on training activities and this had rather taken us away from the Practical doing of things so in 2016 the sbab took a significant uh strategic decision that it wanted to take on a new demonstration project as a means of showing what we were all about and this was the capitalist for a two-year Nationwide hunt to find the right building until we finally alighted upon Saint Andrews um at Boxley um after a lot of thinking and some careful valuations on both sides we agreed a purchase price of sixty thousand pounds which was either a lot or a very little depending on your perspective but it was essentially a fair price agreed by both parties as the right money for the building and for us um it had to deliver much uh well many things but um its value was having a great mix of traditional materials right through from Stone to Timber framing to tiling and also some really challenging repair problems there was no point for us in taking on a building that was easy to fix we wanted something to get our teeth into educationally outside the building was covered in undergrowth and inside it had been disused for a full half century um and was a remarkable survival as such it even had some 1960s tins still left in the cupboard so very atmospheric but also really starting to Decay very rapidly and suffering from uh Vandal damage and and other problems of that kind so our objectives were to deliver several things over a five-year period uh fundamentally we wanted to demonstrate the sbab approach to building conservation and sustainability too we wanted to do as much educational work as possible and that's where things linking with the working parties at boxy Abbey we wanted to pursue research objectives especially around line production and Energy Efficiency and ultimately we had to produce a habitable salable building in order to get the society's uh money down so just a quick bit of context um so Andrew stands very close to Boxley Abbey um the precise relationship between the Abbey and uh Saint Andrews Chapel is still being explored but it seems clear that there is a very strong historical link quite likely uh Debbie may like to comment on this in due course but quite likely is that the chapel was a reliqui building holding a Saints Relic uh linked to pilgrimage which was Central to boxing Abby's activities for me too you can see the the the chapel ring there in Orange um on the left hand side and um the blue arrow indicates the surviving in a Precinct wall but um for me very probably Saint Andrews stands on the line of the outer Precinct um and former out of Precinct of the Abbey itself as you may well know um at the dissolution in the 1530s uh the The Abbey passed the crown and shortly afterwards was handed over to courtier Thomas Wyatt um who lived of course at nearby Arlington Castle so a very obvious uh reason for him to want to acquire the Abbey's lands for his family um Then followed a long period about which uh we're still trying to find out more but pretty clear is that Saint Andrews just was part of the Boxley Abbey estate and this position continued right on through until the late 1960s uh when the uh Chapel was finally sold out of the Abbey's hands from the mid-18th century certainly it served as an estate Cottage and domestic building as shown here on the left and on the right uh rather lovely auction particulars from the 1890s when the whole estate including Saint Andrews Chapel was sold on so um during our four years of ownership since 2018 we've done as much documentary Research into the building's history as possible in particular thanks their go-to Debbie Goucher who's been an enormous help to us but we've also drawn on local expertise um a historian called Robin Ambrose has been extremely valuable and also others from KAS have have contributed a great deal too so that's the background I shall now hand over to Johnny um who will talk you through some of the investigation and repair work and planning and thinking that we've done to date so Johnny I'll click forward the slides when you tell me to okay great thank you very much Matthew and um I'd like to Echo what Matthew said Thank you to ks and mag and and uh kirg and and particularly harg um for all of their uh help expertise and Equipment without it um we just wouldn't be where we are with this project and it's a fantastic team that we're working with and and it's been a great pleasure and uh and I've learned a huge amount as well um but uh certainly um understanding as Matthew mentioned in the approach understanding uh since Andrew's Chapel was our first task back in uh the end of 2018. um we're very lucky to have a lot of people involved in the spab who were able to help us out uh just like um you guys have particularly one company is Terror measurement who we've all been working very closely with Beaufort St Andrews and at Boxley immediately they came in and did a 3D scan of Saint Andrews Chapel which you see in the right hand photo there using the equipment that you've got you can see in the left hand photo that was able to with that um sort of drawings and scans and sections we were really able to thoroughly understand how um the the building was built and and developed over time but also the construction and where any issues that we um had noticed but could actually work out how far gone they they were and whether it was something to worry about one of those concerns was the um West Wall which we're currently working on on sites as um at the moment now you can see down in the right hand bottom section of the slide there the sections through the building wall and that was just invaluable information that just showed exactly where the the West Wall had moved through its middle third and therefore needed some support next slide please sorry um other people that have helped us right from the beginning it was certainly uh Dr Martin Bridge who I'm sure some of you know uh he's a dendrochronologist and um a huge amount of experience um in trying to work out or date buildings particularly timber frame structures and Timber structures uh which is what he did at Saint Andrews chapel and the old house project initially he came in and undertook a gender survey on the areas which he could tackle could see but uh having got a few question marks he came back when we were undertaking repairs to the roof and and that then just opened up a whole new world and um say flipped everything on its head but certainly um galvanized some of our thinking and uh and gave us a lot more information to work with we also had other people involved who looked at the internal surface finishes and um Catherine Hassell was the lady that was involved there and it was just fascinating to understand how many times and um and how often uh and when the um surface finishes changed and really um as it as Matthew showed in a particulars and auction particulars we think that a lot of money was probably spent at the end of the the 19th century but after that uh really there wasn't much uh change and so we were taking on a building that hasn't been lived in for 50 years but is actually decorated in a way that was coming from Victorian period and it was a real Time Capture in that way next slide piece made um one of the first bits that we tackled in physical work was the roof as William Morris says fix a leaky roof and that's exactly what we did we had actually set aside money um to actually renew the whole roof we thought it it would possibly need that when we were first looking at um and undertook a conditioned survey but actually through further investigations and understanding the building we we realized that the the roof that you could see in the early photos with the family standing in front of the building and beautiful shots of Saint Andrew's Chapel in the background that roof was actually perfectly okay other than where trees had rubbed against tiles and and where repairs had been undertaken mainly due to vandalism and um manufactured tiles have been put in place of handmade tiles and then they had started to break down and delaminate quicker than the handmaid tiles so therefore leaks occurred and then that uh rotted some of the roof structure um so but really it was only very small amounts so we we actually undertook trying to make the tiles ourselves uh using the clay from underneath the site we realized when we needed three and a half thousand of them for mainly the new post office roof that that was going to be impossible so we went to William blibes who were up in Hull um they have a 130 year old coke-fired Kiln which is very much a traditional way of burning and tiles and using their clay we then produced three and a half thousand pounds three and a half thousand tiles which actually we had a sponsor a tile and through the sbab which very greatly a lot of very um healthy members I suppose were able to help us um and and 25 pounds was what you could pay for a tile but some people paid nearly two and a half thousand pounds for tile so that really helped us with the repairs next slide please as you can see here this is the roof Works beginning um as Matthew mentioned one of our ideas behind the uh taking on the the old house project is the Education and Training so we very much wanted to involve as many people as we could from students right up to um you know the most experienced of of building people um we had an extra wide scaffold which allowed that and we also had access via the you can see in the bottom photo there a a system of polls that ran Along The Ridges which ladders could then move across without touching the roof so therefore doing as little damage to the roof as possible but it just allowed access to the whole roof for repairs and also for investigation purposes and uh the scaffold was up for a whole year so right through the process of repair and following as well so it was a great Education and Training aid for us that next slide please the other aspect we undertook was analyzing the mortar both at Boxley Abbey and at Saint Andrews Chapel which we discovered to be the same it was a feebly hydraulic gray chalk mortar taken from the north Downs mixed with a a building sound a very soft sand had been taken from the other side of the site where there is a Sandstone Ridge now we did lots of trials with this mortar and we felt that we could increase its strength without reducing its breathability we were very lucky to be given two million tons if we wanted it but we only needed actually a couple from the ox did uh gray chalk um uh Quarry just off the M25 a lot of you probably know it and um we then with those couple of tons of gray chalk we then burnt it in a a lime stabilized soil Kiln which is um on still on site and and actually in use tomorrow um and that provided us with some quick climb which we can then hydrate and then mix with the local building sand which the cistercian monks used but also added in a little bit of crushed kentish ragstone um one to give it a little bit more strength but also to identify where we had been in the building so as you can see on the right hand side here we did lots of Chimney repairs um where it was needed um left the mortar where it where it was perfectly okay but just where bricks had and mortar had fallen out we needed to to fill it in when pointed up with our own mortar and it's worked incredibly well as it's feebly hydraulic it's a pretty tough mortar um but it also as I hope you agree looks nice as well and matches in with the um the original cistercian mortar that they used next slide please not just great chalk if we tackled in the uh the spab so HP Kiln but also ragstone uh now the building since Andrew's Chapel is built from ragstone and um very common Building Stone but very rarely was it used as a binder if ever mainly because it was impossible to take crush it down to a size which you could then burn comfortably so it was mainly just known as a building Stone but where we have kentish ragstone on Saint Andrews Chapel which needs repair as in its the surface is delaminated away and become quite soft we needed to build it up with a mortar repair that was compatible and what better way than to repair kentish ragstone than with kentish ragstone now these slides that you can see um with the red banners on them they are taken from our videos that we have produced over the last few years since working at St Andrew's chapel and Boxley Abbey so please go and have a look on YouTube and spam YouTube and you'll see the whole sort of process of us burning while making the Kiln burning the stones and and then putting them on the building as trials another fascinating side of our lime research and Kiln research is is that we had a go at taking some septaria off the um Beach up to the Isle of shepi and crushing it burning it crushing it down and then making ourselves some natural cement which you can see in in the bottom right hand slide there um first time in a long time that that had happened and we hope that we can utilize some natural cement in the building as well um so going forward so because we we feel that you know it's another local material that's been forgotten and a little bit misunderstood and we want to just make people more aware of of the benefits of a natural cement or a Roman cement as many people might know it as next slide please foreign as a project we always knew that there was a bit of an easement issue across the site we thought at first it might have been due to the M20 or Grange lane or something on those lines and then then slowly after we got the keys discovered that we had a um a huge gas main that ran across the south side of the site which pretty much fed most of Kent with gas and the first day we stepped on site the gas man turned up and said don't go anywhere near it of course that suddenly scuppered a lot of plans that we had for that part of the site but anyway we took it on the chin and we um we worked with sgm and initially they said don't only go anywhere near the pipe work but our architect said well we really need to cross over it to form a driveway onto site the body Lane entrance is just too narrow and too dangerous to access so we wanted a slightly more improved access from grangeline which meant two years of negotiations and drawings um that were put together by the 36 Engineers regiment in Maidstone they used it as a bit of a project to design a reinforced concrete bridge to span this pipe and and then we got it installed with a load of um help from local volunteers and Specialists that we know and we had a lot of fun doing that so it now gives us access to the south of the site and as you drive onto the site you get a beautiful view of Saint Andrew's Chapel in the in the distance there so it was all worth it it's just something we weren't expecting to do next slide please uh one thing which we were expecting to do and we did um did understand uh some what was the fact that the M20 is is 100 feet from the side and um with that comes all the noise and pollution and everything else that can you know comes with it certainly it was something that when we went for a planning application um the local Maidstone Borough Council were Keen that we got further um research undertaken on the effects of the sound and also uh air quality on our building and if anybody was going to live in our building which hopefully they will then how that would affect them we were very lucky again another local to the sandling Boxley area another resident came forward and said oh what are you up to and can I help and volunteer and anyway after a few conversations we realized you worked for soccer Tech who was a massive engineering firm which took um uh the uh since Andrew's Chapel under their wing and so from a structural monitoring side they've helped us from a soil investigation side they've helped us and also from a environmental side so for air quality and also sound quality uh they've also helped us and Acoustics so what we've got here is on the left hand side is the original building which gives some relief to the uh the sound from the M20 on the north side of it and the other building on the right is a garage which we're hoping to put in it's a proposal we've got planning for now but that doesn't exist at the moment and you can see there's a little bit of sound relief behind that but by putting a wall between the two which is what our proposal um has been an accepted proposal is this wall would act as a sound barrier to provide sound relief to the rear Garden of Saint Andrews Chapel so when it does become habitable we sell it to someone in 2024 it will hopefully be a nice Garden to be able to sit in and not just be the sound of trucks and lorries going past next slide please so this is the actual uh elevation from the south um so you've got Saint Andrews Chapel on the left hand side there and then the new extension uh relatively modern looking extension that's um very gently touches the East End of Saint Andrews Chapel but that then houses a walkway behind this wall which gives you access to the the garage and I think if you go to the next slide it should show a plan of it they go so you can see on the left hand side there Saint Andrews chapel and then this walkway with solar panels on the roof of it that's what those Reds and check it sections are and then the garage with two cars in it but also the garage is mainly for services so that we can keep all of the services out of syntha Andrews and and leave it um minimal interruptions um and and of course is Services change over the years they can easily be changed in the new garage than being and everything having to be stripped out in the historic building uh we are looking at increasing the um solar array we've got a discussion with the services engineer very soon about um exactly what we're going to put in but we really want to make the building as self-sufficient as we possibly can utilizing the self-orientation of the site um and possibly um you know solar panels biomass boiler it mentions gas boiler there which is a possibility and particularly air source heat pumps but try and limit the amount that the services the effect their services on the historic building but make it in way that is sustainable and livable for the the person in the building it's a nice warm building next slide please okay I'm going to pass you across to Graham which is the bit you're probably all here to listen to um it's on the um archeology thank you thanks very much Johnny uh Matthew you can just go straight on to the next slide please okay uh what I'm going to do is do a quick description of the kind of work we've been doing so far I first got involved in around about March 2019 so a little bit after it's bad Hood had actually purchased the building and indeed I think after Terror measurements had done their initial surveys but it was obvious that that an archaeologist such as me was going to be needed whether it be for the below ground elements or or the building itself and then the detailed studies it would need right the way through the project I think it's also important to remember several of the photos you've seen so far that give a really nice open view as it is today of the chapel but certainly when I first went there and I know it would have been you know the same or more so for for Matthew and Johnny and others it was more like a jungle you you really could barely see the building itself let alone from one side of the of the The curtle Edge the actual land around the building to the other and far less yet towards the mothership if you like a box of the Abbey itself so one of the early pieces of work relatively early anyway was to tackle that and and to clear out the space hence the kind of photos you've been able to see so far but that was an incredibly important piece of work in its own right because at first it was barely possible to understand that there was eating land there let alone what it might have functioned as historically the the terror measurement survey was particularly useful and important for all of us but I think perhaps particularly for me I suppose in giving a framework for all of the recording that has had to happen needed to happen and we wanted to do since then uh so that a lot of the real groundwork if you like in both the literal and metaphorical sense was already done for me in particular and so hence the this first slide actually shows a sort of an initial interpretive model of the the phasing the development of the building itself it's a slightly misleading um in the the red shade on the roof there should stop a little bit short of of the South Wall you need to imagine that sheer slope of the roof not originally going right the way down yes exactly there thanks Matthew that will be about the line where that would stop but that tone that color shows you what we still to a degree understand and certainly when we first tackled the building understood to be the primary structure that the late medieval Chapel itself then the the light yellow sort of greeny tone to the right was in addition to that we thought medieval in date and then the the sort of dark blue was the early post-medieval again as we thought extensions to the building after the dissolution of the monasteries wanted to become a largely sort of private Affair a residence broadly speaking if you go on to the next photo please Matthew this shows a little bit more of the um the work that's been going on if you like in the background and this is essentially what Martin Bridge has been looking at as the the dendro specialist funded by historic England looking at the building itself so these are the areas he he was looking at again with the same kind of um Tone If you like so the primary elements trying to get dates for the initial structure of the building and then the theoretical edition of this little um Square elements on the Southeast corner and then subsequent editions that the slightly later phases so we thought of the building next slide please Matthew thanks so initially we got the the um the dates back I think in fact in the very first stage of the work that that Martin did he was able to successfully date the the um the primary element of the structure if if you like and it's kind of worth noting as we go through some of these slides the overall um the previous picture if you like the it's grade two style listed building the listing describes it as being probably late 15th century with them post dissolution editions of various dates and it was rather good to get this date back of a failing date let alone just a range with a felling date of 1484 for the primary structural Timbers of of the roof itself of the chapel element of the building uh you can see even in the plan there the thickness if you like of those primary walls exactly there but you can also see that on that plan there is a damn great Gap at the West End um which Matthew is showing you now and indeed that that South Wall exactly where the pointer is is a little bit shorter than the other one but the north wall will come back to that because that's got quite a few ramifications for the overall interpretation of the building next slide please so moving on when we had the scaffolding up in 2020 Martin was able to come back and do much more extensive sampling and that was invaluable in its own writing that it gave in a lot more dates but it also helped him to to go back to the the first set of samples he'd taken a couple of years before and he was actually able to use both sets together and get better results if you like from the first set of samples he'd taken as well as these ones so the the timber framing of this um we thought still do think primary element perhaps the priests lodging for the reliquary chapel itself so the priesthood actually served the chapel and keep a watch over it the the dating for there we didn't actually have necessarily felling dates but we had a good range of dates which indicate at the very least broadly contemporary with the chapel element um so you can see there the date ranges the Timbers in the later 15s and perhaps just straying into the 16th century but those ranges are such that the date could be anywhere within those but it's definitely broadly speaking at least contemporary with the roof of the the chapel as such and I say with the roof of advisedly for reasons we'll come on to next one please Matthew it was when Martin got to the Timbers of the this we thought added on framed range Timber framed range at the southeast Corner the things started to get really interesting and we're still working through the implications of this because again although he got a range of dates rather than absolute felling it seemed quite clear that the dates for this building were actually earlier full stop than the the primary element the chapel and indeed the the priests lodging if that's how it did indeed function which has set as all sorts of challenges we've been looking at whether it was likely that the timber frame might have been reused in some way I don't think any of us quite believes that because it's not easy to reuse a timber frame from a separate building and bring it in and import it to an existing one it just doesn't doesn't work like that we've sort of I think all of us come round to the idea this is genuinely an early part of the stroke culture and how we then Square the circle of a primary Chapel being ostensibly later than a framed Bay which we thought was later than it well you know that's slightly open to discussion to say the least I I have my own ideas I'm sure we all do we can come back to that again in a moment next slide please Matthew and then again another surprise was when we looked at the evidence for the extended element um this bit where the part of the building was added to that didn't behave itself we were fairly firmly in our own minds looking at this as being a post-disolution extension for this phase when it becomes a private broadly speaking residential property but with the date range in mind once more rather than being an absolute felling date it's quite clear there as the dates suggest that the the timber we've been able to date and admittedly it is a Timber but it definitely Falls within the medieval period is that a reused Timber well possibly but you know the date we have is the date we have so all sorts of interesting little conundrums there for us to work through next slide please Matthew uh and then one of the final bits of the jigsaw was getting a date for the spine Beam on the ground floor which is one of the few uh parts of the the extended building if you like the reused building which were quite com confident was going to be post medieval in date for various reasons that wouldn't date by dendro but Martin did get a radiocarbon determination from it which as you can see is in the late 17th or very early 18th century which tends to support the idea um that for instance the insertion of a floor into the building probably the chimney stack itself as well is substantially post dissolution in date rather than just slightly soaking and that at least behaved itself quite well next slide please Matthew can we move on one that's it great thank you moving on from that obviously that's just been one part and with all the dendro dates has been continuous survey work going on as a part of that indeed at the moment literally speaking work has been happening in the last few days on on the further opening up of the interior of that same South Eastern corner of the building with all sorts of fascinating results which I haven't even seen yet let alone can start to interpret for you but it's a building which is slowly but surely and unfolding its Secrets before us but at the same time we've also been doing work outside and here once more as well as the Abbey as you'll hear in a moment we've been enormously helped by Kevin and Lynne Cornwell and various others from the Hastings area archaeological research group and with the assistance of Maidstone area research group archaeological research group doing the geophysical survey as you can see on the right hand image as you as you look at it here I think this might be Kevin himself doing the survey work and also a series of test bits I think we were up to 19 test bits and one large trench so far the the gypso survey on this site wasn't tremendously successful partly because I think it had only just been cleared at this that that stage there was still quite a lot of metal debris on on close to the surface but also is an extremely dry time and with the resistivity it didn't really respond very well to that the test pits again of the 19 that we've dug so far something like well maybe even as many as 15 have only really had results which are directly related to the foundations of the building or have had really no archaeological results at all they've been one or two which just this last summer where we started to get really quite exciting results but as I say the the below ground archeology has been going hand in hand with the above ground all the way through next slide please Matthew moving on so these are just a couple of the test picks around the building itself on the left hand side as you look at it this is the East wall of the chapel um the offset there is broadly speaking at the foundation level so everything below that offset is foundations everything above it broadly speaking is standing wall it goes down from the offset level about 800 Center at 80 cents 800 millimeters slightly less than three feet in depth onto what you can see at the bottom there a little bit of the natural mile so they hit what they would have seen as good bearing ground and stopped perfectly sensible people The Helpful thing there is that we did have a couple of shades of very late medieval so late 14th century and that's just turning into early 15 sorry like 15 30 16th century shirts from in the foundation trench associated with that not a great deal of evidence but nevertheless sitting very well with both the historically anticipated date of the building and indeed with the dendro dates then on the right hand side as you look at it early this year we did a small test bit inside and then uncovered the original extent of the South Wall building you remember the slide we were looking at just now where we were pointing out where both the West wall and a chunk of the South Wall had gone this is the chunk of the South wall where the standing masonry has gone but lo and behold not surprisingly again that we know how deep down it's going to go the remnant of it is still there and where the end of the tape measure is the orange end there if you can just that's it exactly there that's the original Corner the southwest corner of the building and indeed just the start of the return of the West war going across what is otherwise a room now inside the building itself next slide please Matthew uh we the the work on the um entrance off of Grange Lane that Johnny was mentioning earlier on that involved me as well we had some really quite fun bits and pieces from that generally speaking not a great deal in archaeological terms there was a a graveled surface which we've picked up in several of our excavations now in this area which might be natural might be a deliberately laid surface but it's certainly a major feature of this part of the site various bits and pieces of fines including this rather lovely on the right hand side um in Caustic small mosaic tile with a a rather nice little design on it which you will no doubt have seen on the ks newsletter cover a couple of issues ago I have a feeling that some of the animations I've put in here are disappearing so I'm gonna say a little bit more about this rather than oh there it is thanks Matthew perfect this particular photo it is actually or image is from Peter tester's excavation report of his work at the Abbey itself in 1971 which I'll say a little bit more about when we come on to The Abbey but what when we found that tile at the the chapel I immediately recognized it thinking you know I've seen that before and lo and behold looking at Peter's publication report in art Kant there it is that there is an exact equivalent that it is effectively precisely the same piece but his find was from The Abbey ours is actually from the chapel site so there's a nice degree of linkage there but in the 1920s uh a kiln a tile Kiln for the Abbey was actually found sort of in between the two sides and we're vaguely hopeful we might be able to get to have a look at that at some point in the future but this is a good in some ways the only physical direct link archaeologically that we have between the two sides at the moment so next slide please Matthew and that's my element of it Matthew I don't know if you want to take over these I think keep going Graham because I think in the interest of time it's probably best one of us does it and I'm I'm really interested to hear what you're going to say so um give us your thoughts and we can debate them later straight on to the next one I did notice that one of the photos from a previous slide had disappeared so we'll just this is this is the next one which got some animation so I hope the animation works but anyway um it was mentioned earlier on I think Matthew was talking in terms of how the the chapel itself actually functioned how it operated with the main Abbey site and it's long been a thought on on many of our minds as to whether it was in fact not just a chapel but actually an out of Gatehouse Chapel that concept had really eluded us completely in any terms we weren't finding any really good evidence historically Debbie May correct me there or archaeologically in any of the work we'd done to really go with this until we dug one particular pit this last summer as part of the working party and and found this really rather nice quite tasty quite chunky wall in big kentish rag blocks very similar to what we know because it's still there is actually in in the chapel and we were starting to wonder we have started to wonder whether we're just getting the first trace of either the outer Precinct war and or perhaps a Gateway associated with it because as you can see here there is a very clear end to this structure this is only one small pit that we dug we don't know whether it's a genuine Gap whether it's something that's been robbed away whether we do have a gate hassle quite what we have but it's the first tantalizing evidence for us and hopefully if the photo will now appear magically there it is that shows you that the direct relationship between the two so this is now that same test bit looking back towards the chapel itself with our newly found wall very much in its context parallel with the south side of the building and with that possible opening where the ranging Rod the scale tape is there on the left hand side so open aligning quite nicely with the priests lodging and I think aligning quite nicely with the doorway between that and the chapel at ground floor level so you know that again very early days something we're hoping to do more work with the reason for digging that pit in the first place is that this is where there is going to be a drainage feature a little Swale a gully if you like to catch potential flood water which is one of the issues again we very much have the chapel moving forwards so that Swale is still going to be there it's still going to need further excavation without necessarily well without full stop damaging this particular structure that will stay no doubt but we will hopefully see more of it and be have a much better understanding of how it fits into the overall picture I think that's probably my bit so far oh okay Carry On just in terms of how it all fits together then um we now have the timber frame Bay as this slide shows on the south east corner of the building which uh in terms of dendro is definitely the earliest part of the building we have so far the chapel itself appears at least its roof comes in slightly later at the end of the 15th century I do Wonder personally whether it's actually a re-roofing and that the the envelope of the masonry structure is actually slightly earlier and therefore we do still have this contemporary set of structures with the timber frame Bay actually going with the stone masonry structure but without doubt in terms of the dendro of the Timber structures as such the the roof over the chapel is that little bit later than this timber frame section moving on Matthew please we then get the extensions themselves which we do still see as being post-medieval rather than medieval we don't do only have the one timber so far which it it hasn't returned this this apparently late medieval date that could very easily be a reused piece rather than an entire frame um which plausibly I don't think could be reused what is interesting about this part of the building though this extension almost whatever its date is that it's very clearly reused monastic material and of a very very high quality indeed the Ashland masonry there is actually of higher quality than the the stonework of the chapel itself in my mind it's very very good masonry um and it's it's slightly hard to actually work out exactly where it was coming from not least because when you look at what's left on the Abbey site itself there's nothing of this quality surviving above ground anywhere so it's still quite a challenge to work that one out but again all of the excavations we've done so far have shown that the West wall and most of the South Wall what you see on the main photograph here has very very poor foundations indeed it's just a single course basically resting not on good bearing geological ground but on relatively speaking what an engineer would term made ground so again if it's shown as indeed it has some structural stresses in the past it's not necessarily that surprising the amazing thing is in in a way is this massive structure of this extended part of the building has survived with such apparently poor foundations under a large part of it next slide please Matthew the the chimney stack and the internal first floor we know were introduced around about 1700 now from again from the dendro dating and indeed from what we would expect from the the overall character of of the masonry and the use but perhaps following on from a period when the interior of the building was in effect an open Hall whether for a domestic or otherwise use at this stage we don't know next slide please Matthew and then there is a bit which we haven't really talked much about which is the small Timber framed element on the North West Corner which was erected probably just before 1900 so late 19th century Edition and then the latest phase of the internal use the evidence for which is all still very much there is this slightly unusual early 20th century stuff that the fireplace and particular amazing collection of art deco Lino floor coverings which are a challenge in their own right so that sort of brings the building up to almost the date when it fell out of use around about 1960 uh next slide please and Matthew perhaps you you might want well just to wrap up thank you Grandma that was a wonderful um uh rounding up quickly of of our thinking at the moment and I agree wholeheartedly with what you say but um if you want to learn more um uh plenty of information about the old house project on our website um and we're thrilled already to have won an award for the project particularly for its kind of community engagement and digital work but rather fraudulently perhaps given that we've still got a couple of years to go but in the interest of time let us now move over the fence uh towards boxy Abbey which is not in the sbab's ownership but has become a really integral part of what we're trying to do and I think this is Johnny's bit first of all [Music] yeah thank you Matty yes Boxley uh working parties now um the SP had been running working parties since um the early 1980s so pretty much 40 years now and no doubt before then um there was Gatherings of friends interested in repairing old buildings and uh but it's something that has built up over that 40 years uh to groups of say 10 15 20 people uh to the um the working parties that we run at Boxley Abbey now where we have maybe up to 150 people on site and spit up into various groups of work um but I'll come on to that in a second this is uh the plan of uh Boxley Abbey the tear-shaped in a Precinct wall there and since Andrew's indicated with the red circle with the M20 100 feet away so it's quite a nice site but a large site for us to work on and has um many interesting buildings and areas to it which we've been investigating over the last uh well since 2019 um next slide please so this is the entrance to the Gatehouse of Boxley Abbey and at every working party we we fix our flag to the to close to the entrance as we possibly can to let everyone know that we're here uh for the week next slide please and it's a gathering as I say up to 100 150 people with visitors coming along as well but generally it's a mix of students homeowners professionals Craftsmen Builders um of you know of Barbarian kinds it's a it's it's what's lovely about is that you can have people who are Highly Educated working with people who are just starting their career and everybody gets on and it's just fantastic so this is our NASA control where everything is discussed and we have our briefing um first thing in the morning before everybody then goes off and does their little bit of work around the site next slide please um so one of the areas of work which we have been working on is the is the Garden Wall at um Boxley Abbey it's a kentish ragstone wall very similar to the one at St Andrews chapel and we've because it's listed rather than in the schedule rather than scheduled it's it's a it was an ideal first place to sort of practice some of our techniques on so uh when we we arrived at the wall it was absolutely covered with Ivy um it had no coping to it you can see where the sections of the wall had just collapsed and even since having done a conditioned survey um went back six months later and and another large section of about 30 40 feet had collapsed so it was really at the end of its tether and we needed to do something so uh by um understanding as I mentioned earlier and analyzing the mortars that we had found across the site including this wall we were able to come up using our Kiln with our mix of mortar um that feebly hydraulic gray chalk mortar which we mixed with the local Sands and the crushed kentish ragstone as I mentioned and we were able to apply that to this wall and and as a bit of a trial before we used it at Sint Andrew's chapel and more important parts of the or more scheduled let's say parts of the of the site and it was a great success so we've been rebuilding and repairing and repointing the wall and then putting a soft capping on top if you go to the next slide so we have other areas of uh the the Walled Garden that we worked on um brickwork uh standard sort of brickwork to the left hand uh um slide a picture and and then we have some uh gauge brick work on the right hands um pictures uh we're very very lucky indeed to have some incredible Specialists that work with us and alongside all of the KAS and mag and hot Kirk and and hog Specialists who do deal with the archaeologists and and working alongside Graham we also have specialists in Timber Framing and brick workers in as in Lynn here um in um uh um mortars and um burning of lime um and and everything basically surveying of every type and it's a fantastic group that give their time up for the um for volunteers who are the guys in the yellow um uh tops to be able to um work alongside next slide please um as you can see here this is the hospital on the left hand side where we had uh after a quite a strong Breeze or storm um a number of the the Kent pectile um had slipped and therefore we got a genie um cherry pick her in to repair that this summer but we also so we're using the modern technology to help us repair the building but also the most traditional techniques as well as you can see on the right hand side here I've got John Russell and his team um pit soaring one of the beams which then went into the hospital to repair the um ancient well cistercian floor so that was a really great repair um and you're more than welcome to come and see that next slide please okay pass you over to Graham again who will talk about the archeology which has really just brought the um the working party to life and we're really grateful for it so thanks Johnny um one of the things Johnny just mentioned there a couple of times is the the scheduled area many of you will already know the Boxley Abbey the entirety essentially of the the precinct area defined by that how to wall is a scheduled Monument so it's very very closely protected in law specifically really for its below ground archeology it's interesting that the the hospitium is actually included in the schedule as well as being a listed building whereas for the most part otherwise the listings aren't included within the schedule but the ground underneath them is that has been to a degree a challenge for us um in that I think we probably all didn't feel in our hearts of hearts that we were very likely to get the chance to actually do any substantive excavations at Boxley Abbey within the lifetime of spab's interest in the site which is hon go on for a long time yet but with specifically within the working parties at least we were doubtful whether we would get that chance but for various reasons we have had that chance um quickly it's again I mentioned just now Peter tester's work in 1971. his was the first really substantive excavations or indeed archaeological work at all at the Abbey there had been 19th century and I think early 20th century investigations but Peter's work with a whole series of test bits all across the core of the Abbey itself had been the the first attempt really to understand the the overall layout and development of the buildings from a purely archaeological perspective because as you can imagine a lot changed at the dissolution there was a private house a grand house which developed through several stages to get to where that house is today so there's been all sorts of change changes and but Peter really addressed that and answered a lot of those questions but not surprisingly perhaps given the sheer scale of the site and this aspect of it having the scheduled designation he didn't really look beyond that and nor had any of us except with sort of longing perhaps looked at the precinct but one of the first things that was done as part of this project was to carry out major geophysical surveys within the precinct and I'll come on to that in a moment but next slide please Matthew as a another part of the scheme we wanted to get a better understanding of how one specific aspect of the underground element of the site was working or perhaps more to the point wasn't you'll be aware I'm sure that water management was a fundal fundamental element of any medieval monastic estate and especially so for the cisterns who were Master water Engineers that element rather fell by the wayside and up to a degree at least in the post dissolution period a lot of the water courses were still maintained and reused for garden features in some way feeding new ponds and the like but a lot of it really started to fall into some disarray and so one element that kurga been doing has been to explore and map out the the the underground drainage and water channels on the side which is what a lot of little circles are on here represent uh all under a schedule Monument can sense to allow these really really very targeted and very small scale excavations to happen but also as a matter of doing that to sort of follow things like here on this photograph is that the rear daughter in in the Abbey itself to try and follow a lot of the drainage and into and out from that feature and indeed all across the site so really important work in its own right next slide please Matthew um but more to the points and say uh we we have I say grandly we from this point of view Kevin and Lynn Cornwell particularly and the Hastings area archaeological research group with help from from Maidstone archaeologist Stephen Clifton and several others Nick here we included um to to do an amazing array of geophysical survey effectively covering the whole of the ground of the of the the scheduled area where it can be surveyed there are areas of Woodland where you can't survey realistically but probably 75 maybe 80 of the the precinct has been surveyed using both magnetometry and and resistivity and in an area outside has been looked at as well uh next piece please Matthew should have another image yeah here we are this is Kevin and Lynn's survey work on the core area of the The Abbey itself so an area that Peter tester had looked at a lot in the 1970s but you can hopefully see from the geophysical survey that we have a lot more now particularly up in that top right hand corner where there is a range of probably monastic phase buildings um to the left top left hand corner similarly the area of the wall Garden the big area on on the right hand side there lots and lots of really tasty anomalies for us to perhaps get a chance to have a look at in the future uh but you know really looking from that core outwards to cover the whole of the site in a way that I think is if not unique then certainly unusual I don't think there are many other medieval monastic precincts have been looked at in the way that Kevin and Lynn have been able to do here and you know 100 credit to them for the amazing work they've done over a prolonged period of time in a hell of a lot of work has been put in from from there and other people's point of view on this particular element and we wouldn't have got anywhere with the next few slides had it not been for this bit of work next one please Matthew following on from that we've also been looking at the lidar imagery this is the one meter um Contour DTM digital terrain model there is a 50 centimeter one which includes keeps the trees in but this is the one where you can look through the trees and you can see the the complexity of the Earthworks some of which you can actually see on the ground but a lot of which really only come out with the lidar or more particularly with the the radar survey and it from this image just concentrate briefly on the the Northern Area the top right hand corner in effect of the slide because this is an area where exactly there is Matthew is indicating Kevin and Lynn have got some good results from the the geophysical surveys which should come in now next image yes here we are on the left here this is for roughly half of that area the left hand half if you like the Western half magnetometer survey on left resistivity survey on the right complement complementing each other very well with some overlap in terms of the the features showing through but also some quite distinct differences but again you can see that a lot of that represents quite well on the lidar imagery as as well as on the geophysics and it's clear that we're getting stratigraphy even in the lidar and geophysical survey results particularly on the resistivity that area on the bottom right hand corner again which shows up very well on the the lidar you clearly have one set of of structures and features overlying another moving on please Matthew but it was when really we came to the field to the north of the hospital and and therefore also to the west of the primary Abbey that I I think the results really got us all going um this is the the mat the magnetometry I think I'll be corrected on that one if I if I'm wrong but anyway this is yeah I think this is right uh this is the area immediately in front of north of the hospital and it was Apparent from very early on the uh the early plots that Kevin and Lynn showed us within a day or so of having done their survey here that there were some pretty special intensive stuff going on with multiple features and again obviously phasing of features one on top of another and in particular they're the ones which are numbered uh eight um nine uh seven I think you've got this large circular feature about 23 meters in diameter there you've got a linear feature Crossing it roughly diagonally which is nine I think there as Johnny sorry as Matthew is showing with the cursor and to the north of that a massive complex of all sorts of things going on you can make out potential wall and Foundation lines in there there is a big linear feature cutting across it there's intense activity at the top left hand side anomaly one amazing complexity of material showing through and it set us all I think wondering whether there was a chance that we would actually be given shed your Monument consent to actually do some excavations so we met with Liam Delaney and recently appointed assistant inspector of ancient monuments who is effectively becoming our case officer for this area um in I think it was early may this year we'd already sent historic England the results of the geophysical surveys is up to date as we could at the back end of last year we've been pursuing a meeting with them we finally got that meeting in early May and we were all I think slightly shocked but also delighted to to hear that Liam was quite happy with the idea of a potential shedy Monument consent to carry out some escalations in this area and again we we all on the project team wanted to share all the credit where it's due and we do need to give a considerable round for Applause if you like metaphorically and but literally really to Liam because he went out on quite a limb to press the the department for digital culture media and Sport to actually Grant the SMC in time for us to do the work at the the working Party In Due early July this year so we had from meeting on site through the whole SMC process to being on site digging into the pits there in in two months which is not far short of miraculous but anyway if we bring in the next photo please and a few there we go it's also important that we keep coming back to the the documentary evidence for the whole of the site and this was something that is particularly important as it became for the the results of the archaeological work this is a survey carried out of the Abbey site itself an estate survey in 1801 and it basically shows the whole of the precinct again I've just snapshot a relatively small part of it but it does include the same area so you could fit in the the area of the geophysical survey on the left-hand side there into that area that Matthew is indicating now and in terms of the map there are a couple of points I do just want to highlight there for you one is um if Matthew can just about show it there is a little stream channel running diagonally down towards a pond which is to the left of the hospital that channel there which also shows through on the geophysical survey as feature number 11. over there exactly there um but also at the top right hand end of that water channel on the the historic map there is a small building which if you can just maybe manage to highlight that that's the one exactly you won't be able to necessarily see it but the the internal arrangement of that is exactly the same as an area at the West End of the hospital which is clearly shown as a stable it actually refers to it as stables and stable stalls and that little building to to the north of our spitium I think must have been a small stable as well which becomes relevant as we quickly go through the the results from the excavations so next slide please Matthew this is the first day of our excavations whatever day it was back in early July now with Hospital in the background um Stephen Clifton Nick Hill Kevin and Lynn Cornwell in the middle there with my wife Kathy on the left just literally taking the turf off on the first of our trenches and on the next slide here on the right hand side is that same excavation now looking eastwards back towards the Abbey if you'd like and really just on taking the topsoil off we came down onto this Flint Cobble layer nicely in position for our circular structure now initially I resisted firmly the idea that we'd actually found the circular structure I wanted it to be something you know really archaeologically sexy damn great Iron Age Roundhouse or whatever it might be I didn't really envisage it being a late post-medieval structure which is what it is the structure perhaps being a slightly loose term for it but we found this in two of the excavations and by extending this trench a little bit as you'll see shortly we did find both sides of it so there's no real doubt that this is that's big 23 meter diameter circular feature that Kevin and Lynn picked up in the the geophysical survey what I think it is it's definitely very late it's perhaps a late 18th early 19th century structure I I think interpretively that it's actually a horse training ring which goes obviously with that little stable building so that someone would stand in the Middle with the horses on a long rope and would just that you encourage them to go round and round this thing so that appears to be What that particular structure was we also found the the linear feature running across it and that proved to be again with pretty certain post-medeval and date just underlying the track way and it didn't show through in this trench it was on the next one um to just to the right of of the image here but we did pick that up as well and that also we think is post dissolution in date next slide please Matthew but it's one we got to the the lower levels of this big trench that we really started to to sort of really drive home both the Brilliance of the geophysical survey and also the the amazing character and quality of the archeology in this part of the the precinct in that once we'd taken off the the track surface and gone down a little bit further we started to see emerging patches of stone work which again you know initially none of us were greatly convinced looked like walls but the more we saw of them the more we exposed and it was quite clear that we had what effectively is the end of a building and then as we carried on going down a little bit further here we have Kevin and Steve and Stephen actually in the trench and on the right hand side Stephen merrily beavering away in what we quite clearly have as a really nice Stone line Culvert a water feature this being stratigraphic the earliest element that we have on on this particular part of the site and in effect there you see all three major phases that we had on the geophysical surveys all being completely confirmed within this relatively small excavation and the next image which will come through here this is steam's 3D model um of the the trench taken as expected so that a lidar scan if you like on just on the wonders of digital technology now on an iPhone expressed as a plan and there you see the the phases of the excavation and indeed the geophysical survey at the left hand end we have the remnants of the the trackway the Flint track waste that's surviving the right hand half of the trench we have our Stone building and that respects and effectively butts up against the water Culvert running through the middle and that had a fantastic assemblage of pottery in it everything from good quality Roman material through a very nice later medieval assemblage and then in the upper levels earlier post medieval material as well so we have the date range we have what with pretty comfortable is a a late medieval water Channel we have a post-medieval building associated with it and perhaps even with the channel still being active at that stage we can't be certain of that and then the the late post medieval um trapway horse training trackway on top of that on the next image as that flies in we should see that you know there you get that in relation to the geophysical survey again this particular trench is trench one so you can see there how it relates to the actual the imagery if if you like the wonders of the geophysical survey so we have that circular ring as the latest feature we have the linear feature that was picked up in trench two as the the earlier than that and you can see there the line well both of the the building itself where that comes across and you can still see it on the right hand side there Matthew can you just indicate that the line of the wall there really from the the top of the the box unit exactly there you can see the that wall Line running through to the right so we we have at least one building there but the the Culvert is that stronger feature running from the north that one exactly seeming to carry all the way through gradually getting faint of the further north north it goes but certainly picking up I think all the way through the survey right the way to the top of the field and then immediately to the the south of our trench one turning right and continuing off towards eastwards towards the Abbey so an important obviously part of the overall water red parent buildings to the north and east are and we are very much hopeful we already have it in effect as sort of a framework framework consent for further working in future years we're hopeful that we will get at least one more season of excavations here in tandem at least in part with the working parties and uh we we still need to have the conversation with Liam from historic England but one set of features we'll obviously be looking towards now that we've answered a lot of the questions we had about these particular features is that Masset of archeology in in the northeastern part exactly there of the side so um that's a quick whiz through the results this year um uh fantastic results I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who participated that the spam volunteers would have particularly Kevin Lynn Nick Steven and others from our local Partners who quite literally we couldn't have done it without you so so thanks to everyone from from that point of view for all the amazing work you've done thus far and hopefully we'll continue to do so with us on the project I think that concludes my bit Matthew yes thank you so much Graham a wonderful survey a Gallup through a huge amount of work but thanks to all involved from the sbab just to wrap up a final slide um which is just to show you how um our working party season ended uh this year at least um we linked up with the spitalfields trust to um do a sort of pilgrimage uh uh link to uh the fact that both sites have pilgrimage connections um unfortunately we chose one of those very hottest days of the year in July to do this walk of 18 miles but it was still a wonderful experience and uh perhaps if if we're brave enough to do it again some of you will be interested uh to join us on a future occasion it was a memorable experience in in many ways so thank you all very much indeed