Randall Manor revealed: community archaeology excavations in Shorne Woods Country Park

Description: Re-discovering a medieval manor! From 2006-2015, a series of community archaeology excavations revealed the remains of this fantastic site, in Shorne Woods Country Park, near Gravesend. This online talk by Andrew Mayfield focusses on the history of the site, the big dig over ten seasons and the work to further research and report on the former home of a Sheriff of Kent. Andrew Mayfield is a community archaeologist working for both Kent County Council and the Royal Parks at Greenwich.

Transcript: all right all right I think we are about ready can everyone hear me okay we're good all right well hello everyone and thank you for joining us the sixth of our series of online talks for the Kent archaological Society this is the last of our talks before the holidays so as you can see I'm in full festive mode I hope you all all join me hey whatever drinks you've got and uh wear your coziest jumpers and enjoy as we delve into another fascinating corner of kenish History we hope as always to escape without any technical issues but please do bear with us if there are any hiccups our very own Christmas elf Jacob is busy in the workshop checking all of our magical toys and simultaneously dealing with our technical stuff hopefully he won't Go full Grinch on us just yet Eben Scott I shouldn't really joke he's got the power to cut me off at any moment anyway um if you're not a member of our wonderful Society please do think about joining us it works out at about3 P30 a month which is less than a deluxe pack of mince pies and for that you'll receive a copy of our yearly Journal archaeologia cantiana full of the most current historical and archaeological res research in the county you'll also receive our biannual magazine regular newsletters exclusive access to our collections conferences and selected events opportunities to get involved in excavations and research projects and you will help to allow us to continue to put out content such as this these online talks outreaching School Community groups and seminars which we hope as always is bringing the uh benefits of Kent history to the people so check the website for details on how you can become a member housekeeping first uh the talk will last around an hour after which we'll have time for questions if you have any please keep yourself on mute with your cameras off through out so that we can hear our speaker clearly during the Q&A you can either use the raiseed hand feature and we will unmute you when it's your turn to ask a question or if you would prefer you can type the question in the chat box and I will read it out for you I hope it goes without saying uh but please be courteous and polite to our speaker and to each other we will be recording the session and it will be posted to our video channels in the future but no personal data will be shared and if you ask a question but would prefer it not to be published just send us an email and we will make sure that that happens so on to the main event our speaker Andrew Mayfield is the community archaeologist for the Kent County Council the first in-house archaeologist ever to be appointed at the Royal parks and a keen activist for Community involvement and inclusivity in active fieldwork he got the archaeology bug early in life burying toys in his garden so that he could later re- excavate them I think we've all lost a few treasured items that way he later joined up with local archaeology groups in East Sussex and even enjoyed a month digging in Israel before studying archaeology at UCL to Masters level he continued his archaeological Adventure across the globe before settling on the London and Kent regions more permanently he's worked in some of the most important sites in our County from Canterbury to Spring head Caesar's sandwich did a phenomenal work at sha woods so Andrew was awarded the marsh Community archaeologist of the Year award for his exceptional work at grenwich Park part of the maritime world heritage site through Greenwich Park revealed he also continues to support the incredible work of sha WS archaeolog archaeology group is president of the is of thanet archaeological Society a young archaeologist Club leader and a trustee of the enabled archaeology Foundation I first met Andrew as I was infiltrating a society of antiquaries lecture and trying to sneak away as many free wines as I could could get my hands on and uh he was effortlessly called surrounded by people desperate to discuss archaeological things with him me being one of them um it is clear how respected and admired he is in the archaeological community and in particular here in the south east and we are incredibly grateful to have him with us tonight um to tell you all about Randall Mana so Andrew it is all yours well I don't quite know how to follow that Craig so I think I'll just uh leave the talk now and uh and that's all I need to say um right we're just going to try and make this work we had some fun and games earlier so I do that and that oh can everyone see that okay Craig is that showing as a slide anyone is that okay I can't see anyone so is that working no sorry Andrew that wasn't working um sorry I'll just try again I'll make you hosts if you can go through the process again okay okay you're host now okay sorry about that everyone we're just trying to get the slides to work um so I'll share a screen entire screen yeah yeah yeah this is looking good thank you Andrew and then if I go to that that's the one thanks that's it okay I'll assume this is all working from now on uh and obviously if someone lets me know if the slides aren't re uh um progressing that' be great otherwise I'll just carry on till the end um so thanks very much everyone for uh for coming along to this talk and thanks to the Kent archeological Society for inviting me to talk about rall Manor and Community archaeology at shaas Country Park um uh I just wanted to thank all of our sort of key sponsors as well before we progress into the talk so at the moment we've got some funding from the national highways designated funds for the lower temps Crossing um we've had um some great um support from the national lottery Heritage Fund in the past over a number of projects um I worked for k County Council um and they've been a brilliant supporter of community archaeology for almost 20 years now which is incredible and we've had some funding from the K uh for some of the post excavation work on Randall Manor and have also had a small amount of funding as well from the medieval settlement research group who have also been brilliant at supporting what we've been doing at Randall um and so I just want to thank everyone for for that support going forward uh none of the work that we saw come uh were able to do at random Manor would have been possible without people um otherwise I'd have been just standing you know in a in a field in the middle of shur Country Park on my own and over that 10-year period that Randall Mana ran from 2006 to 2015 we work with hundreds of people hundreds of volunteers many of whom are I'm still in touch with about the project and it's thanks to all of them that the project was such a a success um as you can see here we had a keen sense of fashion and every year we had a different t-shirt um starting I think it was with light blue and then ending with uh black and gold at the end of the 10 years um I can even fit into some of those t-shirts still which is quite incredible um but we had a really nice collection of people involved from young young to old um many uh current and former members of the K archaological Society including um uh some of the uh uh your sort of key staff members today so Richard Taylor began his archaological career at Randall Manor uh as did I think Andy Ward one of his early dicks was at Randall Manor um uh so it's been a great collaborative experience across those 10 years and we continue to explore the archaeology of the part to this day thanks to the incredible work of the shuds archaeology group um but the the project was all about people and involving people in archaeology and none of it would have been possible without all of that engagement so for those of you that um perhaps aren't familiar with shood Country Park Sha's Country Park um is between Gravesend and Rochester hopefully that red um rectangle is showing up um so we are in sort of Northwest Kent um just to the south of the river tens and just the north of Watling Street um and sha Woods is is currently a uh a Kent County Council Country Park and has been since the 1980s and before that it was for a long period part of the Darley estate and then before that the cobs um owned the the land in the area um but we're sort of Sandwich between two main centers Gravesend and Rochester sha Woods is a large Park it's 292 Acres uh and if you haven't had a chance to visit the park I do recommend it it's a fantastic Park to visit um we have a whole series of trails a Heritage Trail obviously covering the key archaological sites but also a series of running and walking trails around the park we've got fishing lakes we've got a brilliant Visitor Center um and um through our latest funding we have some new interpretation panels around the park as well so there's lots to see and do in the park um and there's plenty of parking as well um and we're also a hub for The Wider sha cob landscape so you can do much longer circular walks taking in um some of the Fantastic Countryside to the south from Sha Woods um walking along along the Darley Trail into this s surrounding landscape our work at sha Country Park was revolutionized by liar uh and I'm sure a lot of you have heard about liar before and certainly if you've been to any of my talks you have heard about liar and if you work with an sassin in the dant Valley you'll have heard about liar through her amazing liar portal um we started using liar back in 2011 and it really revolutionized how we were seeing sha Woods Country Park um hopefully you can see in the in the center here here um that there's a Old Clay works in the middle of Sha's Country Park and so that sort munched away a lot of the archaeology in the center of the park and then around it you've got all this incredible ancient Woodland and a whole series of Earthworks and other features in this in the wider landscape including rall Mana just to the north um we've also got a series of north south running holloways um a large network of ponds in the park um we've got this High Ridge here with a mound on which I'll come back to moment and we've got evidence for World War II archaeology across the park as well the archaeology of the park however um predates all of this and go back goes back as far as the Mesolithic so as we started to explore the archaeology of the park we started to notice that there were extensive Flint scatters across the west side of the park and these are predominantly Mesolithic in date uh and hopefully on the screen now you can see a few of those more interesting finds uh these include micr which are uh 212 top left and 723 middle bottom are both microliths um and is 452 as well so these are all microliths um and they obviously represent a technology which began in the Mesolithic and ran through from sort of 8 9,000 BC through to about 4,000 BC um a lot of these finds photographs as well I must credit Ru SMY and you'll see her in the bottom right and she's the former archist so she's um uh she was running doing the role before Craig took the role on um so we got this incredible Mesolithic landscape here which um uh everywhere we dig a test bit across the park we tend to encounter Mesolithic Flint work so this is the sort of the base the archaological base for um the park itself we um created a series of interesting artistic reconstruction drawings uh when we were doing our last project our cbon Landscapes project and this just brings into the view again that Mesolithic landscape uh looking down um towards Blue Bell Hill and across the river Medway um with a sort of tented encampment uh people flit napping of all ages men and women children all learning to flit naap um tapping bark off trees um you got a nice antet headdress here like you'd have seen at Star car and a lot of woodworking going on um so we're seeing the tools the product of this activity at sha woods and then across the road Dave May at ransum has done a fantastic project there looking at the Mesolithic archaeology of ransum farm we also thought in the park um partly due to an early earthwork survey that we had a Bronze Age Barrow and this sits up on the heath up on The High Ground in the park um we investigated the uh the site um back in 2007 I think it was and initially it was unclear what was going on but what was very clear was we had no Bronze Age archaeology we had lots and lots of Mesolithic material um but nothing that looked Bronze Age and also there was no obvious no clear evidence for a ring ditch around the mound um we went back to the site in the early 2010s and what became clear at that point was that this was actually a a large medieval um constructed Mound which had scraped up the gravels from the area around the mound into a large Mound a large pile to Anchor a post Mill such as you can see at the bottom of the screen um and these early sort medieval post Mills were often anchored ground anchored with sort of Earth or gravels or something to secure them and stop them blowing over so we started to sort of um recognize medieval archaeology in The Wider Park and this was an interesting site because in the layers you basically had Mesolithic flints jumbled up with medieval pottery and then just to add as a bonus to the top someone had come along later probably in the later 17 early 1800s and built a brick Folly which you can see in the center there in the top of the mound so it's a sort of a multi-period feature uh beginning in the Mesolithic with the surrounding landscape then scraped up into the mound in the medieval and then with this post-medieval Folly on top one thing we're missing in the landscape is any evidence for Roman activity um considering you've got cobon Villa over the road this image here is is an image of a sort of reconstruction of how cbon Villa may have looked uh and you can see this was done by Alan Marshall again who's done a lot of our um key illustrations uh we produce this for our C Landscapes project uh cbon Villa was dug by the K in the 1960s by Peter tester um but in the park itself uh we haven't got any evidence for Roman activity by the fact there's a lot of recycled Roman material in rall Manor itself now the first excavations uh that took place in the park um were in the 19 60s they were led by George dooll I put a question mark here because when we started to excavate at Randall we found older holes that didn't belong to George and so we suspect that perhaps the darnley family um carried out some sort of antiquarian um uh adventuring on the site and may have dug some early holes to um at the sight of of one of their former um uh sort of occupation sites so we don't know for certain and we don't not sure about the dating of these early trenches but they predate George dooll but George dooll who is in the center of the screen here um was the first person to look at the site systematically with a number of his um uh school children that he uh he taught um George is loan by a lot of local people uh in the graves end area because he taught a lot of people locally um uh and he sort produced the first plans and maps of the site we think he found the site because as you can see in this 1961 aerial photograph um the area just north of the Clay Pit this is the Clay Pit here um had been Copus and I think if you look back at George's image here you can see he's standing in a cist um a cist opening in the in the in the Woodland so George obviously took advantage of the fact this AA being cist had obviously done research on Randall Manor and was then able to investigate one of the buildings in the 1960s and as you can see here in 1962 he opened up a series of trenches across what turned what turned out to be our kitchen building and on the right you can see linnn Palmer and Lynn Palmer was the first person to be Community archaeologist at shud Country Park and she brought all of the team together initially and had me along volunteering um uh as well and then when she moved on to a different role in 2009 I then took over from her but must give credit to Lynn for bringing the whole project together at the start and for getting Randall Manor as a project get um started so we had some site records from George um these included sort of trench layouts and photographs and some notes as well um but it was he'd obviously focused on one particular part of the site which we worked out eventually was the kitchen but he hadn't explored the rest of the site and after his work in the early 1960s um the site was then became dormant again and this takes us through to 2006 um so in 2006 you can see how the site looked um so when Lin Parmer um came to the park to set up an archaeology project um this is what Randall Mana looked like and you can see it's under dense Chestnut Copus um with a pass running through the middle of it very hard to see any evidence for any sort of structures on the site um from memory I think we had a few sort of stones showing proud of the surface but there's nothing to really indicate there was a sub sub a substantial medieval building or series of buildings on the site however as you can see by 2014 so eight years later um we had cleared a large area this large platform um with the help of our country Parks colleagues who have always been so supportive of our work in the park and this allowed us to investigate um the buildings at Randall Manor uh this photograph in 2014 hopefully you can see in the for ground is a square building and this is our kitchen building uh which I'll come back to a bit later but you can see in the middle of this kitchen building there is a um a stone half um and then there are a series of other features um both underneath this kitchen building and part of this kitchen building as well and through our work on the kitchen we worked out there were at least two phases of uh kitchen use also to the right you can see the end of what was our um our are sort of service Wing so this was the uh an additional Wing built onto the main Mana building and at the end of this there's a guard robobee or a toilet what was really interesting about this part of the site was that Randall Manor itself is built on a slight slope and in this corner in the northwest corner of the site um they built the building slightly too long and then had to reduce it in length presumably because they had um issues with the uh stability of the building and so you've got footings which uh overshoot the eventual back wall of the building uh you can see as well we've got our tent in the other corner of the site and obviously engaging with the community was a key part of the archaeology project and every year we had the site open from the day we started to the day we finished with regular site tours running uh and everyone really um sort of bought into that uh experience and we're happy to talk to the public and that's why it was such a positive experience for everyone involved but before I S go on with a bit more detail about what we found at rall Mana I think it's worth just exploring a little bit about why Randall Manor is where it is and to do that um I'm using this photograph which Roger cockit who is our site historian took um looking from uh north of Randall Mana so we're looking that we're sort down on the marshes heading towards the temps looking South towards uh the site of Randall what's missing in the middle of the screen there is our Clay Hill so between the 1930s and 1960s a large Hill of clay was scraped away from the middle of this landscape um and if it was still there you'd see that Randall Mana was nestled in the sort of the north side of this Clay Hill and perhaps with its focus looking North across the marids towards the temps as much as South towards kbam and the landscape to the South um the Mana is also situated just to the east of one of our major north south holloways but perhaps its focus was more in a Northerly Northerly Direction than a southernly one to the south at cob Mana um another branch of the cbon family owned cbon Manor um and so that was developing as its own site in tandem with Randall mana and I'll forgive all the text on slides I'm not a huge fan of text on slides but this is important because this is this sort of explains why we think Randall Mana begins and this again is um some fantastic research by Roger cockit and what we think is happening is that perhaps 50 or 60 years before ROM Manor is built the whole area is cleared of trees uh and we have some other accounts perhaps of um uh land owners at the time uh being in trouble for clearing trees or creating an open cleared area but this may have been cleared to create a series of fish ponds um we've got these references to the nuns of fono who are one of the sort of large uh houses of um the font of ABY in uh in this country based at grovebury near Leon Buzzard in bedfordshire um but these nuns were sort of amongst their M amongst their many expertise um they were very good at building fish ponds and we have these two references one to the nuns uh working in the service of the land of Henry of sha um and then one to the nuns doing activities at which is at graves end and so what we suspect is happening is that for slightly unknown reasons uh Henry of sha works with the Nano fono to create a fish farm on the site of Randall Manor before Randall Manor is built and that these freshwater fish are then transported um down to Graves end and to Milton on the river to be taken up to London because you've got uh the king funding some of the activity taking place so this is some sort of perhaps Royal Enterprise we need to look into it a bit further there's no direct reference to fish ponds being built but given the involvement of nuns uh given the involvement of um uh land at Milton as well we're suspecting that this is what's going on and that perhaps rall Mana begins its life as a fish farm you can see these ponds very quar clearly when you zoom into the liar um this is the liar which is focused on random Mana itself and hopefully if my curse is working you can see here that there is a large pond um just to the west of Randall Manor Randall Manor is this cleared area um bottom center of the image then just north of random Mana you've got a second Pond and then just Northeast of random Mana you've got a third pond so you have a network of ponds uh and we now we are now suspecting that these May predate the Mana and that perhaps even the sort of the the Topography of the site so this idea of having a round hole could even give the name to the Mana site so round hole becomes becomes rle be becomes rle becomes Randall um and so the derivation of the term Randall perhaps could be referring to the topographic um ex uh um situation of the site before the manor is built now what we're doing at the moment is we're working with archaeology Southeast on a collaborative project uh with funding from the uh National highways to core our three ponds um so we've taken core samples from all three ponds and from the banks around the ponds um we're still colleting all the information together but what we think is happening um is that you have a a network of ponds um perhaps the round ponds are sort of our Northwestern Pond could even be a natural spring perhaps it's even a natural Hollow with water in which is adapted uh and then turned into the part of this chain of fish ponds um I think we got thinking about uh fish ponds and I know Roger has been thinking about them for a long time but when the medieval settlement research group visited the site they thought the fish ponds were far too large for a Mana site of our size so again it suggests that perhaps you got some industrial use of this landscape of natural springs and Hollows to create a series of damned ponds uh for for to create this fish farm so we're just processing the results of this information from archology Southeast and we're hoping that we can actually run some radiocarbon dates from some of the uh the the pollen and other things we're finding in the cores which might give us a better idea about how some of the how old these ponds are and how they've been used over time uh so watch this space and hopefully we'll have further information on that um by the end of the spring you can see just lastly um the great fun we had trying to pull some of these cores out to the ground um H we are not uh I'm not praying bottom right we are trying to lift one of these um uh one of the cores out so that we can take another sample so uh James Alfred who is a local artist based in Graves end uh created a series of fantastic illustrations of the site as well and this one shows round on Mana in about 1300 and again you can see front and center is our lovely large Round Pond um it's obviously a much more open landscape at this time after the Mana disappears the whole area is planted up as as Chestnut Copus but at this point you've got round or Mana surrounded by a series of field systems holloways driveways um and then the Mana uh in the center of it um and at that time if you had a sort of first floor view from the Mana you probably would have been able to see down to the temps as well so it's well cited like I say looking North with the Clay Hill behind you um and then the Mana the the fish ponds around which we're presuming um were continued to be used through the life of the Mana uh we're really lucky to actually have a tombstone or an effigy for S debam he's our first known Manor owner um he comes of age probably in the 1250s and he dies in 1316 so he's probably in his 80s perhaps when he passes away which is a sort of rip old age for someone in the medieval period um he's buried in sha church and his Effigy is still on display in the in the chapel there um although his bones were taken outside and buried in the churchyard during the Victorian renovation of the site um so I'm always um uh suggesting that in future we do another Lottery project and try and dig up Sir Henry in the churchyard I imagine we'll only have to dig up a few hundred skeletons to find him uh so anyway uh we know where sir Henry's buried and we we have an impression of what he looked like and if you go to uh Sea church do look at the helmet which he's lying on as a pillow because it's really intricately carved on the inside and it reinforces again that medieval helmets were not just tin cans that sat on your head there was a lots and lots of padding to protect you inside that helmet as well uh following on from uh Henry uh you have Steven dbam and he was a baron so he was even more important than Henry um both of them I think were sheriffs of Kent certainly Sir Henry was a sheriff of Kent and uh Henry was also um involved with the the as a warden of the sank ports as well um so step uh died in 1333 and his main residence was probably alington Castle um which Henry had inherited through through marriage um although Steven in his um Inquisition postmortem is recorded as having private chapels at Rondell and Allington and more importantly also a windmill which we're presuming is the windmill M we found in shood Country Park a very quick sort of skip through the sort of the later history of the site the site is still important in 1362 because a deed is signed at Randall but by the 1400s the last of the rall L Thomas tobam has passed away after that the site um had an extended perience of tency so probably 100 150 years as a tenanted out series of buildings although we know that the house is still there in 1555 and which is Al there's also reference the pond at that point um and still in 1558 uh for the post morm of George Brook who was uh Co Lord at cob Manor um however by the S 1580s um the site has disappeared and is referred to as ruiners by the 163 30s um we also know that in the 1580s cbum Mana was being rebuilt as cbam Hall the amazing Elizabethan Mana house that still exists to this day um and they were short of building materials so we suspect that Randall Mana disappears as Building Material recycled into cbum Hall and again another nice Lottery project in the future could be to drill some holes into the walls at cbum Hall and see if we can recover some of our Stone so the archaeology of the site itself um we think that the site begins as an is hall now ised Halls are basically large barns with a series of internal aisle posts um and these are very popular as a as a sort of a medieval building style in the 13th uh and early 14th centuries um we found the old Hall um sort of Midway through the excavations the 10-year program eventually open the whole of the old Hall up um for those of you that visited Randall and know the site you'll know that everywhere was covered in roof tole so we suspect that um the old Hall was a substantial substantially roof structure with a very large tiled Peg tile roof um we got some evidence for decoration with saw yellow tiles so it could be there was some sort of checkerboard effect um but we know it was substantially roofed and in the center of the old Hall just to the right of Pauline here who's standing front and center and I think is in our chat today you can see the evidence for an internal tiled halfth and this is a sort Proto for the Mana site for the for the old Hall at the end of the AL Hall so the AL Hall is orientated north south at the North End of the I Hall um at some point a substantial stone crosswing is added and this crosswing had is orientated East West um and is has very thick foundations which suggested to us it was probably a two-story building building um bottom right we had some evidence um just to the west of the crosswing for a porch area and a substantial metal surface running out of the site as well um so this crosswing is added onto the I Hall um we're still working on the phasing but it it it could be that the is Hall could have even been built for Sir Henry and then he adds the site during his period of occupation from the 1250s onwards through to 1360 or it could be that the old Hall is added to this to the existing structure by his son Steven as an example of a sort two-story cross crosswing type structure medieval structure we have got very close by at Temple Mana strud this a fantastic two-story building there of stone so you can imagine um how a building of this size and scale would have looked in the landscape at the at at at sha Woods it's a sub you know a substantial twostory stone-built building would have been a very impressive thing to to visit and to come to um having s walked up the holway to to the site the other thing we had um which we had great fun with was the guard robe um the guard robe was the only toilet we found on the site presumably there must have been other pits and other things around the site but the guard Roe was at the end of the service Wing uh this service Wing ran North from the crosswing and at the North north end of this service Wing we had a guard robe and although we looked to the west of the building there was no evidence for any drain and so we had great Delight in telling all the children who came to the site that one of them would have had to go in and scrape the contents of the guarde out um to clean it out occasionally we also uh very interestingly had a whole collection of window glass smashed window glass from the guard Roe and so as the buildings are pulled down for whatever reason um window glass is being sort of um push down into the guard robobee uh and top right there you can see Dan Clifford and Roger cockett doing the excavation of the Guard robe and the collection of some of this incredible window glass this is just a nice illustration to show um our or thinking on a Randall Manor uh Roger cockit again Drew this um probably 10 plus years ago now but it does sort of nicely show what we think the buildings look like so to the left you've got this incredible isled Hall this very large um Timber structure with low squat stone walls and a very large um tiled Roof then in front of that um in the middle of the image you've got the stone cross ring which all comes across the end of the a hall and then in the back of the image you've got the stone cross ring running the Stone Service Wing running north of the crosswing and with the toilet in and then just to one side you have the kitchen building now the kitchen building was very much isolated ated from the main Manor um probably because of the fire risk so it was always its own separate building Square building sitting to one side of the Mana complex and these buildings all sat at the Western end of the cleared platform so um as you came to the site probably from the west or coming up from the East you'd have been hit by this very substantial um series of buildings running north south Across the Western end of the platform as site was developed over time uh improvements were made including this very impressive chimney at the South End of the a hall we only have a few fragments of it and you can see hopefully uh bottom right uh the the image there but this is a large hexagonal chimney uh sitting on a a very um substantial um Stone base which ran up the back of the oil Hall and so presumably replaces that internal tiled half um we found fragments of it as we were sort of Excavating behind the a hall and in the ditches and other features around it um and this would have been a very substantial and expensive structure added onto the a hall as the site's developed um then we come to the kitchen so as I said a bit earlier the kitchen um has at least two phases of half and is at least a two-phase building uh and at present I'm working with some of the f team from the project to uh draw together a site narrative for the kitchen and it's it's fascinating to go back into this again and to look at the kitchen in detail what we think you have is an early building um perhaps with sort chore and Flint walls with a series of tiled hears and a cauldron pit in one corner um then the whole kitchen is rebuilt as a as a much more impressive Square building um with a a Stone half and then with this sort of ridos these these structures to the rear of the half here which you can see um in the bottom right image and these structures are a series of ovens and storage uh units within the kitchen at the back of the kitchen um to to some as warming other warming ovens and others as other Hearts um to prepare food within the kitchen environment and where we dug down into the layers into the kitchen and Richard Taylor will will remember this we had a whole sequence of earlier pebbled floors and uh tiled halfs underneath what you can see there so it's a it's a sort of a multi-layered site within probably two main phases of activity this was another nice illustration by Alan Marshall just showing um how the kitchen may have looked at one point in its existence you know it gives it sense of this Square building with the sort of central uh um Hearth being used um and then uh pig a pig being roasted in the foreground and fish being smoked as well so drawing together the evidence we have from the animal bone and the fishbone evidence as well to give us impression of how the Mana may have looked now the other thing we had for those of you having a drink during this talk um is a brew house and this brew house uh sat in the other corner of the site so in the northeast corner of the of the platform on its own in the in the far corner of the site and this is a very substantial structure here with a large Central half um or fire pit um and probably acting as a sort of cauldron base or or Kettle base so you could heat large amounts of water up as part of the Brewing process um it was almost or built into the edge of the platform and then revetted around as well um very substantial structure we had some great Sy Al archaeology from this and these samples we're currently having them analyzed which we're hoping will s add to our understanding of the site going forwards um but like I said this sat us away from the other buildings but certainly acted as a brew house within the uh foundations of the brew house we have part of a cross Pate which is a sort of a a stone grave marker um and then laterally although I haven't got an image of it here we found the other part of this cross Pate in another part of the site so in much the same way as Randall Mana was being recycled into other buildings at the end of its life other buildings and objects and features are being brought in as building material to this site as this site's developed from the 1250s onwards um and this cross Pat was a great piece of evidence for that recycling of material into the building also you can see here this love the beauty ofely excavated flu here for the Brew House top right our last year of excavation was 2015 and you can see the team here and what's really lovely is a lot of the people in this image here are still very much involved with the archaeology of the park um and also if they moved away they still keep in touch about the site as well what we did in 2015 was we looked along the southern edge of the platform of the the manner and here we identify what we think are is evidence of buildings that relate to the tency period of the of the occupation of the site so probably looking at sort of activity in the 14 and early 1500s at this point when a series of sort of lighter buildings using recycled building materials are built along the southern edge of the Mana platform so you've got the the main the key early principal buildings on the western edge of the platform the teny buildings on the southern Edge and then the Brew House in the northeast corner we've had you know thousands of finds from Randall Manor it's been a really rich site archaeologically and we're still you know um very much engrossed in the study of those finds uh from a fantastic Potter assemblage a really great animal bone assemblage including fishbone um we've also got things like eggshells and other much or smaller evidence for diet and activity on the site um we've got a small selection of coins uh but the sort of some of the key artifacts we've had um I put on this little slide here again with the photographs courtesy of of ruer and her fantastic photography skills um two of the nicest things we had and the most enigmatic things are these two floor tiles which are the top of the screen now one of those has a geometric design and the other one top right is obviously um a drawing of a lady now if I was giving this talk 10 years ago I was telling anybody who would listen that this was a cbum lady and this was actually purpose made for uh R manner subsequent to that Albert Daniels was able to let me know that there is an identical Flor tile to this from a church near Hastings at a um so it seems that somewhere between a and Graves end there is a tile floor tile Kil producing these tile patterns we don't know where we've got one at Randall mana and we got one from this church at or um so they're probably part of a sort of two or three piece design of which we only have the head now what's really interesting is with these two tiles there's no evidence on the back for Mortar there's no evidence of being fixed into a floor and so what we think has happened well I think has happened is that perhaps these were even tiles brought to the site um to perhaps to show the decoration what could be done in terms of a floor design um because of the lack of any sort of evidence for fixing they've either been put into some sort of sand base or they are sample tiles much in the same way that you perhaps have samples when you come to have your kitchen or your bathroom redone and you look at what designs you might like it sounds a bit of a sort of um modern interpretation but it's very odd that we have these two very highly decorated floor tiles um but with no evidence of them being fixed into any floor and so perhaps they were um brought to the site uh as an example of decoration but never used another thing we have which is really enigmatic again is bottom left we have this large lead flask or costal this lead flask was buried underneath the stone crosswing of the main Mana buildings um as some sort of foundation deposit um if you look very closely at it there's almost a cross on it um painted with two white lines and so it is perhaps some sort of religious objects and perhaps some sort of large pilgrimage flask which has been brought around on Manor and we think buried underneath the stone crosswing when that building is put up um perhaps to protect the building um we are still like to do further research on this but I've only seen one other example of a costal of this size and that came from North umberland and that one had been cut in two when it was been buried so they're very enigmatic objects of which I'm only aware of two so if anyone is aware of other examples or when you watch this back on YouTube and you think you may have seen another example do get in touch and let us know we've also had this very nice piece of Islamic glass here in the middle um this is from a glass um a glass special like this one um which came all the way from Syria and it's a fantastic story that this um glass um Beaker was brought from Syria to the UK to to England then came down to Randall Manor and at some point was dropped and broken and of those various shards that must have been created we found one in a miden um which at first we weren't aware of its importance and then when it was cleaned up we could see there was Islamic writing on it which hopefully you can see in this image and then we had it scientifically tested at Fort Cumberland and it came back as being Islamic glass from Syria so really high status object found at Randall Manor um and then bottom right is just an example of the sort of carving that may have been around the doorways this is a label stop and label stops would have sat either side of a doorway as you entered it and you'd see them at sort of head head level and this is an example of a carve label stop and really amusingly this was found on the spoil Heap so one of us during the Dig had picked this up not realized what it was and tossed it away on the spoil Heap for it to be found by Dan Clifford as we were putting the site um to sleep over the winter and then we were able to work out what it was from that what was really important about round and Mana though was um this was a community dig it was all about getting the community involved and so a great part of the site of the of each Year's excavation was having schools along we had lots of local schools from chant from graves end the Chantry sha school um a lot of the local primary schools we also work with a special needs School Dame Court in Gillingham every year which is really really great to to to engage with um kids with special education needs as well um there was sort of probably some of the highlights of the dig for us um the only thing for me which I find alarming now is that all of these children are probably in their 20s um and probably don't want to well hopefully we'll we'll look back on this fondly still um the day they found roof tiles and medieval archaeology um and going forwards we hopefully respect archaological sites and other Heritage sites in the future we also created a series of tactile resources uh for visually impaired volunteers and for the public and these included a plan of the Mana which is top left um Larger than Life um coins so you can actually see the decoration on the coins a an example of our Lady tile here in relief so you can feel the design and then bottom right you've got the um the a recreation of the Islamic glass as well so we were trying to extend the S reach of the project and to involve people of all abilities and impairments as well a key part of Randall Mana however was uh the fines processing and this still continues as a project to this day with many of the people involved in this image here um and the pottery in particular uh we a lot of the spot dating we were indebted to but first and Grant you can see in this image here uh leading a whole series of pottery sessions I think top right there is Richard Taylor as well and I I think I saw Paul Hart who's on this um the the conference today the presentation today so Paul was also a key part of this and all of this spot dating we're all drawing this evidence together still now to try and understand the various phases of the Manor in more detail we also have had great fun processing all of the soil samples and you can see ruer and Amanda here top right with our very own flotation tank which we call Thomas uh and this was built by the volunteers to flot our samples and those samples bottom left have now gone off to an expert to be identified and then hot off the press bottom right is some latest some of our uh are Meandering through this the strateg graphy of the site and where we're trying to understand the phasing of the site through the various walls and layers um to get a better understanding of how the site came together to put the site in its wider context um between 2016 and 2019 we did a project at cbum um the landscape over the road from Sha Woods Country Park and part of that project was it was able to reveal the fact that we have a whole network of medieval manners in The Wider landscape so bottom right there hopefully you can see Randall Manor uh sitting within what is now Shas Country Park but then uh if you're looking South as it were across the landscape you have a Cobin Manor here which hopefully my cursor is pointing over you have Cobin Village down here uh you have the Barrow Ashen bank which we put a windmill on just as an example of what could be there and in the far distance you have additional manners at North Court and Vons as well so You' got this Rich s tapestry of uh medieval um manners in this wider landscape and with Randall being one of those and the most Northerly of this colle of manners in the widest shown cob landscape very quickly then because I'm aware we're coming to the end of the time after Randall Manor um disappears the whole area is covered in Copus Woodland and I've included this image from the 1799 um ordinance Sur aers drawings and this shows sha woods and you can see no evidence for Randall Mana which would be in the center of the image there is this feature called Randall Hall to the west and Randall Hall um was a post-medieval building built on the edge of what is now shas's Country Park which took the name from Randall Manor but this is a later building and this was here probably from this sort 1600s through to the early 1800s when Lord darnley has it pulled down um to build a carriage drive across it so the name the Randall name did survive in the landscape after Rand Manor uh and then bring it into the 20th century the whole landscape was then being transformed again as part of a very militarized landscape with RAF camps and Army Camps within shaas Country Park partly associated with RAF Graves end which sits between the country Park and Graves End Town itself and then as I alluded to earlier you've got the Clay Pit which has really transformed the archa well the the Topography of the park and remov that huge plug of London clay from the center of the park and here we are just post lockdown back in 2020 Excavating one of the few surviving rail sections of the Narrow Gauge Railway on the edge of the Clay Pit and then coming uh towards the end of the talk um what we've done more recently is we have found a new set of medieval buildings to the west of Randall Mana this is a focus of the current project by the shaud archaeology group this was in an area that the liar suggested was perhaps a Terrace and when the group investigated they found dense scatters of tile um in an area we previously didn't think were any buildings at all and we also then found substantial foundations of buildings and very nicely a medieval key which you can hopefully see bottom left and what we think is going on here is we have two large buildings one um uh sort of large building replaced by one slightly smaller on on a similar footprint the larger one is built of very nice um dress Stone and flint and then the smaller one built with inside the larger one to replace it has a lot of reused Stone in it including what we suspect as parts of our chimney or perhaps some the doorways or Windows frame framing from the main building um so we have two buildings two large rectangular buildings on this platform west of Randall Manor and then to add to that we've now found a third building on the same site um and this is live from the site this Photograph has taken today where you can see us Excavating and this third building is probably part of the second phase of activity on the site so we're not sure what these buildings are they could be barns or wood sheds um they could also be something to do with um uh The Fish Production Center on the site but you've got extensive foundations of a series of um Stone and uh Stone flint and chalk uh Foundation for buildings west of the manor um and this is a subject that we're going to come back to and continue to excavate into 2025 so if people are interested in volunteering and taking part in this work will be on site on Thursdays and Fridays uh and you can get more details from me what's interesting about these uh sites is we have very little evidence for pottery we've got thousands of shirs of pottery from the main site of random mana and we hardly have we have about five shirs from these sites so they're not domestic they're not building they are some form of additional structures barns or storage buildings um set into this s wider round landscape to the west of the site we're also continuing with a Ser of ongoing events in the park um and these include open days we've created our very own well the Sha group have created their own sand pit uh for kids to get involved with archaeology we've done a whole series of guided walks we've also worked with the young curators group at maone Museum and we've had them on site as well so we're continuing to offer activi and um guided walks Etc and Outreach events as part of the the work to to to to uh uh display what we've been doing to the wider public and to explain what we've been doing um both in person and online um through our sort of social media channels as well and as part of that work we've also got um a whole series of uh new interpretation in the park and if you go to the park now you'll see we have a new display case in the visitor center with key finds in it including the floor tiles and we have uh new interpretation boards in the park we have a panel explaining what lidar is and where the features are in the park and then bottom left we have this lovely um thing uh lovely uh Pony which is called the Sha Pony but we call him Dennis and uh this is to reflect this all industrial archaeology and history of the park and fantastic sculpture created by local sculptor Steve porch mouth from elements of the clay Works Machinery that we've excavated from the park and have been incorporated into this sculpture so it's another great way to engage with the public and to explain to what we been doing in the park itself and so lastly before I saw draw to close I just wanted to sort of um pay um credit and to to remember four key members of the Randall Manor um project team who are very sadly no longer with us but I want to celebrate all of their involvement and their their their work with uh with Randall Manor over the years so the top of your screen you've got Nigel M first and Grant who was a pottery expert based down in thanet but really took us under his wing in terms of understanding the medieval Potter assemblages of Randall Manor and came up and gave us a huge amount of time and ran sessions for us to understand more about medieval pottery and to give us his spot dat sequence and a fabric reference collection to base our our future understanding of um Randall Manor on and we're hugely indebted to Nigel for all of his hard work good humor and his Peery that he also used to bring with him at every visit as well um bottom left we've got Roger Hornsby Roger um was a royal engineer and then went into civil engineering and he took great Delight in telling me that he used to chase archaeologists around sites uh when he was involved in engineering uh projects before he retired and then on his retirement he discovered archaeology in the park through Randall Manor and then became a key member of the team on multiple years through Randall Manor H and was then engaged all the way through our common Landscapes project as well and Roger was a fantastic character always had an incredible story uh and was a really great team member of the of the Randall team in the center of the site is the Irreplaceable Dennis Rosier and Dennis um for those of you that visited Randall Mana ran of our site tours and through uh at the site he took up archaeology in his retirement retirement where most of us are thinking of stopping um any sort of physical activity alog together in his 70 late 70s he took up archaeology and then when he could no longer sort of do active archaeology he then took on the role of being our tour guide for Randall Manor and was brilliant at working with kids and with all of the adults and engaging with people across our saw uh the the month we dug each summer and then finally bottom right you've got Albert Daniels and Albert Daniels is a real Titan of Kent's archaeology um he was a fantastic to work with again at Randall Manor he taught me a lot about archaeology and about working with volunteers as well he was great fun to work with he had a fantastic sense of humor um and he also supported a lot of other projects in the county as well as being the main stay of the Maidstone era archaeological group but he really enjoyed digging at Randall as you can see is helping us take levels uh during our work at the Mana site so I just wanted to celebrate um the lives of these S four key members who are sadly no longer with us but we're key parts of the Randall team uh and will always be remembered for their involvement with it so I think at that point given it's 8 o'clock and I've rattled on for an hour or so now I just wanted to sum up by thanking you for all um coming to listen to me this evening um if you go to the Kent online um website we have a 10-minute special on shawood Country Park with the volunteers talking about the archology of the park uh the link you can see on the screen here but if you search Kent online sha Woods it will come up and it's a great little film we made uh a couple of months ago about the archaeology of the park we also have our own website shuds archaeology.org and mayford at k.g. to to to get in touch about volunteering and maybe if you have any other questions about the Dig um so a huge thank you to sha Woods for having put up with us for so many years and for being such great supporters of the archaological work in the park um National highways uh Heritage fund Heritage Lottery fund and the medieval settlement research group for all of their support with the excavations and with the post excavation work and uh for Ken County Council for having put up with me for so many years and allowing us to develop this amazing project uh so thank you very much Andrew amazing thank you so much thank you um wow what an incredible site and uh one which clearly has benefits far beyond the the amazing archaeology that has that's been discovered there so brilliant stuff so um first of all just if you have any questions for Andrew please pop them in the chat and I will read them out and uh get to that so it was amazing to see the community engagement and um it looks like it was a who's who of Kent archaeology cutting their teeth on the site what an amazing place and I love the the the local links for almost every aspect of it you know you showed illustrators and um all kinds of arche archaeologists and other aspects of it all coming from local and using their incredible talents and stuff um and it must have been great to have to continue to have this very broad area to uncover so so you get a really good footprint of what's there but it occurs to me that the length of this project and the size of of the Mana you must have phenomenal amounts of assemblages and archive material piling up somewhere how are you uh how you dealing with that all of that it's a really good question Craig um we're very lucky that the park have allowed us to store material at the park so we have everything still on site and we have a storage shed that they've given us on a very long-term loan um we bought our own cabin so we have our own sort of uh site office which we keep um on in this in the site compound at Sean um so for the amount of archives we have we have enough room um obviously we can't take on anyone's any other archives but we can the most important thing for me is at the moment we keep everything on site so it can be studied and looked at further rather than it sort going off site but at some point we are have to think about that and there are certain objects like the piece of Islamic glass that probably are sort certainly Museum worthy in terms of their um being shown in the future and so we need to think longer term probably about where some of those items are end up on display of future um storage as it were but as we all know um it is the probably the key challenge now facing Kenton archaeology in the future is storage of archives storage of fines um H it's it's a huge issue and it's not going to go away so um we need to we need to have a serious chat about that at some point as a as a Kent Community um we're lucky at around all that we do have the storage and the facilities there but a lot of local groups don't and obviously a lot of the units don't so it's a big big issue absolutely absolutely we're in the same boat and like you say I'm sure pretty much everyone across the county is is in the same situation um I'm gonna I was gonna ask you another question but I'm gonna jump to the questions on here because I hug all the time um it's Andy actually as that's the first one he says Andrew I can't remember was there anything found inside that lead costal also to age myself I started at Randall in 2014 I Andy I think you started before 2014 cuz I can remember you as a child but uh we'll gloss over that um no uh we it's very hard to excavate because it's lead um we haven't ever excavated or tried to take a sample from it uh Dana Goodburn Brown I should have said I had did some fantastic conservation work on it um but we haven't taken it any further so there is potential there to perhaps look at residue analysis um uh so it's been conserved it's been Consolidated um but we haven't Tred to take any further in terms of what could be inside it if there's any evidence for anything inside it thank you thank you um Ben has asked is there any evidence of farming or farm buildings at the site perhaps from the rented period that's a great question Ben there so we the the site building seem to change over time obviously I think the the main buildings at the West End of the platform are probably still there but they may be robbing bits of them or or taking bits away to create some of the other buildings so we think that the building along the southern edge of the platform is part of the tency building and it did have a large internal halfth presumably to heat that building um but the main farm buildings we think are the ones we're digging at the moment and they're to the west of the site where you've got these large rectangular buildings um probably with stone foundations but they're mostly Timber um Timber above and with large tiled roofs again so we're thinking they are all farm related because of the lack of domestic material there okay okay and I guess um maybe some of the work that you're doing this year will start to show up some of that maybe we hope so but but the weird thing about this part the other part of the site we're digging at the moment is there are so few fins I mean you got we got masses of roof tiles again we've got about five bits of pot and we're getting nails but that's it apart from the key we're just not getting anything there we've got one possible piece of deer bone um and that's it so it's there they're not processing anything there but we're not sure what they are doing there interesting uh Martin um has asked when and why was the Mana abandoned it's it's a really good question Martin our best our best understanding looking at the pottery and looking at this the additional sort of historical information is that this site disappears in the late 1500s and as I said in the talk at that point cbum is being C Manor is being built into cbum Hall if you haven't seen what Hall looks like do Google it it's incredible it's just a massive Elizabethan mansion and they must have needed a huge amount of building material for it and ROM Mana at that point is empty sitting just to the north of cbum Hall and would have been a perfect SE perfect um uh place to so I'm presuming most of Randall Mana has been recycled into cob Hall in the 1580s when cob Hall has been built because the Pottery Factory the pottery of sub ends at the end of the 1500s and apart from some milk bottle glass and a few bits of clay pipe you've got nothing sort of po600 from the site okay are you doing all the postex on site then uh yes at the moment it's all been done on site I think we're going to have to look at some further funding to try and draw things together uh we've got some great catalogs of all the material but we need to get some more specialist support I think now to sort of draw some of that information together because the animal bone assemblage is fantastic the the bone is in really good condition and we've got everything from you know tiny fish bones through to large you know cattle bones so we got a really great assemblage of material to work with which is stratified as well amazing so how many more years do you think you can get out of it uh I think I'll still be doing this in my retirement Craig brilliant well um my only other comments here Andy are all things saying how much people enjoyed the talk and saying thank you so I reckon unless there's any last minute questions come through um someone has said to come along and um if you want to give Arch archaeology a go all welcome we have all the tools you need the danna's owner I don't know if that just means they're the owner of the device that they're using um but it must be someone who's involved and welcoming anyone to go along and excavate at Sean exactly that Craig I mean we're we're still an active archaeology group um and if you're interested fines as well we have our own fines team which I alluded to during the talk um so you know it's we we we're offering experiences as it were Beyond just excavation brilliant uh John T has is hand up so Jacob if you are able to uh allow them to un mut or maybe they can unmute themselves I don't know how if it all works John are you able to unmute yourself Jacob I can unmute him no I can't unmute him what we saying Jacob I've sent a request to unmute [Music] but okay perhaps they perhaps John hit it by accident um if you've got a question John if you can quickly type it in the chat oh John bont has said sorry I'm owner yeah so yeah so as John was saying we we're always Keen to encouraging you people to take part so if you have an interest do come along um and there's there's loads and loads of different projects to get involved with brilliant okay well unfortunately um I can't see that jonty has been able to unmute so um I think um if you if you do have a question for Andrew I'm sure he will be happy to accept email questions in the future on anything you you have interest in um yeah so thank you um everyone for attending and thank you Andrew for the amazing enthusiastic talk that you promised um because you didn't give me a Tik Tok video and your continued amazing work across our County like it's brilliant and your work with local communities has been astonishing and and really really appreciated um for everyone uh as I mentioned before if you are not a member please do think about joining us at the society as I say it's only about3 P30 a month and you'll receive our Journal um and magazines newsletters access to our Collections and conferences selected events opportunities to get involved in excavations and research projects and you'll help us to keep bringing uh all of this Kent archaeology together for everyone we have more coming up more talks um so keep your eye out for these There's Thursday the 23rd of January we have Dr Reb Ellis hacken who will be talking to us about animals and humans in the late Iron Age art of England and Wales with special reference to Kent on Thursday the 21st of February I think David Brown RI will be uh bring us a presentation on aerial Imaging and record and view aerial Imaging to record and view archaeological excavations in space and time sorry about that um Thursday the 20th of March 2025 Janice Thornton will be talking about sheppy mun munes women in shns doyo God in World War I I think maybe that festive beer has gone to my speech somewhere sorry uh Thursday the 17th of April 2025 Dr Martin Watts will deliver his talk on Richboro the secret port and we will have more continuing throughout the year so check out the website for more details on these talks and a wind Rage of other Kent based events as well as how to become a member if you're interested finally we sent five Society Expedition elves out into the county to spread some festive cheer but they got lost please help us find them and give them a new home they might have a little gift for you if you can find them um keep an eye on our social media for Clues as to where these Christmas elves are hiding we're very worried about them so if you can find them that would be great uh Andy says to check out the website where you can find more details on events excavations and joining and follow our social media channels and I think that is all from me so thank you all very much thank you Andrew for that incredible talk and I look forward to seeing you again soon and I will see you all have a wonderful festive holiday season um we'll see you in the new year take care