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Originally from York, since 2003 Stephen has been employed by the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) on numerous multi-period urban and rural excavations, developing a solid fieldwork and post-excavation speciality in complex multi-period deeply stratified urban excavations in the city of Leicester, and directing urban sites exclusively for the last 10 or so years.

Stephen says:

My five and a half year long ‘swan song’ at ULAS was as fieldwork and post-excavation analysis director through to completion of a massive Roman and medieval excavation. Over the years I have also been fortunate to have worked extensively in the North African Sahara (Libya and Morocco) and in Cyprus (Operation Nightingale) and the Adriatic coast of Italy, in most recent years as the H&S Lead Archaeologist in the multi-disciplinary project EAMENA (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa). I also set up and ran a small football charity in Zambia for some years.  With an awareness that there is always much to learn and plenty of room for improvement in what we do, I am excited about the challenging new chapter in my career working with PCA and look forward to offering something to, and learning from, everybody here. Please introduce yourself, if you haven’t.

The Rank Hovis Premier Mill is an important survivor of the now almost vanished industrial history of the London Docklands. Described by the Evening Standard as a ‘decaying industrial anachronism standing defiant and alone in the surrounding subtopia’ the complex has become an icon of post-industrial Britain, and has a long and varied past. It was partially destroyed in 1917 by the devastating explosion at the nearby Brunner Mond’s munitions factory, which was manufacturing TNT for WW1. More recently, the mill has appeared in music videos by the Arctic Monkeys and Coldplay.

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These images show the Royal Victoria Dock in 1937 alongside a Google Earth image of the same (yet dramatically different!) view today, with the remains of the Rank Hovis Premier Mill marked in red. The mill was established by Joseph Rank in 1904 and remained operational until its closure in the mid 1980s.

Do you have stories about the Rank Hovis Premier Mill? Maybe you worked there or lived nearby, or know someone who did? Please spread the word and get in touch if you can tell us anything about this iconic building.

Thanks to Professor Neil Christie for this great review published in Medieval Archaeology Volume 66.2 (Dec 2022).

By the Medway Marsh by James Gerrard and Guy Seddon is available to purchase here

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A few kilometres north of Watling Street and close to the Roman town of Rochester in N Kent, excavations by Pre-Construct Archaeology at Grange Farm identified intriguing Romano-British activity, adding to older reported finds in the zone (including an early 5th-century coin hoard): earlier/mid-imperial earthen agricultural enclosures giving way in the 4th century to (cob-)walled enclosures, plus roadway, aisled hall, smithy and, peculiarly, a mausoleum. The latter (of cruciform shape over a squared base of c 6.5 x 6.3 m) held still a lead coffin (pp 65–70) containing an elderly female (landowner/patron?), while fragmentary materials pointed to other (lost) burials here. Potentially the mausoleum and coffin saw (new/renewed?) veneration after farming and industrial activity here ceased: a late 5th-century gilded silver Nydam-style brooch is suggested as a votive offering (pp 70–2), as perhaps were two 5th-/6th-century spearheads (72–3); while apparent demolition of the enclosure walls was perhaps to make the mausoleum more visible around. While one Anglo-Saxon sherd came from the redeposited late-Roman midden spread covering the demolition deposits, no settlement (or burial) activity for the 6th to 11th century occurs. The last remnants of the mausoleum appear robbed out in the 12th century for reuse in a nearby manorial complex (not investigated in the 2003–06 excavated, but related ditches, pits and a well were revealed). An unstratified openwork copper-alloy cross-staff terminal, meanwhile, suggests a chapel hereabouts when Bishop Odo, brother of King William I, held Grange Farm (pp 74–5). Noteworthy was the strong recovery of coins and metalwork finds – including badges, tools, dress-fittings – of Roman to early-modern date (mostly unstratified) thanks to onsite metal-detecting. A nicely produced and well-illustrated monograph, this publication benefits from its detailed, balanced end-discussion (Chapter 4) which integrates all finds types analysed in the specialist reports in Chapter 3 (including pollen from the coffin and evidence for a tawny owl roosting in the mausoleum ruins).

— NEIL CHRISTIE (University of Leicester)