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Occasional Papers

Excavations along the Thames Estuary in North Kent

by Peter Boyer, James Gerrard, Alexis Haslam and Stuart Holden with Jonathan Butler

PCA Kent Papers 1 2014 – £10 + p&p

This publication brings together the results of archaeological excavations undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology in five disparate locations across Kent between 2002 and 2005.
Site 1, at West Hill Hospital, Dartford had been severely truncated by terracing and other work associated with the construction of the hospital; archaeological remains survived only in two isolated pockets. Bronze Age and Iron Age activity included the remains of two roundhouses suggesting settlement of the area. Three Romano-British burials may have formed part of a late Roman inhumation cemetery adjacent to Watling Street.
At Site 2, in Gravesend, worked flints suggest activity dating from the Mesolithic to Early Neolithic periods. A larger assemblage of flint dating to the Middle Bronze Age and later, together with a smattering of later prehistoric features, is evidence of increased activity at this time. Field ditches and a late first-century crouched burial indicate that the sites lay in agricultural land beyond the area of settlement during the Roman period and continued to do so until the early sixteenth century, when the area was taken over by the local fish-smoking industry.
The excavation at Site 3 revealed the remains of the seventeenth-century vicarage and associated phases of extension and rebuilding, through which it was ultimately transformed into a substantial structure fronting the High Street. Medieval masonry robbed from the parish church was reused in the foundations of a late nineteenth-century soakaway.
Site 4 comprised medieval remains: backyard activity associated with terraced houses along Bell Road. A large assemblage of pottery and glass from cess pits provided information on the lives of the inhabitants and this forms a major focus of the report. Extensive quarrying reflects one of Sittingbourne’s major nineteenth-century industries, brick-making. Medieval worked stone from nearby St Michael’s church, discarded during restoration works, was recovered from a twentieth-century foundation.
Site 5, at Westgate on Sea, produced a Mesolithic to Early Neolithic flint blade and the remains of Mid–Late Bronze Age activity consisting of a pit and a ditch together with a few undated features. An assemblage of Bronze Age struck flint was recovered from the features and later dump layers.

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From Burnished Flints To Polished Buttons: Excavations in Maidstone at West Borough School, Waterside and James Whatman Way

by Barry Bishop, Peter Boyer, Stuart Holden, Chris Jarrett and Joanna Taylor with Jonathan Butler

PCA Kent Papers 2 2016 – £10 + p&p

This volume brings together the results of archaeological excavations by Pre-Construct Archaeology in advance of redevelopment, at three sites in Maidstone, Kent. Supplemented by documentary research, each of these excavations epitomises a different aspect of the town’s past.
The earliest evidence came from investigations at West Borough School (Site 1), to the west of the town centre, where ditches, pits and associated finds provide evidence for occupation spanning the Bronze Age to Roman periods. The evidence adds to a growing picture of agricultural intensification along the north Kent coastal belt in the later prehistoric period. However, the most remarkable discovery was an apparently unique assemblage of polished flints had been buried in a Bronze Age enclosure ditch.
At Waterside (Site 2) evidence attests to the post-medieval expansion of settlement beyond the Saxon and medieval core of the town. Cess-pits and buildings, dating from the 16th century onwards, demonstrate the development of a series of tenements. Late 19th century census records demonstrate that these were the homes of working families, primarily employed on the barges that plied the adjacent River Medway.
Excavations at James Whatman Way (Site 3) were focussed on the structural remains of a complex of buildings that formed part of Maidstone Cavalry Barracks. Initially constructed in the late 18th century, these barracks survived until the 1990s. Metal buckles, buttons, knives and cigarette tins, lost within the drainage system beneath a former gymnasium, provide an insight into the daily lives of those who lived and worked here.

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