Great Britain -- Antiquities, Roman; Romans -- Great Britain
(xxi) A third house is supplied by Kent. This was found in June about
six miles south of Gravesend, near the track from _North Ash_ to
Ash Church, on the farm of Mr. Geo. Day. Woodland was being cleared for
an orchard, flint foundations were encountered, and the site was then
explored by Mr. Jas. Kirk, Mr. S. Priest, and others of the Dartford
Antiquarian Society, to whom I am indebted for information: the Society
will in due course issue a full Report. The spade (fig. 13) revealed a
rectangular walled enclosure of 53 x 104 feet. The entrance was at
the east end; the dwelling-rooms (including a sunk bath, 7 feet square,
lined with plaster) were, so far as traced, in the west and south-west
portion; much of the walled space may have been farmyard or wooden
sheds. Many bits of Samian and other pottery were found (among them
a mortarium stamped MARTINVSF), and many oyster-shells. Other
Romano-British foundations have been suspected close by.
The structure somewhat resembles the type of farm-house which might
fairly be called, from its best-known example--the only one now
uncovered to view--the Carisbrooke type.[7] That, however, usually has
rooms at both ends, as in the Clanville example which I figure here as
more perfect than the Carisbrooke one (fig. 14). One might compare the
buildings at Castlefield, Finkley, and Holbury, which I have discussed
in the _Victoria History of Hants_ (i. 302-3, 312), and which were
perhaps rudimentary forms of the Carisbrooke type.
[Footnote 7: It has been styled the 'basilical' type, but few names
could be less suitable.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14. FARM-HOUSE AT CLANVILLE, KENT (To illustrate
Fig. 13)]
(xxii) A few kindred items may be grouped here. Digging has been
attempted in a Roman 'villa' at Litlington (Cambs.) but, as Prof.
McKenny Hughes tells me, with little success. The 'beautifully tiled
and marbled floors' are newspaper exaggeration. A 'Roman bath' which
was stated to have been found early in 1914 at Kingston-on-Thames,
in the work of widening the bridge, is declared by Mr. Mill Stephenson
not to be Roman at all. Lastly, an excavation of an undoubted Roman
house at Broom Farm, between Hambledon and Soberton in south-east Hants,
projected by Mr. A. Moray Williams, was prevented by the war, which
called Mr. Williams to serve his country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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