During October volunteers from SWAG joined the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme and the National Trust in an excavation at the moated house of St John’s Jerusalem in Sutton-at Hone. For more detail on the dig click through to The Past – a new archaeology, art and heitage website.
The consultation on the future of KCC maintained Windmills will close in January 2024.
The Kent County Council (KCC) owns and is responsible for the preservation of eight historic windmills across the county. Due to the ongoing financial challenges faced by the council, they are looking closely at where savings can be made. One possibility is to find alternative arrangements for the ownership and/or financial responsibility for each of the windmills.
If this a topic that interests you and you’d like to have your say, visit the KCC website for more details.
We are excavating a building about 100 metres from Randall Manor.
The building appears to have had at least two phases and to be from the medieval period. Much of it has been constructed using reclaimed material from the Manor so is therefore later in date. The picture below shows one of the walls with the inner face made from chalk blocks and the outer from flint, a common style of construction in Kent for that period.
We still have a lot to learn so the excavation will continue for some time. Would you like to join us in an effort to answer a number of questions, such as – what was it used for? You’d be very welcome. Email us at SWAGkent2023@gmail.com to check when we’ll be on site.
The weather hasn’t been ideal for returning to our excavations on the platform near Randall but we have started to plan for events next year, including the Festival of Archaeology in July, with its theme of Community!
We have also progressed a survey at White Horse Wood country park, and below you will see the resistivity and magnetometry results. The area is 90m by 90m max, though that includes a lot of partial grids. We were looking for evidence of the iron age enclosure on the site.
The Classics and Archaeology Department at the University of Kent have a series of public lectures that have just begun that might interest you all. See the posters below for details.
