Greenwich Park Revealed

Posted on 7th October 2021 by Ruiha Smalley

Andrew is now involved with the Royal Parks and will be investigating the Saxon barrow cemetery at Greenwich. Some of the SWAG team will be helping as well. This video has more details:

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Clay Works at Shorne

Posted on 30th September 2021 by Ruiha Smalley

The clayworks projects at Shorne are coming to an end. We confirmed that the bank carrying our narrow gauge railways has been revetted and reinforced with a series of vertical rails set into the old concrete road. These rails held back a wall of sleepers and timbers, anchored through the bank with metal hawsers. This allowed the diesel locos on site to run along the top of the bank and for an offshott track to run out onto a metal hopper, so that trucks could drive under and take the clay away. Quite elaborate but also built in a very practical fashion.

We are backfilling these holes soon and will continue on finishing our dig on the clayworkers canteen block.

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Archaeology at Swarling by the University of Kent

Posted on 21st September 2021 by Ruiha Smalley

Open Day for the Public

Date: Saturday 25th September, 2021

Time: 2pm

Place: Meet outside The Granville, CT4 7AL

Bus 18, Bay C5 in Canterbury City Centre to Hythe. Bus time – 1:40pm leaves Canterbury Bus Station and arrives at Granville Inn, Street End Lower Hardres at 1:52pm. Someone will be waiting for you there with further information.

We will be running guided tours of the site, alongside displays of finds and survey results. All are welcome, of any age. We are particularly keen to meet people from the village.

Warning: The walk from The Granville to the site is a 20 minute walk through the fields. You may arrive near the site on Iffin Lane in a taxi, but parking on site is not permitted.

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3D modelling of Bitchet

Posted on 10th September 2021 by Ruiha Smalley

Thanks to volunteer Peter Barry we now have 3-D models for the features dug at Bitchet Common, click here https://sketchfab.com/peterbarry/collections/kent-archaeology  – they are amazing!

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Reserach into nails found at Randall Manor

Posted on 10th September 2021 by Ruiha Smalley

Nails were valuable. Horseshoe nails were even used as a form of currency in certain circumstances. They were made from English iron which was less carboniferous than the imported iron from Spain and Sweden (used in the making of cannons).

Apart from their use by blacksmiths and in shipbuilding, nails were used in furniture making, particularly in the earlier medieval period when furniture was board made. Nails might also be used to decorate furniture and chests. Often furniture nails were tin plated as the tannins in oak wood caused iron nails to corrode. They might also be silvered on the heads to provide a furtherdecorative feature.  In house building they were used to secure laths for roof tiles and in walls, when lath and plaster was used.

Randall manor was subject to a planned abandonment so there should be very few if any furniture nails but as excavations have shown that tiles were widely used on the roofs of the buildings and there was likely lath and plaster internal walls, it is probable that most, if not all of the nails will be nails used in the construction of buildings.

Sources:

  • Wood, Margaret (1983) The English Medieval House. Harper Collins.
  • Clifton-Taylor, Alec (1973) The Pattern of English Building. Faber & Faber.
  • Ramsey, Nigel & Blair, John (2001) English Medieval Industries. The Hambledon Press.

(Amanda Hebbert, 2021)

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