Thank-you to the the nearly 2,000 people who joined us in our excavations and activities for 2024! It was great to have so many involved in out activities.
Look out for our diary of event for 2025 which will be published in the New Year. Go to the calendar on the home page of the website for updates.
We hope to see you all again next year.
The Council is excited to announce the start of a new project to create a Heritage Strategy for the Borough and everyone is invited to get involved.
This will provide an opportunity for organisations, individuals and the Council to work together to highlight what is valued, encourage participation in heritage and promote the huge wealth of heritage that exists in the Borough which is often hidden. The Strategy will also be used to help support future project funding bids.
Heritage provides us with a sense of place and links to the past. Heritage is not just physical buildings, but can include anything from museum collections, public art, parks and historic gardens to archaeology and cultural activities, events and festivals.
The aim of the strategy will be to create a shared vision about the borough’s heritage, drawing on the thoughts of organisations, businesses and the people of Maidstone. Please help shape the new strategy by giving your views on the heritage that is important to you.
The consultation opens at 9am 8th November 2024 and closes at 5pm 28th November 2024. Local organisations and individuals over the age of 16 are invited to share their thoughts (go to the above link).
Work continues apace at the platform dig. We may have the corner of our third building now. It’s much larger than we first suspected, almost coming as far as the putative path heading to the manor from our main hollow way…something to be seen?
We recently received some comments on the Archaeology in Kent FB page about the Shorne clay works and thought we’d share some with you here.
If you’d like to contribute please email us at SWAGkent2023@gmail.com.
“We returned to one of our favourite park finds this week, the cart in the tree! It carried London clay from our clay pit, along a narrow gauge railway to be processed. The clay was both slurried & pumped along the A2 and taken by lorry to Northfleet, for use in the cement industry. The pit was worked 24/7 from the 1930s to the 1960s, transforming the landscape at Shorne Woods from wooded hill to worked out quarry. The fishing lakes and visitor centre now sit in the base of the old quarry pit- with 100ft of clay missing above our heads. This cart must have been pushed off the railway and abandoned, with nature taking over and a hornbeam tree growing out of it”
Simon Thornton:
I remember swimming and rafting on the quarry lake back in the early ‘70s long before it became the country park. There was still a lot of machinery, rails and metalwork scattered around back then. I suspect a lot of that is still buried under the park. There were also steep hills/spoil heaps, which must have been flattened when the park was created. Although it was great fun to play in there as a kid, the conversion into the park is a very positive use of the land.
Matt Whiting:
The foundations of the quarry offices can still be found in the park not far from the a2. Still bits of rail to be found in the woods too
Susan Jacobs:
We used to call it the ‘Crystal Quarry’ when I was a youngster back in the early 70’s. We used to dig out loads of quartz from the clay before it was the park. Happy Days. Shorne Shorne Woods Country Park is one of my favourite places.
Other Clay Works News:
This week we’ve had Archaeology South-East at Shorne to take a look at the fish ponds associated with Randall Manor.
They’ve taken core samples, to a depth of 120cm, of the separate ponds and will report back to us with findings. Hopefully there will be some clues to help us date the structures.
Update (8/11/2024) : The banks were extremely tough to auger through, but we ended up with six samples taken away for further analysis. The top pond had two metres of ‘suspended sediment’ over a metre of alluvial deposit – that we did not bottom…so when you visualise Randall Manor, imagine the top round pond having 3m + of water in it? This could mean that larger fish were being bred in the pond? All fascinating stuff.
