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 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.
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.
This week the SWAG team spent an enjoyable day being filmed by Finn MacDiarmid for a future, 15 minute documentary on the park’s archaeology and history. We visited the clayworks, RAF camp, our new dig site, Randall Manor, the Heath and the finds team to talk about the projects we run and some of our key finds from the park.
Once we have the link to the film, we will share it with you!
