Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Excavations in advance of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2002-3 identified a number of property boundaries west of the Ebbsfleet. Within property 7 which was aligned along the branch road from Wating Street, was the remains of a substantial Romano-British building. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• FLOOR (Roman - 75 AD? to 200 AD?)
• HEARTH (Roman - 75 AD? to 200 AD?)
• PIT (Roman - 75 AD? to 325 AD?)
• WALL (Roman - 75 AD? to 200 AD?)
• YARD (Roman - 75 AD? to 200 AD?)

Associated Finds

• SPOUT (Late Iron Age to Roman - 100 BC to 50 AD?)

Full description

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Excavations in advance of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2002-3 identified a number of property boundaries west of the Ebbsfleet. Within property 7 which was aligned along the branch road from Wating Street, was the remains of a substantial Romano-British building. This was aligned with the road. Modern terracing had truncated archaeological deposits in the east of the property but that part that could be excavated revealed that the building was at least 12 m x 5 m in size and possibly larger. It had walls of flint and mortar that were c. 0.6m wide and survived up to 0.4m in height. These walls probably provided the support for a timber superstructure. Four rooms were identified. The central large room had a chalk floor scorched in the middle and probably indicating a hearth. One of the other rooms also had a chalk floor but a third room had no surviving floor surface. It did, however, have a very small area of tesselated floor, the only such flooring at Springhead. A pre-building layer contained a coper alloy zoomorphic spout from a vessel.

South of the building was a gravel yard surface. Between the building and the road was a substantial fence line. A small number of pits lay to the south-east of the building and contained early Roman material.

Overall the dating evidence indicates that the building was constructed towards the end of the 1st century and may have continued into the mid-Roman period. There was some evidence of limited activity in the property in the later 3rd or 4th century. (1)

Location accurate to 2m based on available information.

<1> Oxford Wessex Archaeology Joint Venture, 2010, Settling the Ebbsfleet Valley. CTRL Excavations at Springhead and Northfleet, Kent. The Late Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, and Medieval Landscape (Unpublished document). SKE31245.

Sources and further reading

Related records