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skeleton lying east and
west, 7 ft. deep, and called it ‘a very early and
regular burial,’ but it may just as well be medieval and
irregular (see p. 79). Battely (in Somner, op cit. ed. 1703,
pp. 191, 192) mentions as Roman a well, certain pits which he
thought cisterns, and also ‘an oven with wood-coals in
it,’ 7 ft. deep. We can only register and pass on.
(21) Sun Street and Guildhall Street revealed in
1868 Roman walling on which important theories have been
based. Unfortunately it has been as inadequately recorded as
most Canterbury remains. From Pillbrow’s plan, section, and
very brief text it seems that he found in Sun Street a
substantial wall of flint and concrete with bonding-tiles,
built in Roman style, running along the street for about 130
ft. Apparently his drainage trench passed along its east face;
its west face was not uncovered nor its thickness ascertained.
About 90 ft. to 100 ft. west of this he found a precisely
similar wall running along Guildhall Street, about 95 ft.
long. Here his trench seems to have passed along the west
face? and the east face was not found. These two walls are not
parallel, but if produced would meet in Palace Street and
enclose an angle of about 30o. Having thus two
similar faces of walling, 100 ft. apart, he conceived the
theory that they formed the two faces of some unusual feature
in the Roman town wall, ‘a strong gateway or massive work of
defence’ (Arch. xliii, 162, 164, nos. 57, 58). But
the trapezium shape of the space within the two walls is too
irregular for any such purpose, and we may dismiss the wild
guess. A quite different suggestion was made by Faussett (Arch.
Journ. xxxii, 376). He explained the remains as part of
the city wall, but supposed that to have run not along, but
across, Sun and Guildhall Streets. This is plainly a total
misreading of Pillbrow, and incidentally results in a city
wall 45 yds. thick. What the two converging walls really
represent it would be rash to guess. As the plan shows (P1.
XII) their site does not fit any natural line for the town
wall. More probably they belong to two buildings not standing
parallel or at right angles.
Pillbrow further marks under Guildhall Street,
close to High Street, a wall of which he gives no details (no.
56). Two querns have also been found here (Arch.
Cant. xv, 349) and a clay figurine of Gaulish type in Sun
Street (Cant. Olden Time, 40; Arch. Journ. i,
281).
(22) The Cathedral and its precincts are stated
by Brent (Cant. Olden Time, 18) and Pillbrow (Arch. xliii,
164) to have yielded no Roman remains, although extensively
trenched during the drainage works, and, indeed, the one
recorded Roman discovery in this quarter is ‘a large
collection of Roman vases discovered in the precincts of the
Cathedral’ shown to the Archaeological Institute in 1844 (Arch.
Journ. i, 279; Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. Cant.
Meeting, p. 330). It does not appear that any Roman work in
situ, or, indeed, any great amount of Roman material used
up again, has been found in or under the Cathedral, and
Somner’s assertion that it stood on the site of an old Roman
building seems wholly unfounded. Under the north-west
(Arundel) tower a deposit of black silt was noted about 1830,
and in it the bones of a man upright and two oxen, ‘some
drover who perished with his cattle in the bog’ (Arch.
Cant. iv, 39; Arch. Journ. xxxii, 377). Perhaps
this may belong to the water channel conjectured above.
(23) In Palace Street, Pillbrow marks walling in
line with, and about 80 ft. north of, the walling in Sun
Street noted above (sec. 21), but he does not describe it.
Further along the street, opposite St. Alphege’s Church, he
found 7 ft. deep a broken tessellated floor, nearly 18 ft.
wide, principally red, but with a small panel of red and white
in the middle (Arch. xliii, 162, no. 61). This is the
most northerly piece of building which can be ascribed with
certainty to the Roman period. With it we may perhaps connect
a find made about 1703, 8 ft. deep in a cellar somewhere in
St. Alphege’s parish, a structure of large Roman bricks,
strongly cemented and ‘indentwise,’ about 4 ft. broad and
high (Battely, Somner’s Cant. ed. 1703, p. 192; hence
Hasted, iv, 411 ; Brayley and Britton, viii, 753, etc.).
Towards the north end of Palace Street a noteworthy burial
occurred (see p. 79).
(24) Still further westward, in Staplegate. and
King Street, Pillbrow found Samian and other potsherds and a
coin of Lucilla, and at the south end of King Street an old
foundation of flint and tiles, the tiles 2 ft. thick, and the
wall built on them (Arch. xliii, 154), possibly
Roman concrete and a bonding-course of tiles. A deposit of
silt underlay both Staplegate and King Street.
D. Remains in the suburbs.
(25) On the west and north-west, that is
beyond the Stour, remains are few. St. Dunstan’s contains a
large cemetery beside the Roman road to London. But apart from
sepulchral objects, Very little that is certainly Roman has
been recorded. Pillbrow found only a mortarium and a quern
near St. Peter’s Church; a deposit of iron slag and
‘ferruginous concrete’ (of unknown date) at the point
where Grove’s Lane enters St. Peter’s Street; some ancient
road surfaces under the London Road, in part as much as 7 ft.
deep, and therefore possibly Roman) and below them some Roman
coins, potsherds, nails and keys (Arch. xliii, 153).
It seems plain that on this side the Roman inhabited area
did not extend beyond the King’s Bridge channel of the
Stour. But it is Puzzling to read in Pilibrow’s account that
the marks of exposure to fire were especially clear on the
remains found here (ibid. p. 152). |