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pottery and a scatter of coins dating from the late
first to the late third centuries, a notable bronze buckle-plate
decorated with portrait medallions and inlaid with niello, and an
unusual terra-cotta mask which was probably an architectural ornament
from a building of some pretensions. (1) An equally short distance
northward is a Roman road; for the "Old Road"—that
prehistoric route along the Downs—provides
evidence of burials along its course at Cuxton and Upper Halling to show
that this part of it at least was still in use in Roman times.
The barrow is now about 18 feet in height and almost 100
feet in maximum diameter. No surrounding ditch is visible either on the
ground or in an air photograph. It lies a little below the 150-foot
contour, and like the majority of known Roman barrows, it is not on the
sky-line although it must have been a far-seen landmark from the vale of
Maidstone before regenerated scrub invaded the lower slopes of the
downs. The collapsed and silted trench of an early excavation together
with the tip piled along its edges and spread over the top of the mound
are still clearly visible, otherwise apart from a light growth of
wayfaring tree and thorn and a little damage from rabbits, the barrow is
in fair condition. On its western side it is approached very closely by
the tram-line of the large chalk quarry which is gradually destroying
Holborough Knob, and if a further extension of the quarry is made in
that direction the barrow will be in immediate danger of destruction.
The nature of the site is fortunately recognized by the landowners,
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Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd., who would not permit
its unwarranted removal.
The barrow was first brought to notice as long ago as 1576
by William Lambarde, the famous Kentish topographer. "As touching
that Holboroe (or rather Holanbergh)," he writes, (2) "it
lieth in Snodland ........ and tooke the name of beorh, or the Hill of
buriall, standing over it: in throwing downe a part whereof (for the use
of the chalke) my late Neighbour, Maister Tylghman, (3) discovered in
the very Centre thereof Urnam cineribus plenam, an earthen pot filled
with ashes, an assured token of a Romane Monument." It is not very
often that Lambarde goes out of his way to describe field antiquities,
and the reason here must be that as he lived for some time at Lower
Halling scarcely two miles away from Holborough, he was probably
familiar at first hand with details of the discovery. Nothing further is
likely to be known of this early accidental find, but we may accept the
story without reserve.
It was almost three hundred years later that Holborough was
1 References are collected
in V.C.H. Kent, III (1932), p. 124.
2 W. Lambarde, The
Perambulation of Kent, 1570 (1640 ed.), p. 445. Hence Hasted, History
of Kent (8vo ed.), IV (1798), p. 464.
3 The Tylghmans
owned Holloway Court and other property in Snodland. The Maister
Tylghman concerned may have been the son of that William Tylghman who
died in 1541 and to whom there is a brass in Snodland Church. |