Aspects of Kentish Local History

Dartford District Archaeological Group (DDAG)

The Christopher St John Breen Roman & Medieval Pottery Archive

Introduction
   Chris Breen (see About Christopher St John Breen) and other members of the D.D.A.G. collected thousands of pottery sherds from the Billingsgate Soil Dumps in the 1980's. These were sorted and identified and bagged using the Museum of London pottery codes in use at that time. Since then some of those codes have been expanded and many more added to include those used by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust.
  
This archive is intended to help amateur archaeologists identify and date the pottery that they find in the course of their excavations. There are a number of excellent websites (see links below) where pictures of complete pots can be viewed, but here we show pictures of individual sherds and fabrics of pots.
   The present pottery archive consists of pottery sherds recovered from the Billingsgate dumps, and so apart from the imported wares represents pottery traded and used in London. We are now extending (2011) the range of material by including sherds from excavations throughout Kent, to better reflect the differing fabrics of all dates from London and Kent
   Chris Breen set up a system of plastic boxes, each holding fifteen small trays measuring 2½ x 5¾ inches, that contained examples of Roman and Medieval pottery sherds identified by the visiting specialists. The K.A.S. Fieldwork Committee kindly made a grant towards this work.

To the Roman Pottery Archive        To the Medieval Pottery Archive

Ceramics and Glass, Museum of London  (The LAARC ceramics and glass catalogue is no longer available at the Museum of London website, owing to ?software updates, 27-11-2016. However it is available at:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090510221705/http://museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/index.asp

The ceramics and glass collection is made up of 25,000 objects and 20,000 Roman Samian sherds. It is a collection of regional, national and international significance. As a result of London's position as a centre of national and international trade and of manufacturing innovation and of the Museum's long-established acquisition programme, these objects are very representative of the evolution of ceramics and glassware. Many of the items were acquired in the years before scientific archaeological excavations, when building workers finding complete objects were encouraged to offer them to the Guildhall Museum. The collection reflects the whole spectrum of society, including everyday items and luxury wares

 

 

This website is constructed by enthusiastic amateurs. Any errors noticed by other researchers will be gratefully received so that 
we can amend our pages to give as accurate a record as possible. Please send details to localhistory@tedconnell.org.uk