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according to Pillbrow, of
Roman tiles laid two thick on a bed of brickdust, mortar and
concrete, above a layer of flints (Arch. xliii, 154,
no. 78). He took this for a hypocaust—why, it is hard to
imagine. Hasted ascribes a mosaic to Jewry Lane (iv, 411), but
it is that found near the County Hotel (above, 2). At the
junction of Stour Street and Hospital Lane a flint-and
mortar-wall coursed with Roman tiles was found under the
roadway in 1867 (ibid. 156, nos. 85, 86). Pillbrow and
Faussett connect this with the Roman town wall, for which view
there seems neither proof nor disproof available. The timber
recorded by Battely as discovered 15 ft. below Lamb
Lane—Stour Street—may be of any date (Somner, op. cit. p.
192).
(9) St. Margaret’s Street yielded much in
1867—8. Three Roman walls close to High Street are noted
above (no. 3). Eighty feet south of them, near the church,
another wall emerged, parallel to them and oblique to the
street, built of rubble with courses of bonding-tiles; if one
may trust Pillbrow’s sketch, it is certainly Roman. A garden
near the church contained a burial urn. A few steps to the
south, opposite the Fountain Hotel, was a floor of small red
bricks, doubtless Roman work, and 15 ft. further on a
floor of white tesserae, also doubtless Roman, 2 ft. wide,
flanked with walling. Twenty-two feet further south began a
series of massive foundations which extended to the end of the
street. They ran obliquely to the street-line but not parallel
to the other oblique walls and, as described by Pillbrow, are
not intelligible. Their age, too, is uncertain, except that
the great hardness of one part, 22 ft. thick or long, may
assign it to Roman builders. Two remarkable bronze pieces were
found here. One is a circular ‘horse-trapping’ enamelled
in red and green, Late Celtic in style and probably of the 1st
century A.D. The other is a pin 8½ in. long, with two tiny
wings pendant from its head, possibly also Late Celtic. For
the above, see generally Arch. xliii, 159, nos. 44—5
; for the horse-trapping, Cant. Olden Time, 5, 47;
for the tessellated pavements, ibid. 28, and C. R. Smith, Arch.
Cant. xv, 127; for the pin, F. B. Goldney in Proc. Soc.
Antiq. Ser. II, xviii, 279, with cut reproduced.
(10) Under the junction of St. Margaret Street,
Beercart Lane, Watling Street, and Castle Street, Pillbrow
found a well containing an ‘earthen Roman bottle’ and a
coin; close by, in the mouth of Wading Street, was a solid
foundation, 13 ft. thick (or long) and 12 ft. deep at
bottom, and the mouth, of Beercart Lane yielded another
foundation, 7 ft. thick. The well and the first of the
foundations may be Roman; the other is too little known to be
dated (Arch. xliii, 156, nos. 44—6). Pillbrow
adds that he found evidence of a Roman road all along Beercart
Lane, 4 ft. deep. But he gives no details; the depth is
suspiciously shallow, and the road cannot be accepted without
further proof.
(11) According to Battely, a mosaic floor and a
‘strong piece of stonework, indented so firm that it
resisted very strong blows,’ were found in digging cellars
somewhere in St. Margaret’s parish, not both apparently in
the same spot, 5 ft. below the surface (Somner, op.
cit. 191, hence Harris (1719), 196; Hasted, op. cit. (1799),
iv, 411; Brayley and Britton, viii, 755, and Brent, Cant.
Olden Time, 28). By an error of Brent, the mosaic has
sometimes been transferred to St. Martin’s parish (p. 75).
(12) Proceeding straight south to Castle
Street, we have to note that this street yielded, only 20 ft.
from the junction of the four streets, foundations,
pottery and coins which have not been described in detail, and
further on, near St. John’s Lane, very heavy flint masonry,
12 ft. thick (or long), which went down full 12 ft. below
the surface; near this latter were black urns, oyster-shells
and what Pillbrow calls ‘a piece of asphaltum,’ with coins
(Arch. xliii, 158, nos. 41, 42). Close to Castle
Street, in Hospital Lane, were found a foundation of rubble
and flints with strong concrete 4 ft. wide and 12 ft. off,
another wall 12 ft. thick (or long), coursed with Roman
tiles, and having some tiles inserted obliquely, almost as if
in herringbone fashion—presumably Roman. Here were also
flue-tiles, black inside with smoke, indicating the hypocaust
of a Roman dwelling (ibid. 156, no. 84). This appears to be
the most southerly point of the Roman inhabited area as at
present known. Somewhere in Castle Street, according to Somner,
a ‘strong and well-couched arched piece of Roman tile or
brick’ was found about 1640 (Chartham News, reprinted
by Battely in Somner, op. cit. 188; hence Harris, 199; Hasted,
iv, 411; Brayley and Britton, viii, 754).
(13) Along the south end of Castle Street,
near the Castle, many Roman cremation burials have been found
(p. 78). A hard metalled road, only 4. ft. deep, some
ditches and the piers of a bridge were also discovered here by
Pillbrow (Arch. xliii, 158). They belong almost
certainly to the medieval castle which Hasted describes (iv,
408, note, and 410) in language well suited to Pilibrow’s
facts. But one piece of ‘hard concreted wall with courses of
Roman bonding tiles’ detected by him is Roman work, unless
possibly it is copied from a Roman pattern. It occurred close
to Worth Gate, where Castle Street intersects the line of the
medieval ramparts and, if Roman, helps to fix the line of the
Roman town wall. The Church of St. Mildred, behind the Castle,
probably older than the Conquest, but has no claim to he
regarded as Roman work.
(14) At the very end of Castle Street stood the
now vanished arch of Worth Gate, piercing the city walls. This
gateway is ancient. Apparently a road here passed through the
city wall before |