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(26) The
north-eastern and eastern suburbs of Canterbury, from the
Stour to the Dover Road, are full of Roman remains. Three
Roman roads leave the town on this side, for Reculver,
Richborough and Dover, and extensive cemeteries have been
traced near them. But here again definitely Roman remains,
other than sepulchral, are rare. Pillbrow records Samian
potsherds from the medieval city-ditch in Broad Street and
Brent from Ivy Lane; a gold and onyx ring, engraved with a
head, was found some time ago in the precincts of St.
Augustine’s College (Cant. Olden Time, 31); whilst
much Roman pottery and metal objects have been found in recent
years during the excavation of St. Augustine’s Abbey. Here
also, under the western alley of the Norman cloister, near its
southern end, were found in 1929 part of a clay kiln and a
small circular furnace for smelting bronze, in association
apparently with late 1st-century pottery (p. 129). In 1922 a
fragment of a Roman tombstone (Journ. Rom. Studies, xvii,
214) was found outside the Great Gate of the Abbey, bearing
the letters—
[D] M
. . ERNA
. . . XIV
Opposite the same gateway, in 1868, was found a large brooch
of an early Romano-Gaulish type, according to Brent with marks
of red enamel on it (Cant. Olden Time, 46, plate x (i);
Proc. Soc. Antiq. vi, 377; C. R. Smith, Coll.
Antiq. vii, 203, pl. misdating it). This and an ‘old
foundation,’ potsherds, bones, glass bead, spearhead, pin
and ring found by Pillbrow 8 ft. under Lady Wootton’s Green (Arch.
xliii, 161) might also belong to Roman burials. The rest
are unsatisfactory. The ‘hollows or pipes carried along in
the thickness of an old stone wall, for heating rooms,’
found near St. Radegund’s Bath just outside the city wall (Gostling’s
Walks in Cant. (1774), 20, hence later writers), may
well be medieval. The 100 ft. of iron slag in Ivy Lane, the
quern ‘of peculiar form and material’ from Northgate, the
rubbish pits and gilt spoon in Love Lane, all found by
Pillbrow (Arch. xliii, 153, 160), are likely to be
post-Roman.
(27) The chapel or church of St. Pancras, though
in great part built of Roman material in rather unusually
close imitation of Roman style, is now accepted as post-Roman
work. The large amount of Roman brick, nearly all broken, but
with Roman mortar adhering to some of it, may suggest that a
Roman building stood here, and Canon Robertson noted, deep
under the south ‘porticus,’ some fragments of Roman
pottery (Arch. Cant. xiv, 106). But the building which
supplied the brick for St. Pancras must have been extensive,
and, though the site has been excavated, no trace has yet been
detected in—or, indeed, near—it of the foundations, or of
the smaller remains, suitable to extensive buildings. On the
other hand, there is no difficulty in supposing the bricks to
have been brought from Roman buildings in the town.
(28) A similar but harder problem arises 250 yds.
further east, in connexion with St. Martin’s Church. This
well-known structure existed (as Bede tells us, Hist.
Eccles. i, 25, 26) in the time of Augustine (A.D. 597) and
was, indeed, used by Bercta, wife of Ethelbert, and her bishop
Luidhard before Augustine landed. It was, Bede adds, built
during the Roman occupation of Britain. We can easily credit
the statement that the church existed before A.D. 600. The
fabric visible to-day contains elements, as all observers
admit, which may well be as old as that, and a few Saxon
objects Of suitable date have been dug up near it. The
ascription of a Roman origin is another affair. Bede’s
statement is plainly guess or tradition, and we must turn to
the church itself. Here opinion is violently divided. The late
Sir William Hope strenuously upheld the Roman theory; the late
Mr. Micklethwaite, Prof. Baldwin Brown, Mr. A. W. Clapham, and
most recent writers think the church a post-Roman erection
built out of Roman materials. The facts bearing on the
question are unfortunately few. The structure contains two
distinct elements which have been judged Roman. One is the
regular brickwork in the western half of the chancel, which
resembles that of St. Pancras, but is said to contain fewer
broken bricks (Arch. Cant. xxii, 24), and which, if not
Roman building, is very like it. If, however, we accept St.
Pancras as post-Roman, we may well assign St. Martin’s
Church to the same age. The other and more important element
is the nave. This exhibits four Roman features, two in the
walls and two in the windows. The walls show a rough
approximation to Roman bonding-courses, and are plastered with
a red cement containing pounded brick, such as was used by the
Romans. The two splayed windows in the west wall— built with
chalk jambs, and round heads turned in ragstone and
tile—have their voussoirs constructed alternately of tiles
and of blocks of whitish stone and cemented with pink mortar,
although the fabric as a whole (including the window jambs)
has white mortar. Both the alternation of light and dark
voussoirs16a and the use of pink mortar at
windows, etc., as if for decoration, are features of Roman
16a The facts about this trick
of building have been ill-recognized by antiquaries, and it
may be worth while to gather them in a footnote. It is not
uncommon in Roman work, both in Italy and outside it. Perhaps
it was first adopted for structural reasons, but its principal
later use seems ornamental. It occurs at Pompeii (house of
Popidius Secundus, Durm Baustile, fig. 257), and Dr.
Ashby reports of another early instance, (continued page 75) |