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and Arcadius have been picked up by the
gardeners. Although no Roman structures have been recorded
within the area, there can be little doubt that the inclosure,
whatever its purpose—whether a fortified village or a large
posting-station—dates from Roman times.
But the most ample evidences of Roman occupation
in this vicinity have been recovered in recent years. Since
1913 nine sites in the neighbourhood of Ospringe and Judd’s
Hill have yielded more or less extensive Roman remains. These
sites are marked A to K on the map, Fig.17.
In 1913, in a gravel pit at site A, about 700 yds. west of
Syndale Camp, six Roman cremation-burials with pottery dating
from about 70 to 110 A.D. were found and carefully preserved.81
At site B, about 120 yds. north-west of the front door
of Syndale House, a 1st-century Samian plate of form 15 was
found on the edge of the embankment of the earthwork; whilst C
indicates the spot where the alteration of the line of the
road in the 19th century led to the discovery of Roman
remains. At D, about 700 yds. east of the earthwork and about
8 yds. east-north-east from the 46th milestone (from London)
on the main road, a further group of more than twenty
cremation-burials was found within a space of about 20 ft. by
30 ft., and the pottery with them seems to have dated from the
2nd and early 3rd centuries (P1. XIV, No. 2; see also XIII,
No.1).82
In the following year, about 285 yds. west of
this spot (E on plan), further burials of about the same date
were located 83 and in 1922—3 excavations were
carried out at the spot marked F, where several cremation and
two or three inhumation burials were found. In the following
year considerably more than 172 cremation burials and 74
inhumation burials were carefully unearthed by the Society of
Antiquaries, and these with many of the previous finds are now
preserved in the Maison Dieu at Ospringe. A long trench was
also dug within the park at G, and two others at H, where a
rubbish heap containing potsherds of the 1st to 3rd centuries
A.D., pieces of burnt wattle— and-daub, a coin of Commodus,
and many animal bones were found. Lastly, in the vicinity of
the Saxon and medieval chapel of Stone, to the north-west of
Syndale House, a hearth and chalk walling, found by Colonel
Hawley in 1926, seem to represent Roman cottages alongside the
Watling Street.
Regarded as a whole, these various relics
obviously represent a considerable, if straggling, population,
centring, perhaps, on the earthwork at Syndale House, but
extending far both to the east and the west of this spot. The
backbone of the settlement must have been the Watling Street,
alongside of which lay extensive cemeteries for a distance of
half a mile or more to the west of Ospringe. The chronological
limits of the occupation are not very clearly defined, but
there is sufficient evidence to show that it was already
fairly extensive in the Flavian period and lasted to the end
of the 4th century.84 The presence of a
great Jutish cemetery associated with Roman remains in
Kingsfield, immediately to the east of Ospringe,85 may
be thought to indicate something of a continuity of occupation
in early post-Roman times, such as has been suspected at
Frilford in Berkshire and on three or four other Roman and
Saxon sites.
81 Arch Cant.
xxxi, 284; xxxix, 38.
82 Ibid. xxxv, 1 ; 65. 83
Ibid. xxxvi, 74.
84 The rather scanty coin-lists
begin with one of Claudius and end with two of Arcadius. See
especially Arch. Cant. ix, lxxii, and xli, 197.
85 Reliquary, iii, 141; Arch.
Cant. i, 42 ; ii, 22. C. R. Smith, Anglo-Saxon
and other Antiquities found at Faversham and bequeathed to the
S. Kensington Museum |