WINGHAM was certainly a place of importance in early times; several roads converge into it. It was near or on the Roman road from Richborough to Canterbury, during the period of the Roman occupation of Britain; and at a later period, when Sandwich rose into importance, Wingham formed a half-way resting-place between it and Canterbury. At Domesday Wingham gave the name to the Hundred, which also contained the parishes of Ash, Goodnestone, Nonington, and part of Womenswold. Mr. J. B. Sheppard some years ago had discovered a roadway of faggots, leading across the Marsh to Little Briton, and constituting part of the road from Richborough to Canterbury. To the south-east, the road from Staple to Wingham passes by the Saxon burial-place at Witherden Hall, opened by Lord Londesborough and the late Mr. Ackerman. To the north-east, lay the Roman burial-place I discovered at 

Dearson, described in the twelfth volume of Archaeologia Cantiana. Hasted mentions that in 1710, "behind Wingham Court, in a field called the Vineyard, the tenant of the Court-lodge farm, being at plough on his lands, observed the plough to strike on something hard, and found it to be a chest or coffin of large thick stones joined together, and covered with one on the top. The stones were about four feet in length, two in breadth, and four in thickness. It was about a foot deep; at the bottom were some black ashes, but nothing else in it; the place round about was searched, but nothing whatever was found." * Such another was found near Goshall, in Ash, not long before. †
These coffins were in all probability Roman. It has
   * Hasted's History of Kent, folio edition, vol. iii., p. 700.
    † Harris's History of Kent, p. 335.