Hasted¹ was perhaps a late persistence of its name. It can surely be none other than the settlement which on archaeological evidence is known to have existed near Old King's Farm on the riverward slopes of a spread of gravel in the neighbourhood of the modern Hoo Junction. In the gravel workings have been found many relics of Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, Roman and Saxon occupation, and in particular a small but well-furnished Saxon cemetery.² This cemetery and another 2¼ miles north-eastwards³ can be dated by their grave-goods in the early part of the sixth century. No one would begin to suggest that there was a continued occupation of the site from the days of the early cemeteries, which probably represent at the best a temporary rather than a prolonged residence, until the grant to Canterbury, but the prominent geographical advantages of the site must always have appealed quickly to any people who made a landfall on the southern side of the Thames.
   There are still many problems to be solved in the early history of this piece of riverside country, and it is in the hope that someone may be led to undertake the necessary field and library work that these notes are published. The roadways have already received attention

in past years.⁴  The Causeway to the important ferry at Higham, by which travellers came to the famous Councils of Hoo and by which the people of Higham went to their marshlands in Essex, is but little known apart from one tantalising reference in the Crown Pleas for the Hundred of Shamele, 21 Ed. I., and the small piece of its course yet remaining. A complete study of the Saxon land charters of the Hundred of Hoo would amply repay the long time which would need to be spent upon it. As a footnote it may be added that the large mound known as Barrow Hill is a naturally weathered mass of Thanet Sand. It was dug into in the lifetime of Mr. George Payne, and the scars of his excavation may still be seen.
   (I should like to express my best thanks to Dr. Gordon Ward for help in preparing this note, and for so readily giving me access to his own MSS. when my own notebooks and library had been destroyed.)
  ¹ Hasted, op. cit., III, 444.
   ²  Arch. Cant., XXIII (1898), 22; XXVIII (1909), xc-xcii; Jessup, Arch. Kent. (1930), 257.
   ³  Arch. Cant., XIII (1880), 562.
   ⁴  Arch. Cant., XIII (1880), 494; XXIV (1900), 90.