Summary
A rectilinear enclosure, ring ditches, linear ditches and pits, 132m north-west of Greensleeves
Reasons for Designation
The rectilinear enclosure, ring ditches, linear ditches and pits are considered to be the remains of a multi-period site with round houses, a Roman villa and Anglo-Saxon settlement. On modern arable sites, where cultivation has taken place, the earthworks of archaeological monuments are sometimes levelled or the ditches in-filled and can instead be identified as crop and soil marks. These occur due to differential crop growth (crop marks) or differences in soil colour (soil marks) as a result of buried archaeological features. Where these have been excavated, they are often shown to contain significant archaeological remains and deposits surviving below the modern ground level.
A round house is a circular building, usually of domestic function, and generally prehistoric or Roman in origin. It is normally indicated by one or more rings of post holes and/or a circular gulley and was usually of timber construction with a thatched roof.
Romano-British villas were extensive rural estates at the focus of which were groups of domestic, agricultural and occasionally industrial buildings. The term "villa" is now commonly used to describe either the estate or the buildings themselves. The buildings usually include a well-appointed dwelling house, the design of which varies considerably according to the needs, taste and prosperity of the occupier. Most of the houses were partly or wholly stone-built, many with a timber-framed superstructure on masonry footings. Roofs were generally tiled and the house could feature tiled or mosaic floors, underfloor heating, wall plaster, glazed windows and cellars. The house was usually accompanied by a range of buildings providing accommodation for farm labourers, workshops and storage for agricultural produce. These were arranged around or alongside a courtyard and were surrounded by a complex of paddocks, pens, yards and features such as vegetable plots, granaries, threshing floors, wells and hearths, all approached by tracks leading from the surrounding fields. Villa buildings were constructed throughout the period of Roman occupation, from the first to the fourth centuries AD.
Anglo-Saxon settlement can sometimes include re-occupation on earlier villa sites. The associated remains can include building foundations, post-holes, stake-holes, pits, metalled paths or trackways, and ditches marking the sites of buildings, boundaries, refuse dumps and other features. These are found with Anglo-Saxon artefacts and material remains, such as pottery, which provide valuable dating evidence.
Despite cultivation on the site in the past, the rectilinear enclosure, ring ditches, linear ditches and pits 132m north-west of Greensleeves survive well as crop marks. The site has not been excavated and retains potential for further archaeological investigation, which will provide information regarding the exact nature of the archaeological remains. It will contain archaeological information and environmental evidence relating to the settlement and the landscape in which it was constructed.
History
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Details
This record was the subject of a minor enhancement on 19 June 2014. The record has been generated from an "old county number" (OCN) scheduling record. These are monuments that were not reviewed under the Monuments Protection Programme and are some of our oldest designation records.
The monument includes a rectilinear enclosure, ring ditches, linear ditches and pits surviving as buried remains. It is situated on gently sloping ground near Dane Court Gardens, west of Broadstairs.
The features which have been recorded as crop marks represent the surviving ditches of a Romano-British and Iron Age settlement complex possibly used into the Anglo-Saxon period. On the west side of the site is a double ring ditch about 21.5m in diameter with a causeway entrance on the south-east side. About 30m to the north-east is another ring ditch, about 15m in diameter. On the east side of the site is a rectilinear enclosure, delineated by a buried ditch. It is orientated ENE to WSW and is about 46m long by 41.5m wide. There is an entrance, evident by a 15m break in the ditch, at the east corner. Two further rectilinear enclosures are situated immediately to the north-east of the site but are not included in the scheduling. A number of linear features, generally on an ENE to WSW orientation, cross the site. There are also several concentrations of pits and post holes. These are most notable at the entrance to the rectilinear enclosure, where they are arranged in a series of three concentric rings. It has been suggested that some of the crop marks are indicative of later Anglo-Saxon occupation. The site is located near to, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, about 500m to the north.
The site was recorded as part of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) Kent Mapping Project carried out in 1986-7. This produced 1:10,000 scale depictions of crop marks identified on oblique and vertical aerial photographs taken across Kent.
Further archaeological remains, including ring ditches and rectilinear enclosures, survive in the vicinity of this site but are not included because they have not been formally assessed.
