During a watching brief undertaken within the churchyard of St Nicholas Church in New Romney for the excavation of drainage trenches and soakaway pits, a collection of floor tile fragments were retrieved from the graveyard soils abutting the chancels east wall foundation. Closer inspection of the walling on the chancels east wall and the north aisle’s north wall revealed more fragments of broken floor tiles reused within the fabric. After cleaning and further examination of these tile fragments it soon became clear that some of the fragments, despite them all being glazed on their upper surface, had incised decoration highlighted in different colours. These clearly conform to a style of floor tile known as ‘Clowes Wood’ type tile, named after its location in the forest of Blean where fragments of roof and floor tile and burnt kiln waste material had been recovered in 1967 and 1997.

The two most complete pieces of tile clearly represent two different styles of flooring due to the incised design on each fragment of tile. On tile has a deep red background with the top of the head of a bird with a striking representation of its eye in a paler yellow slip, whilst the other has a mid green-brown background with two opposing unequal curving arches also highlighted in a paler slip, possibly representing a floral pattern or forming part of a multi tile geometric design. Until the discovery of these tile fragments, Clowes Wood tiles were only known from three other sites, all in east Kent. Two of these sites situated in Canterbury while the third was from Faversham abbey. In all of these sites the tiles are generally recovered from contexts dating between 1165 and 1185 which falls during the period of major re-embellishment work at St Nicholas’s Church. (1)

<1> Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 2005, An archaeological watching brief during groundworks associated with the construction of new drainage trenching and two new soakaway pits in the churchyard of St. Nicholas Church, New Romney, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE15822.