Excavations in advance of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2002-3 identified a two brickearth quarries within property 12 of the Roman roadside settlement at Springhead. Aside form the road and its associated ditches these quarries were the earliest features identified within this property. One of the quarried straddled the boundary between properties 11 and 12 and measured approximately 25m by 15m. The other was only partially exposed in the corner of the site and its extent is unknown. Both quarries were irregular in plan and comprised a series of flat-bottomed pits, most 1.2–1.5 m deep. It is likely that they both date to the second half of the first century AD as both were filled with large quantities of domestic debris which appears to have been deposited from the later 1st century through into the earlier part of the 3rd century. (1)

<1> Oxford Wessex Archaeology Joint Venture, 2010, Settling the Ebbsfleet Valley. CTRL Excavations at Springhead and Northfleet, Kent. The Late Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, and Medieval Landscape (Monograph). SKE31245.