Monument record TR 04 NW 239 - Roman industrial building and Anglo-Saxon building to the east of Harville Road, Wye

The Roman building was part excavated following geophysical survey. Survival of the Roman building was good with stone walls, an oven, areas of sandy gravel floors all covered by a layer of collapsed Kentish Ragstone. Cutting through the collapsed strata were cill beam slots, sitting on a different alignment likely for a timber building. The pottery identified from this context dates to the 5th-6th century AD.

The structure measured 32m in length by 10.5m in width, and the collapsed walls indicates they may have had a height of 2.5m for the outer walls. The south wall of Roman building was built of flint nodules which were set in an off-white mortar and had small well-rounded gravel inclusions. This wall measured around 16m in width and continued to the south east, so the full extent was not exposed.

A Roman external room overlaid the route of a leat. Investigations into the leat revealed the presence of a Roman waterway measuring around 3.50m wide and 2m deep. The waterway was not fully excavated. The building was sited on bedrock geology of Gault Formation-Cretaceous Mudstone. The geology revealed during the 2019 excavations comprised loamy and clayey floodplain soils.

At the northern end of the trench, the internal and external N-S walls were revealed as well as the internal sand floor. Running N-S but a different angle was a cill beam slot which measured 23m x0.40m inside the Roman building, this building dates to the Early Saxon period based on the pottery excavated. (1)

<1> Kent Archaeological Field School, 2024, Excavation of a Roman Industrial Building to the east of Harville Road, Wye, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE55935.