During a small open area excavation carried out by Kent Archaeological Projects at District Park Manston,a medieval pit was uncovered. The pit was sub circular and had an average diameter of 1.45m and a maximum depth of 0.84m. The investigation showed the pit to be bowl-shaped in section, partly undercut on one side and to contain three fills. Its basal and primary fill was 0.11m thick and comprised dark brown-grey humic fine sandy silt fill with frequent flint and fragmented chalk inclusions, the latter almost certainly resulting from erosional collapse from the pit’s chalk sides. An overlying, 0.14m-thick layer was a clast-supported deposit, the matrix consisting of fine grey clay-silt and the clasts consisting mostly of winkle shells, although considerable numbers of limpet shells were also present. A piece of much-rusted cast iron, possibly a rim fragment from a cauldron-like vessel, was also recovered from this deposit this helps to date the feature as ‘Large-scale introduction of cast iron in Europe did not occur until approximately 1200 to 1450 A.D. [Stefanscu 2018]. The presence of over four kilos of winkle and limpet shells in this feature suggests that such shellfish comprised, at least at certain periods, an important and major part of the diet of the inhabitants in the immediate area. It is unlikely that winkles were eaten in such quantities out of anything other than necessity, and even more unlikely that limpets were eaten except in the absence of another, more easily digested sources of protein. The presence in the pit of winkle and limpet shells in such quantities therefore represents strong evidence of adaption, in extremis, to a severe reduction in other sources of food (probably during the winter months), in what was effectively a subsistence agricultural economy. The overlying deposit of dark-brown, moderately humic clay-silt contained occasional small fragments of much-eroded animal bone along with fragments of scorched daub and charcoal, all interpreted as waste materials deposited in a rubbish pit which, given its bowl-like profile, may have originated as a storage pit. It also produced a hard-fired, dark-grey, heavily mica-dusted potsherd of generic early-to-mid medieval type, indicating that this feature probable dated to that broad period. A total of nine red-orange scorched daub fragments, along with many crumbs, all sparsely tempered with finely crushed chalk, were recovered from this deposit, some of the fragments containing occasional narrow semi-cylindrical fragments of carbonised wood. These materials were interpreted with some confidence as the remains of a clay-built oven, kiln or furnace, with the rod-like carbonised wood fragments probably being the remains of the wooden framework around which the clay structure was originally built (1-2) (information summarised from source)

<1> Kent Archaeological Projects, 2023, Archaeological Investigation Area 1, District Park, Manston Road, Margate, Kent Ct9 4lz (Unpublished document). SKE56956.

<2> Kent Archaeological Projects, 2023, Report of an archaeological investigation by open-area excavation prior to development on the site of Area 1, District Park, Manston Road, Margate, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE56398.