In 1994 a watching brief was done on the pipeline for the Herne Bay Water Treatment. At Site 9, 18 pits, 6 ditches and 6 post holes were observed. Many of the ditches were thought to be Roman, being superimposed upon an Early Iron Age enclosure, after a suggested hiatus on the site between the Middle Iron Age and the Romans. (1)

Between 2021-2023, two evaluations and an excavation were carried out on land at Hillborough, Herne Bay. These identified evidence for a late Iron Age/Roman pit and an adult cremation burial within a Roman amphora at the site, alongside an area for the burning of either domestic or industrial
crop processing waste. The Roman cremation burial was interred within a vessel thought originally to have been used to transport olive oil, originating from southern Spain.
Two Roman ditches were identified slightly north of these features. One of the ditches was a major field boundary ditch which had truncated an earlier Iron Age ditch (TR 26 NW 219), suggesting that earlier field boundaries may have been reused into this period.

Deposits of burnt crop processing material were identified dating to the late prehistoric/Roman periods. Environmental analysis suggested that emmer and spelt wheat chaff, barley, silicified glume wheat beaks, and wheat/rye/barley awn fragments were present within the assemblage. A small assemblage of animal remains was identified at the site, including a cattle molar.

Earlier features at the site dated from the Neolithic (TR 26 NW 1237) and Bronze Age and Iron Age periods (TR 25 NW 219) and later features dated from the medieval period (TR 26 NW 1236). Undated features such as pits and post-holes were also identified at the site. (3)

<1> Andrew Hutcheson, 1994, An Interim Report on the Archaeology of the Herne Bay Water Treatment Pipeline (Unpublished document). SKE17251.

<2> Andrew Hutcheson, 1994, An Interim Report on the Archaeology of the Herne Bay Water Treatment Pipeline (Unpublished document). SKE17453.

<3> Cotswold Archaeology, 2024, Land At Hillborough, Herne Bay, Phase 2 Archaeological Evaluation (Unpublished document). SKE56912.