Foundation trenches were mechanically excavated for residential accomodation, built by Wiltshiers on behalf of Canterbury City Council. The site, located on the corner of London Road and Prince's Way, was formerly Westgate Court Farm. The work was undertaken in March and April 1982 and the site code was WCF82.

After an initial part-time watching brief, a full-time watching brief was established, with monitoring of the excavations and checking of discarded soil before it was transported off site. Salvage archaeological work was undertaken during this period.

Fifty-three Roman cremation burials and a number of early Saxon artefacts, including a very fine gold pendant, were discovered. The burials (many recovered from the foundation trenches but also from the discarded soil and even the bucket of the mechanical excavator) dated from the mid 1st to mid 3rd centuries AD.

A well-defined buried Roman soil horizon (never more than 0.05m in depth) was also noted in most of the foundation trenches, and a number of features that cut through this soil horizon were observed and recorded, which were considered to be possibly associated with the use of the area as a cemetery. These features included a small pit, a large shallow depresssion containing carbon and burnt clay (interpreted as a possible ustrinum), a large V-shaped ditch (interpreted as a major boundary within the cemetery), and a very large deep pit (interpreted as a possible clay quarry).

The Saxon artefacts (apart from a single sherd of Saxon pottery recovered from the possible Roman clay quarry described above), features and two burials were located at the west end of the site. Two features observed and recorded were the remains of a shallow pit containing a thick deposit of carbon and burnt clay (a sceatta, dated to c AD 690-725, was found within the deposit of carbon), and a shallow 'grave-shaped' cutting, backfilled with redeposited brickearth. A very fine early 7th century AD gold pendant was found lying on the bottom of this latter feature in two pieces. The burials were one possible Saxon burial, the above possible 'grave-shaped' cutting and one inhumation burial of an adult male, possibly contained originally within a wooden coffin. The burials were considered to be possibly part of an early Saxon secular cemetery that was located as an annexe to the Roman cemetery described above.

Frere, S., Bennett, P., Rady, J., Stow, S., 1987, Excavations Intra- and Extra-mural Sites 1949-55 and 1980-84 (Monograph). SKE29800.