Monument record TQ 67 SW 1417 - 'Property 10' including blacksmiths workshop at Roman settlement, Springhead

Excavations in advance of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2002-3 identified a number of property boundaries west of the Ebbsfleet. This is Property 10. The property lay immediately south of the junction of Watling Street and the branch road. As elsewhere the earliest feature was the road-side ditch, cut in one phase and probably silted up by c. AD 75. Shortly after this the area was occupied by a smithy. To the south-east was a structure (c.9m x 5m), possibly open-sided while to the west were a number of pits, one of which contained a large pot and may have been a quenching pit for the smithy, a sequence of metalled surfaces and spreads of iron-working slag. Based on coin and pottery evidence the smithy spanned the late 1st century and early 2nd. (1)

A leaded brass Colchester brooch was found in layer 16039 and a leaded brass Hod Hill brooch nearby (2).

<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.

<2> Oxford Wessex Archaeology Joint Venture, 2011, Settling the Ebbsfleet Valley. CTRL Excavations at Springhead and Northfleet, Kent. Volume 2: Late Iron Age to Roman Finds Reports (Monograph). SKE32435.