Reviews

REVIEWS The Lullingstone Roman Villa: Vol. I - The Site. By Lt.-Col. G.W. Meates. 22 x 28 cm.Pp. 220, 35 figures and 30 plates (2 in colour). No. 1 in the Monograph Series of the Kent Archaeological Society, Maidstone, 1979. (£18.00). In 1955 Colonel Meates set a new standard for British archaeology in what the French call haute vulgarisation (the term is hardly translatable) with the publication of Lullingstone Roman Villa. Several other archaeologists have since followed him - notable examples include George Boon with Roman Silchester (1957, with a revised edition in 1974), Barry Cunliffe with Fishbourne, a Roman Palace and its Garden and Roman Bath Discovered (both 1971), and Lesley Alcock with By South Cadbury is that Camelot . .. (1972) - and it is doubtful whether the commercial publishers of these would have chanced their arm if Meates (and, to their credit, Heinemann) had not first established the market. Each of them, in varying proportions, offered not only a popular account of the results but also some explanation of the methods of archaeological excavation, and were thus doubly educative, but in no case would the author claim them to be an adequate substitute for full excavation reports. It is, therefore, an excellent thing that we have here the first volume of the definitive account of Lullingstone. The finds, including the celebrated wall-paintings, are relegated to a second volume, still to appear, though the mosaics are discussed, and illustrated in colour, here. The book begins with a list of acknowledgements (rather saddening for the older reader: John H. Evans, Richard Goodchild, Eric Birchenough, Cregoe Nicholson, R.J. Rook, Frederick Zeuner, all are gone, and so also is the ebullient Michael B. Cookson, whose photographic survey of the mosaics is duly noted on p. 75), followed by an Introduction and Summary, complete with a 'Table of Events.' Thereafter each area of the site is dealt with in order - 'The Northern Group', 'The Central Unit', 'The Auxiliary Structures' (including both the external kitchen and tannery and the baths attached to the main house) and finally 'Exterior Buildings'. 417 REVIEWS This fractional arrangement has some obvious advantages for description, but there are disadvantages, too, and it tends sometimes to obscure the development of the establishment as a whole; it is also unfortunate that one has to seek out figure 6, on p. 138, to discover the numbering of the rooms (it should appear at the beginning). There is, however, a final note (p. 137, oddly omitted from the 'List of Contents') on the importance and significance of the villa and an index. For the grateful owner of the earlier work the chief interest must lie in what has been added and what has been changed. Among the additions the most important are the descriptions of the painting of the nymphs, the external kitchen and tannery, and, above all the circular shrine and temple-mausoleum, of which the fullest account hitherto has been that contained in the site guide. The treatment of the tannery is especially good, with informative notes on the processes involved, but curiously with only one reference to analogous structures elsewhere. A somewhat similar criticism can be made of the account of the temple-mausoleum: the excavation report for Arbury Road, Cambridge, is cited, but the more relevant cases of Minusio and Weiden-bei-Koln are undocumented and even the Tempelbezirk at Trier is accorded only a secondhand reference (to Lewis: Temples in Roman Britain, as one discovers with some difficulty: more editorial control might have been exercised here - it should not be necessary to search back 72 pages to find the title of the book referred to!) Above all, it is regrettable that we are not told more about the overlying Saxon(?) church: the possible significance of its orientation, with a hint of some sort of continuity, is noticed on p. 123, but the matter is not pursued and even the eighteenth-century woodcut is not brought forward from the 1955 book. At the other end of the chronological scale, it is equally unfortunate that, through no fault of the excavator, the pre-Roman occupation of the site was not more fully determined nor the ditch referred to on p. 19 further explored. For changes one inevitably looks first to the chronological 'Table of Events.' There is little alteration here and 'abandonment' is still postulated for the 80 years (two or three generations) from c. A.D.200 to c. A.D.280, and 'dereliction' from c. A.D.220. With the detailed study ( and re-appraisal) of the pottery still to come in Volume II it is, of course, impossible to assess the validity of this,' but some doubt might be allowed. In the 1950s such desertion was taken almost as a matter of course, but more recent research elsewhere ( and as near as Ewhurst in Surrey, or even Eccles in Kent itself) has cast doubt on many earlier examples; there are also those worn coins of Severus Alexander and Julia Maesa from Room 10- 418 REVIEWS but again we must await the full numismatic report in Volume II and its assessment of the probabilities of survival. Nor has the predicated sociology changed, and this raises difficult questions - not only how one would distinguish between a 'Roman' (however one interprets that slippery term) and a Briton of the curial class after a century of romanisation, but also what 'Roman official' (in what office and of what rank?) would settle in a British villa for twenty years? It has to be remembered that the idea that the marble busts were already in Lullingstone in the second century (when they were certainly made) is, although it has had some support from so eminent an authority as Professor Jocelyn Toynbee, still an hypothesis - and that Britain was sometimes a place of exile from the Mediterranean world. The story given may be true, but it is not suffiiently firmly established for it to be used to support similar conclusions elsewhere - nor in reconstructing the sociology of Roman Britain in the late second century: only inscriptions could do this. These minor criticisms must not be allowed to obscure the overall value of the work: Lullingstone remains one of the best excavated villas in Britain and Colonel Meates should be well pleased with his achievement. We look forward eagerly to the appearance of the second volume. A.L.F. RIVET Bibliotheca Cantiana or Antiquarian Kentish Books, vol. 1. 22.5 x 14.5 cm. Pp xx + 340 + 20 (index). John Hallewell Publications, Chatham, 1980. £20. John Hallewell Publications have entered on a truly major project - the concept of a series of volumes comprising a complete and up-to-date bibliography of Kentish writings. This first volume is a reprint of John Russell Smith's original 1837 volume; and, even allowing for the limitation of date, the sheer size of the task, which he set himself, is staggering. In this one volume, Smith prepared a text embracing both County-wide and purely local histories, pamphlet material and articles in journals, and also gave some indication of the principal accumulations of original sources known to him. Much of this information is as valid today as it was in 1837 and, used together with the index volumes of Arch. Cant., already provides a vast resource for the published documentation of Kent. The price, regrettably, is high; a fact, which may well limit sales to institutions rather than individuals, but the reprint is to be warmly welcomed. If, indeed, the publishers can carry out their full intention, 419 REVIEWS they will be rightly regarded by all concerned with the history of this County as public benefactors. The volume is welJ produced and the reprint clear, but it may be regretted that a brief introduction regarding Russell Smith's work and explaining the plans for the future was not incorporated. To leave this entirely to the dust-jacket is to fail to capitalise on the possible impact of the scheme. F. HULL The City Gates of Canterbury. By Christopher Buckingham. Pp. 30, 2 figs., 7 pls. Thomas Becket Books, Whitstable, 1980. (N.p.) This is a useful little book, which, as the author points out in the Foreword, is only the second book to be published on the City Gates of Canterbury. Its forerunner, 'The Vanished Gates of the City of Canterbury' by the Revd. B. Austen was published in 1900, and is, of course, long out of print. The book itself is brief and divided into an introduction followed by expanded notes on each of the seven main gates of the City (Worthgate, Wincheap Gate, Ridingate, St. George's or Newingate, Burgate or St. Michael's Gate, Northgate and Westgate). Accompanying each section is an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century print of the gates as they were; these prints have previously been published by Christopher Buckingham as post-cards, which can still be obtained in a few shops. The only other illustrations are two drawings by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust of the Roman Queningate and a general plan of the City in 1500, which are rather faintly reproduced. As a summary of the main facts that are known about the gates and as an explosion of myths (like the Westgate and the elephant story), the booklet is extremely useful and full references are given at the end. The only comments that the present writer would like to add are that by far the most likely origin for the name Ridingate is the Anglo-Saxon word for cattle (the cattle market was close by the gate from the late Saxon period until 1958), and secondly that the Newingate was certainly not a Roman gate; it was probably a 'New Gate' in the tenth century. TIM TATTON-BROWN 420 REVIEWS The Alice Holt/Farnham Roman Pottery Industry. By M.A.B. Lyne and R.S. Jefferies. 21 x 30 cm. Pp. 77. 53 Figs. Council for British Archaeology Research Report No. 30, (London), 1979. £8.50 (limp). Ceramic studies in the last quarter of a century since the CBA Oxford conference in 1972 and the publication within a year of Current Research in Romano-British Coarse Pottery have made enormous advances .as witness several recent studies, and in this the Council for British Archaeology and British Archaeological Reports have played an important part. Now comes CBA 30 which, in the words of its authors, 'sets out to reappraise previous work as well as give an account of . . . more recent activities in an attempt to produce a comprehensive survey of the Alice Holt/Farnham potteries.' This report is a very welcome addition to Fulford's New Forest Roman Pottery (BAR 17) and Y oung's The Roman Pottery Industry of the Oxford Region (BAR 43), to mention the more specialised studies in the recent literature. For it is precisely such studies of regional production centres, which marketed their pottery widely in Roman Britain, that have greatly aided not only the dating of sites where such pottery has been found, but also in bringing about some understanding of patterns of trade and distribution. The present volume deals in separate sections with the kilns and their technology, the exploitation o f raw materials, the distribution and the chronology of the Alice Holt/Farnham pottery. Perhaps most important is the publication in one single volume of a fully illustrated series of pottery types which will save excavators and pottery specialists alike many hours of laborious search in past excavation reports; for this alone, the authors amply. deserve our grateful appreciation. The gazetteer of sites is particularly useful, too, though additions to it are bound to be made. This slim volume appears perhaps a little too highly priced for an unbound issue, particularly when compared with commercial publications, but this is clearly a reflection of the present-day high costs of short runs. A.P. DETSICAS 421 REVIEWS Prelude to the Civil War, 1642: Mr. Justice Malet and the Kentish Petitions. By T.P.S. Woods. 24.5 x 16 cm. Pp.xi + 119 + 102 (appendices, notes, bibliography and index), 9 illus. Michael Russell (Publishing) Ltd., Wilton (1980). £8. 95. Professor Ivan Roots in his introduction to this volume wrote: 'I commend this learned, elegant book without cavill to everyone, serious student or general reader, for whom the Stuart period has its own compelling appeal'; and how right he was! This is indeed a book of distinction, beautifully printed and produced, well written and of masterly scholarship. For anyone venturing for the first time into the field of biographical or historical writing it is a model: learned, yet never tendentious; superlatively documented, yet never turgid. It is indeed a book to be read, studied and enjoyed. Yet, especially for the student of Kentish history, it is a curiously unsatisfactory book and while we should have been much the poorer without it, there is a sense' in which it is not the book which should have been written. The late Tom Woods, for regrettably he died before publication, lived at Poyntington, the Somerset home of Thomas Malet and, understandably, became interested in the famous owner of that house. He started, therefore, to produce a biography of his hero - a task, which could have resulted in a modest monograph, but for the fact that Malet was the judge concerned with the Kent Assizes of 1642 and therefore became implicated in the famous petition of March of that year, and still more involved in the activities at the July Assizes. As a result, the biography becomes lost in the complex political manoeuverings of that year and more than half of the brief text of 119 pages is almost wholly devoted to Kentish affairs; to the forming of petitions and to the consequences of such action. In this the author reveals his skill as a researcher and his painstaking efforts to produce a coherent, factual story are richly rewarded - yet, inevitably, the result is less than wholly satisfying. By devoting much attention to Kent, Malet is lost; though, because of the primary biographical purpose, the Kentish picture is incomplete. That is not intended as destructive criticism, for what we are given is a lucid, carefully documented account of those difficult days, as well as as full an account of Malet's life as could probably be produced. In addition Major Woods provides appendices comprising the texts of the petitions of March and July, 1642, and of the royal charge of the latter date, as well as an analysis of the attendances and voting within the Upper House during the early part of the year. His notes are full and both bibliography and index admirable, yet once again there appears to be a strange omission. 422 REVIEWS Here is a book essentially about Kent: the author has used Arch. Cant. extensively and also Frank Jessup's, Sir Roger Twysden, and Prof. Everitt's, Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, among others. In his original research the P.R.O., British Library, Cambridge University Library and House of Lords were visited, he searched the Malet MSS, and also visited the Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset and Warwickshire County Record Offices. In contrast, he seems never to have used either the Kent Archives Office or Canterbury and although he refers to the De L'Isle MSS., which he presumably used while they were still at the offices of the Historical MSS. Commission, there is less evidence of the results of that examination. It seems strange that in a book so essentially Kentish, that County should receive so little. direct attention, especially as it holds significant Dering and Twysden material. Similarly, for a book so well researched it is unfortunate that for Dering, in particular, Woods should have relied, as others before him, on oft repeated comments made by political opponents in a time of acute stress, for the man who spoke so ably and stoutly against the Grand Remonstrance deserves better from our scholars. So, too, Robert, Earl of Leicester, a still more enigmatic figure, receives similar treatment. These are small criticisms, yet they stem from the fact that for much of this book, rather as Twysden has been called 'monumentally dull', Malet is 'monumentally irrelevant'. He is a peg on which to hang a complex and deeply troubling tale of intrigue in high places. To be fair, however, at the end, Malet in his staunch loyalty and firm standards of judicial conduct, is revealed as a man of true substance, but it is this ambivalence between biography and detailed study of a moment of crisis, which disturbs the reader of this otherwise excellent volume. Despite these personal 'cavills', I, too, wholeheartedly commend this book and hope that its scholarship may lead others to attempt the rehabilitation of some, who may be less than justly treated as the fascinating tale unfolds. F. HULL Otford's Medieval Court Hall. By Anthony D. Stoyel. 21 x 15 cm. Pp. 26. 1980. There are few more worth-while tasks in the field of archaeology at the present time than the recording of buildings of historic and architectural interest. So much of value has been lost by decay and 423 REVIEWS destruction during the last few decades that infonned opinion is now awakened to the need for active preservation of what remains and also its detailed recording - especially in the case of minor buildings. Our Member, Mr. Anthony Stoyel, has been spending his retirement in making a study of the buildings in and around Sevenoaks, and the excellent results of his survey have fully merited the practical support given to his work by the Kent Archaeological Society. It is to be hoped that we shall see the publication of more reports of the same high standard as this first essay, preferably in Arch. Cant. rather than in separate booklets. At the entrance to the churchyard at Otford there stands a pictl:lresque tile-hung house which Mr. Stoyel has subjected to close examination, resulting in conclusions of an unexpected nature. Although it has been occupied as a house for centuries, it can be shown to have been originally some form of public building - most probably a court hall. This conclusion has been reached by a process of careful analysis which the author has described at some length in a manner that is quite convincing. The evidence as set out calls for careful reading, and would been easier to follow if there had been a plan and drawings to accompany the text. Necessity for economy in the production of the booklet has, however, let to their omission. One can hope that this publication will serve to illustrate the value of this type of survey and encourage others to promote similar undertakings. Copies may be obtained from the author at 52 Tudor Drive, Otford, Sevenoaks, TN14 5QR, price 65p. including postage. Proceeds of the sale will be used to further the work of the Sevenoaks District Architectural History scheme. P.J. TESTER Later Roman Britain. By Stephen Johnson. 16 x 24 cm. Pp. xi + 195. Pls. 60, 20 figs. and 22 maps. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London and Henley, 1980. £7.50. This is the latest and final of the publishers' five-volume series Britain before the Conquest and continues with Roman Britain where Wacher's The Coming of Rome (Arch. Cant., xcv (1979), 311-3) left off though, not surprisingly, there is some overlap between the two volumes. 424 REVIEWS In six closely argued and fully documented chapters, Dr Johnson has undertaken the rather daunting task of examining what is likely to have happened in this country in the later centuries of its Roman period and immediatelty afterwards; this is not a straightforward task in view of the vagueness, contradictory elements and confusion in the post-Roman historical record and the dearth of secure archaeological evidence. The later fourth century and the immediately post-Roman decades before the establishment of the AngloSaxons over what remained of the former Roman province is a particularly confused period; it is a measure of the achievement of this book that the reader can at least grasp what caused it. The administrative chaos that followed the weakening of the links during the fourth century and the final break with Rome in the fifth, and the arrival of so many settlers from the north, west and mainly east of the Roman province were reflected in a breakdown of reliable information in the literary sources and the intermingling of ill-remembered historical events with special pleading and fictional reportage. Moreover, the end of production of the very industries on whose surviving artefacts the archaeologist largely depends for dating has made it virtually impossible to reconcile the dates of such documentary sources with hard archaeological evidence. Dr Johnson has, nevertheless, manfully shouldered his task and interpreted these conflicting strands as best as they would allow him and pointed the way in which future research and discovery may gradually bring about a more precise understanding of a period in our history, which is almost certain to have lacked as much in organisation as on the arrival of the Romans. This scholarly volume is attractively printed (very few printer's errors were noticed) and profusely illustrated with excellent photographs, text-figures and maps; regrettably, Cantii is still retained (Map 1), and Maidstone, for whose status as a small town there is scarcely any incontrovertible evidence, is given the same symbol as Rochester (Map 20). However, as a statement of what is known, what can be inferred or discounted, and what needs to be done in this period, this book deserves to be widely read. A.P. DETSICAS 425 REVIEWS The Hoo Peninsula. By Philip MacDougall. 28 x 14 cm. Pp. 209 with 55 photographic illustrations. John Hallewell Publications, 1980. £8.95. The auJhor of this book confesses at the outset to be unable to define the precise boundaries of the area loosely known as the Hoo Peninsula, apart from the obvious natural ones of the Thames and Medway. He disarms criticism in this respect by stating that he has simply included the eight villages about which he wished to write, namely, Allhallows, Cliffe, Cooling, High Halstow, Hoo St. Werburgh, St. James on the Isle of Grain, St. Mary's Hoo and Stoke. Throughout the centuries these flat pastures and marshes have not presented a hospitable aspect for human settlement, and malaria plagued those who peopled its scattered villages and farms. Cliffe, however, could once be described as a small medieval town and its church is still certainly the most architecturally important building in the area under consideration. In his account of church matters, the author states that 'under Henry VIII church services ceased to be in Latin', but it should be observed that apart from the use of English in the Lessons and Litany little change in that direction was made in his reign and that the vernacular liturgy as a whole did not replace the old services until 1549, two years after Henry's death. Such errors are of little account when seen in the context of the well presented and valuable body of information Mr. MacDougall has recorded for us. His declared aim has been not to present a 'piece of sophisticated local history', but to interest those who are either visiting the Peninsula or live there, and in the achievement of this purpose he has been successful. The chapters include such matters as the Dutch attacks in the Medway, the treatment of the poor, nineteenth-century defences against invasion, the creation of Port Victoria, the Peninsula during the two World Wars and the twentieth-century development of industry. There are useful appendices, one of which provides summarised information about all the buildings of architectural, historical or general interest. An index is provided, but there is no map - an omission to be regretted in a topographical work of this character. As a sociologist, Mr MacDougall is a strong advocate of conservation of the Peninsula as a recreational amenity for the inhabitants of the crowded Medway Towns, a sentiment undoubtedly shared by others who view with apprehension the increasing urbanisation of some parts of our County. P.J. TESTER 426 REVIEWS The Parish of St. Martin and St. Paul, Canterbury. Historical Essays in Memory of James Hobbs. By Margaret Sparks (Ed.) 21 x 15 cm. Pp. 112, 1 folding map, 13 figs. and 33 pls. Published by the Friends of St. Martin's, July 1980. Paperback, £2.90. Limited, bound edition, £5.00. (All profits to St. Martins's Church Restoration Appeal. Obtainable from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust and St. Paul's Parish Office, Church Street, Canterbury). Twyford History Series (a) Education in Ya/ding, 1974; (b) Origins of Yalding Parish, 1975; and (c) Parish and People of Ya/ding, 1979. Edited and compiled by Tony Kremer. 25 x 20 cm. N.p. (Obtainable from the author, at 2 Downs Road, Yalding.) It is indeed a 'sad occasion dear' that we had to lose James Hobbs through a car accident on September 30th, 1979, in order to gain, from a team mainly consisting of members of our Society and the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, a book containing essays on Canterbury's past. I am truly astonished that such a scholarly work has been prepared and published in so short a time - considerably less than a year. The book is filled with good things and includes plenty of up-todate information about the Romans in Canterbury (plus an impressive stone-on-stone view of the Quenin Gate), Tim Tatton-Brown's inspired comment on the possible origin of St. Martin's font from the Christ Church Priory puteus, the crop-marks at Hoath Farm (an introduction to the subject), Bill Urry's fascinating account of the founder of the Doge Chantry, followed by Duncan Harrington's equally fascinating account of Ambrose Warde and of Rouge Dragon Pursuivant John Philpott's heraldic arrangements for his funeral. In like manner, Anne Oakley has resurrected the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hill family of estate-map makers. Much of the rest of the volume may be classified as historiotopographical and deals faithfully with parts of the parish such as Oaten Hill, the Old Dover Road, the Prison and Hospital in Longport, the various barracks, prints, Dr Frank Jenkins' chapter called 'Tumbled Waters' which has much to do with water supplies, the King's Park, the despoliation of the Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul and St. Augustine (1542-1793), and an enumeration of the remarkable vicars of St. Paul's Church, by Canon Ingram Hill. Ken Gravett's auth oritative and detailed description of Jim Hobbs' timber-framed house, The Hall, in Ivy Lane, must on no account be missed. Mention of it reminds me of a building problem, 427 REVIEWS which arises in another of the Essays. For those of us who for many years have been crusading against the Kent folklore that discarded woodwork from ships was re-used in timber-framed houses, it is disconcerting to learn in Mrs. Lyle's article on Barton Court that 'during repairs in 1970 we discovered a ship's keel supporting the upper floor, its rib holes complete with adze-cut Roman numerals, and the side joists shaped to fit them.' I would like to know more about this mid-eighteenth-century 'seasoned oak from an old ship.' All three parts of the Twyford Series are compiled from local records by Tony Kremer. They deal with a good part of Yalding's history and range from details of poet Edmund Blunden's Old school, founded by the will of William Cleave in 1665 ('the school had one large room downstairs, the ceiling of which was supported by three baroque pillars, and upstairs were two dormitories . . . (for) about eighteen or twenty pupils'), to a description of the parish church and the non-conformist chapels. A particularly interesting item is the list of local families compiled from the 1334 Lay Subsidy and from the Parish Registers. Each family is put in a dating context. Part Two deals mainly with local administration. It seems that the Yalding borsholder was not so dumb as his counterpart in neighbouring Wateringbury and was still sending in expense accounts at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yalding owes a great deal to the devoted research work of Tony Kremer. It would be a gracious act for the inhabitants to show their appreciation by ensuring that his results appear in a more permanent form than a series of paperbacks. L.R.A. GROVE 428