The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-11


 John Burtonshaw's farm as the site O
 Roman remains, and it must have beer
 from tradition alone that old ordnance
 surveyors were enabled to mark thi
 place Cn their maps, for within thu
 memory of living men and their father
 there has never been so much as {
 mound in that part of the field to indi
 cate what might be found beneath
 Fourteen years ago a man dreamt
 three nights in succession that he hat
 found a hidden treasure there, but that
 dream was probably no more than ar
 unconscious reminiscenee of something
 he had heard in his boyhood. At any
 rate, nothing came of it except that ths
 man, more than middle aged now, ts | 'iseeing his dream out" at last as one | of the workers in search of whatever
 the Roman owner may have left be-
 hind him when he quilted that villa
 some fifteen hundred years ago. Apart
 from tradition, there was always in
 trinsic probability of Roman relics eX-
 isting within short distance of where | they have been found. It lies In the
 vale of "Silvery Darenth, stained with
 Roman blood" a. mile from Earning 1 ham Road Station, two miles and half from Dartford, and therefore less
 than two miles in a direct line from the great Roman military road known as Waiting street, by which legions
 poured on their way from Dubis and
 Rutupus toward the north. Much
 nearer to the place now being explored in fact not two hundred yards from it,
 is a "via devia," which, from its nar- rowness, has been named the pack road" This, however, bears all the fa- miliar traces of Roman work, and
 doubtless served as a. link between mi nor settlements That Roman build ings must have existed not far off was also clear, from the fact that tiles of that period are built into the walls of Darenth church. Notwithstanding all these promising signs, the dreamer of dreams does not seem to have found anybody with faith enough in his vis- ions to set about digging for hidden treasure, nor have archaeologists turned their attention that way until now.
 It was left for MT. Edward Arnott Cloves, whose country house is near, and his neighbor, MT. J. B. Marchant, to make the interesting discovery, after consultation with Mr. Burtonshaw, who readily gave them all the assist ance which knowledge of the ground and the rights of tenant placed in his power. He could take them to a spot where stones, flints and fragments of burnt clay were often turned up by the plough, but 1t was rather hollow than otherwise, like shallow saucer, with not a line to show that masonry might be hidden below the soil. MT. Cloves however, came to the conclusion at once that the broken bricks" were fragments of Roman tiles similar toI those embedded among masonry in the Norman church; and MT. Marchant setting to work little later, came upon a level pavement not more than a foot beneath the surface.
 Then permission to dig further was sought from the Ecclesiastical commits sioners, who are MT. Burtonshaw's landlords. By the advice of Sir Vol laston Franks, MT George Payne, the most persistent of Kentish archaeolo- gists and certainly the greatest local authority on Roman antiquities, was asked to take control of the excava- tions. No better choice could possibly have been made, as the results al- ready prove MT. Cloves, MT. Mar chant and Mrs T. R. Hoare provided the necessary funds and the unem- ployed workmen of Darenth were put to work on the excavations a little more than week age. Since then MT. Payne has gone on from one interest ing discovery to another. First 1t was the pavement of a portico, then the tes- sellated floor of the Atrium, then the baths, in a wonderfully good state of preservation, ard so on step by step until half the foundations of an imposing Roman villa have been un- earthed. In the course of removing some hundreds of cubic yards of soil and flinty debris--the ruins perhaps, of upper walls-many things of interest were brought to light. At one point, | when certain depth had been reached, | fragments of Upchurch pottery, black ened by process of firing in smother ldlns, turned up with every spadeful of earth. Then the searchers found a few fragments of other earthenware vessels more delicate in form, of harder tex ture, and richer in the redness of their color. These may have come from the potteries of Rutupis, near Sandwich | In another place were the heads of l boar spears, an axe and other imple- ments.
 Near the floor of a sIoplng path, | where every tile is still perfect were | several coins of the time of | the usurper Tetricus (about A. D. 270), | a few small bracelets, rings, a buckle, | and other items of personal adornment, [ ivory pins. A small unguent | bottle only slightly damaged was in this part of the building, and among | refuse consisting of animal bones, oys- ter shells innumerable. red deer's antler, and ancient nails, were the | of an opalescent glass vase, | not perhaps quite so beautiful as the 'Nibus Vitreus" of Martial, but very fragile, and like film in thickness. Of | these minor discoveries, however, the most interesting to an antiquary were broken sheets of window glass, having ,n one surface the iridescence charac- .eristic of all of all Roman glass, and