How SHAL began
Guy Topham and Peter Stutchbury came together to start SHAL after Guy moved to Lympne in 2008 and was amazed to find the village steeped in history. He discovered that within the Parish there was a Roman ‘Saxon Shore Fort’ (Stutfall Castle); medieval Lympne Castle; the Chapel of the Maid of Kent at Court at Street; a section of the Royal Military Canal and Shepway Cross.
Peter Stutchbury was instrumental in developing the Lympne Parish Plan, a community initiative to influence the future development of the village. Peter and Guy met frequently to discuss different ideas about what could be done in the community. One idea was to form a history and archaeology group.
The Kent Archaeological Society (KAS), of which Peter was Secretary, provided inspiration and encouragement; Studying History and Archaeology in Lympne was born. The first meeting, held in St Stephen’s church was hugely encouraging, attracting around sixty interested residents. SHAL was set up formally and registered as a charity.
First finds
A first walk along the footpath from the top of Lympne Hill towards Newingreen, revealed a piece of Samian ware pottery in the ploughed field alongside the footpath. Professor Steve Willis, from the University of Kent, provided a 1st/2nd Century date for this initial find. Peter’s contacts helped enormously in making connections and finding speakers for regular talks.
Malcolm Davies, a keen amateur archaeologist with extensive experience, was a regular visitor to the area. He contacted a number of the land owners in the area and gained permission to conduct resistivity (a non-invasive geophysical method) on their fields. His objective was to find the Roman road to Stutfall Castle, also possibly an earlier fort and harbour. It was agreed that SHAL would assist Malcolm. His old resistivity equipment required frequent on-site repairs but was useful in mapping the area.
SHAL’s first excavation was also organised by Malcolm. He spent around a year convincing English Heritage to give permission to dig within the walls of 3rd Century Stutfall Castle. An altar stone was discovered during the Roach Smith dig of 1870, later reused in the entrance of the third century fort. Malcolm hoped to find the temple from where the altar stone originated. Unfortunately, the dig did not reveal clear evidence of this temple.
Malcolm then focused on a field belonging to farmer, William Hurley, situated on the old Roman road towards Hythe. This was the same field in which Peter and Guy had found the piece of Samian ware. The field was marked out in 20m squares and systematically walked, collecting finds and bagging them. This was then followed with resistivity on each of the squares with Malcolm‘s equipment.
Malcolm also revealed that there had been a dig in this area in the 1970s. Dr Sam Moorhead had been part of this dig as a young man, conducted by the Ashford Archaeological Group. Sam is now incorporating finds and information from that time with SHAL’s more recent discoveries.
Guy also befriended Simon Read, a metal detectorist who had been discovering coins in the field. Simon had quite an extensive collection originating around the stile in the corner of the field. He had also found a number of interesting objects in a field further to the north.
Malcolm Davies, with assistance from SHAL, also carried out resistivity in a different location next to a Scheduled Site at Upper Park farm near Court at Street. The Scheduled Site had revealed a quantity of mosaic fragments. There is currently a public footpath that goes from the bottom of this site down to Marwood farm: some modern footpaths may have originated during the Roman times or earlier.
The resistivity results in William Hurley’s field were intriguing and Malcolm thought that SHAL should employ Richard Taylor, a professional archaeologist, who had access to the KAS magnetometry equipment, which would provide a different kind of geophysical input. The entire field, over a period of years, was marked out in 30 m squares, and SHAL members assisted Richard in undertaking magnetometry across the entire field. The results were remarkable, revealing what appeared to be a Roman road-side settlement. It also revealed a trackway, assumed to be the original route of Stone Street road leading to Canterbury. This seemed correct, as this road runs from the top of Lympne Hill rather than through the more recent village of Lympne.
To learn more about the following years’ digs which revealed, among much else, a Roman cremation burial, the outer wall of a defensive structure and, most surprisingly, a beautiful metal oil lamp dated to the early part of the Roman occupation of Britain, please go to the Archaeology section of the website.