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Description: | The surviving part of a Saxon Shore fort, an earlier, temporary Roman military camp and an Iron Age farmstead, situated on a low sandy cliff on the North Kent coast. During the Roman period the sea was around 1.4km to the north and Reculver occupied the southern tip of a promontory at the north western end of the Wantsum Channel, an estuarine waterway which separated the Isle of Thanet from the Kent mainland. Coastal erosion has destroyed the north eastern part of the Saxon Shore fort and later monastery. Investigations have shown the site has undergone several phases of development and reuse. Below ground traces of an Early Iron Age farmstead represent the earliest settlement, dating to around 500 BC. The strategic importance of the promontory is illustrated by the construction of a temporary Roman military camp in the first century AD. The camp defences survive as a pair of now buried, infilled ditches, originally surrounding a timber-reinforced, earthern rampart, enclosing an area of around 0.5ha. Analysis of pottery fragments has indicated that the camp was in use during the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43. The Saxon Shore fort was constructed during the early third century AD. It took the form of a NNE-SSW aligned, square enclosure of around 3.2ha, the southern half of which survives as ruined walls, earthworks and below ground features. The core of the enclosing curtain wall survives to a height of up to 2.7m. This was originally around 3m thick and 4.5m high, augmented on its inner side by a large earthern mound around 13.5m wide. Surrounding the wall are a pair of now infilled, 10m wide ditches, separated from each other and the curtain wall by up to 10m wide berms. Buildings, including the commandant's house, the headquarters building, a bath house and a corn drying kiln have been identified. The fort was subsequently reused as the site of an Anglo-Saxon monastery of which details are recorded in record TR 26 NW 2 (uid 467090). Scheduled. | Subjects: | Temporary Camp Defence Industrial Domestic Maritime Saxon Shore Fort Bath House Agriculture And Subsistence Promontory Fort Farmstead Health And Welfare Water Supply And Drainage Corn Drying Kiln | Source: | English Heritage - Viewfinder | Creator: | National Monuments Record | Identifier: | http://pastscape.english-heritage.org.uk... | Language: | en | Go to resource |
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