The fort that wasn't there

The 'ankle-breaker'
Excavations conducted by the Kent Archaeological Field School at Syndale, in Kent, have produced some interesting Roman finds. The most exciting was the discovery of what is thought to be an 'ankle-breaker ditch', a special military design that incorporates a trap at the bottom to perform the task it was named after.

A day or two's march from where the Romans landed in 43 AD, and on the north-Kent route they would have taken on their way to the Thames, could this be the site of the first Roman fort in Britain, dating back to the Claudian invasion? As usual, the Team had three days to find out.

Ridges, terraces and banks
As the geophysics team battled to extract information from the confused and tough-to-interpret landscape, all eyes turned to landscape expert Stewart Ainsworth. The ridges, terraces and banks surrounding the site would have been complicated enough anyway, even without the landscaping that had been carried out over the past few hundred years.

Using his skill to read the land, though, Stewart unravelled the 'lumps and bumps' and suggested that what looked like a defensive perimeter on the western side of the hill was actually based on Iron-Age agricultural terracing which had been adapted during later use of the site. It was time for some trenches to make sense of it all.

Claudian pottery
Excavation uncovered Roman ditches on the western and eastern sides of the site. These features contained Roman pottery from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. One fragment was even dated by pottery expert Malcolm Lyne to the Claudian era. The profile of the ditches was 'V' shaped, however, and didn't feature the expected military ankle-breaker at the bottom.

Old Farmer Time
Further excavation in the east of the site discovered another Roman enclosure ditch, this time dated to the late Roman period. Investigations at the centre of the site, meanwhile, found no evidence for substantial features apart from what appeared to be a large rubbish pit or well. Nowhere had any evidence been found for military activity.

The final conclusion, after much searching and trench-digging, was that this wasn't the first Roman fort in Britain. In fact, it wasn't a fort at all but more likely a defended farmstead that had been used and remodelled frequently throughout the Roman period.

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