Extract from the project design submitted by Time Team and the Canterbury Archaeological Trust The modern hamlet of Tyler Hill lies around 1.5 miles north of Canterbury on the edge of the Blean Woods. The area was a natural location for medieval pottery and tile production. Locally outcropping deposits of London clay and brick earth, together with an abundant supply of water and fuel from the Blean Woods and a ready market for its products in nearby Canterbury, all combined to create ideal conditions for the growth of a local ceramics industry. The name 'Tyler Hill' itself derives from its medieval tile-making industry. The Church owned extensive tracts of woodland and arable in this area and may have owned tile kilns here, too.
		Tyler Hill site
		^top Evidence for pottery production here dates from c AD 1150. Production of peg-tiles probably dates from around 1175 in line with new regulations that buildings near the cathedral should be roofed with tile as a fire precautionary measure (there had been several devastating fires in the previous decades). Also, at about this time, the production of decorated floor tiles first took place in a kiln at Clowes Wood about 1.5 miles north of Tyler Hill. These – the earliest two-colour (red and white) floor tiles in England – are characterised by their incised designs and have been found in several major religious buildings in the Canterbury area. The Clowes Wood episode, however, was short-lived. Floor tile production was reintroduced to the area c 1285, perhaps by a group of immigrant tilers from the Paris area brought here by the Cathedral authorities. Two-coloured floor tiles decorated with a range of heraldic and floral designs were made by the more traditional 'stamp-and-slip' technique. Tyler Hill tiles are found in churches throughout Kent and even in some adjoining counties. ^top
		Tyler Hill pottery was a fairly coarse domestic red-to-grey sandy ware consisting in the main of cooking pots, bowls and glazed jugs but also a few specialities such as chimney pots. The ware has a mainly east Kent distribution but is found as far away as northern France and Belgium. Over the centuries, as new clay deposits were exploited, the Tyler Hill industry formed a ribbon development stretching along both sides of Canterbury Hill/Hackington Road, running north from Canterbury to the coast. Although the focus of the industry was in and around Tyler Hill itself, the ribbon development extended for at least two miles. The second and most prolific phase of floor tile production may have been short-lived, confined perhaps to the period c 1285-1325. Pottery production died-out c 1525 or 1550, but the production of brick and peg-tile continued as late as c 1900, thus marking at least seven-and-a-half centuries of continuous ceramic activity at Tyler Hill. At its peak – c 1250-1350 – Tyler Hill was the most important ceramics industry in Kent and one of the largest in south-east England. It is difficult now to envisage that this sleepy rural hamlet was once the focus of a thriving medieval ceramics industry with its sprawl of workshops, stockpiles of brick, tile and fuel, its waster heaps and constant clouds of wood-smoke. ^top