Monument record TR 26 NE 1347 - Late Iron Age/Roman pits (group 3) along the clifftop at Minnis Bay/Oyster Bay in Birchington.

The first clifftop pit identified in 1957 and work finished on it in 1959. This pit was literally on the cliff edge. A small pit, about 1m in diameter and 30cm deep, was found at the end of a ditch with a larger similar pit inland. The small pit became known as the oven as it was lined with burnt clay except on the entrance to the larger pit and was sooty beneath. The sherds in this pit have been dated to between 50 bc and ad 175. Amongst the finds were a near complete Early Roman pot of Thanet silty ware, 11 tile fragments and some grog-tempered sherds. The subsequent cliff-top pits became prefixed with an ‘O’, starting at ‘Oyster Bay’. Amongst the collection of Late Iron Age to Mid Roman sherds in Pit O:2 was an unusual cluster of 16 extremely thin-walled rim and body sherds of Middle Bronze Age pottery. They are very crude, slightly finger fluted with a row of pierced holes beneath the rim. Pit O:6 was on the top of a narrow jutting out section of the cliff. This pit was excavated in 1960 as a series of small pits working their way out to the tip. Of interest, amongst the many sherds were two pottery spindle whorls, a pot or stone loom weight and a small Iron Age square-shaped mould or container. Two Iron Age pots could be reconstructed from the sherds. One was a 30cm high urn of coarse gritty red brown clay. The other was a much smaller pot, 11.4cm high with a diameter of 14.6cm with holes in the base to form a strainer. Amongst the cliff-top pits one grave and the surviving half of another were excavated. The first burial, Pit O:10, discovered in 1960, was in a ditch, about 3.65m in length, 45.72cm wide at base. The ditch was on the edge of the cliff face above Minnis Bay. The overall depth was 1.37m to turf with about 60cm dug into the chalk. It appeared that the skeleton was of an old male. A 5.5cm long bronze brooch in this ditch lay in the RB layer above the skeleton about 60cm away. After stormy weather and more cliff falls in 1961 the existence of a possible second grave in the cliff face to the east of the central steps in Grenham Bay was noted. A piece of a platter or dish with part of a long bone beside it was seen protruding out of the topsoil layer of the cliff. Excavating a trench on the cliff top, 76cm southwards back from the cliff face was found a cranium in poor condition, upright and facing east at the south end of the grave. The skull had collapsed with no lower jaw or face, although a few teeth remained. Of the long bone that had stuck out of the top of the cliff only a fragment remained on the east side of the grave with the nearly complete dish of Thanet Silty ware, dated ad 25-75. The dish was plain and handmade but interestingly crude. Its diameter at the rim is 17cm with a height of 4.5cm. Above and behind the skull and resting on the end wall of the grave was a little jar. At the back of the head and below the jar was a large iron nail; two more nails, pointing diagonally forward, were positioned one on the south side and the other to the west. There was another pit, O:13, east of pit O:12. This contained a few sherds including a small piece of samian ware and some grog-tempered Belgic ware. (1-2)

<1> Trevor and Vera Gibbons, 2018, The Archaeological Pits of Minnis Bay, Birchington, Kent 400 BC - 400 AD Middle to Late Iron Age to Roman (Unpublished document). SKE58997.

<2> Vera and Trevor Gibbons, 2021, The Middle/Late Iron Age and Roman finds made by Antoinette Powell-Cotton on the Foreshore and Clifftop at Minnis Bay in Birchington (Article in serial). SKE58998.