Roman Pottery — The Upchurch Ware. 



163 



as to "be covered with water, winch, perhaps deposited a new 

 bed of clay, and that after this it must have become raised 

 again, to receive its surface of soil, since which the water of 

 the river has trespassed upon the ground in its new elevation, 

 and formed the creeks as they now appear ; and, though pos- 

 sibly the state of the ground may be explained otherwise, yet 

 it is well worthy of consideration in connection with the inte- 

 resting question of the change of the coast level. 



The existence of these Roman potteries is not altogether a 

 modern discovery. Dr. Battely, whose Antiquitatis Rutwpince, 

 or Antiquities of Bichborough, was written before the begin- 

 ning of the last century, had observed the remains of this 



7 6541 3 289 



Examples of Roman Pottery from Upcliurch. 



pottery at Upchurch, which he terms umas atque vasa nigri- 

 cantes, "blackish-coloured urns and vases/ ' and he speaks of it 

 in that book, giving it as his opinion (in which he was correct) 

 that the locality in which they were found was not a Roman 

 cemetery, but the site of Roman potteries. The antiquaries 

 of the last century, and of the earlier part of the present, 

 neglected or despised the information given by Battely ; and 

 Halsted, the well-known historian of Kent, actually discredited 

 the notion that such pottery had ever been found there. We 

 owe our first knowledge of the full truth to our distinguished 

 antiquary, Mr. Roach Smith, who has given interesting accounts 

 from his own personal observation in the Journal of the British 

 Archceological Association, and in his Collectanea Antigua,* 



* See the Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. ii., p. 134, 

 July, 1846 ; and Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua, vol. vi., p. 173, 1864. Mr. 

 Roach Smith had first called attention to this pottery in 1840, in a communication 

 to the Society of Antiquaries, printed in the Archaologia, vol. xxix., p. 223. 



