This week has seen the ‘Richborough through the Ages’ conference details and booking information go up on the Centre’s webpages and more preparations for the Medieval Canterbury Weekend, including Diane Heath’s work on the souvenir programme and the arrival of posters for the postgraduate poster competition. We are still putting out publicity because only the guided tours are fully booked, and for people interested in books and manuscripts there remain tickets for some fascinating lectures on Anglo-Saxon treasures by Richard Gameson (Durham) and Michelle Brown (British Library), as well as the literary works of Chaucer’s contemporaries by Peter Brown (Kent). For those interested in warfare, Gordon Corrigan’s lecture on the Hundred Years War will highlight how and why England employed new military ideas, partly borrowed from the Scots, while Diana Webb and Carole Rawcliffe will focus respectively on pilgrim experiences and what medieval towns were like to live in. So things seem to be in hand for both Richborough and the Medieval Weekend and I’ll soon be turning my thoughts to planning an ‘Early Medieval Kent’ conference in the autumn. Early Medieval Kent, 800-1220 looks to be on track for its mid-June publication date and it will be great to be able to celebrate this final chapter in the Kent History series.

Two chapters in the book examine 11th- and 12th-century Canterbury, which nicely brings me to the main focus of this week, David Birmingham’s introduction to his new book on Canterbury before the Normans. Books on Canterbury’s later history are in hand, the period covering the Normans to the early Tudors will be covered by Mary Berg and the story of the remainder of the city’s history will be told by Doreen Rosman. But to return to David’s lecture this evening, by way of giving a flavour of his book he took the opportunity to run through the history of the city and surrounding countryside using food, technologies and objects as his salient markers of change, even if not always progress. As he said in his opening remarks, he is not an expert on British history being an African history specialist, but he has drawn heavily on Canterbury Archaeological Trust’s annual reports, and also the material culture of our ancestors, whether it be flint hand-axes, the Ringlemere gold cup, the Roman helmet from Bridge, or the Saxon beads from Sittingbourne.

In his book David covers a vast amount of time from the end of the most recent Ice Age; that is about 10,000 years ago to 1066 and the coming of the Normans under Duke William, and for his talk this evening he picked out some key developments as he galloped through time. He had an hour for his lecture but here I’m going to be even more selective and just pick out a few items that particularly interested me. Consequently if readers want a more detailed assessment of the period I would strongly recommend that you buy a copy of David’s book, which is available through Waterstones, and presumably other outlets too, at a very reasonable price.

So what particularly interested me? Well firstly it was the large mammoth tooth that had been found near Ashford by a retired dentist who has been attending David’s U3A class of late. These great beasts made very good steaks and our ancestors dined on such choice cuts using their flint-hand axes to butcher these animals. During the Stone Ages not all hand-axes were made of local flint and among the treasures of the British Museum is a polished jade hand-axe from Canterbury. This stone would have come from the Dolomites in northern Italy and presumably arrived through trade or similar mechanisms, just as among the other arrivals were sheep, goats and crops such as spelt wheat, barley and rye. The growing of crops rather than totally relying on wild berries, fruits and nuts suggests the use of hoes, but in addition there are plough marks from this Neolithic period that are evident near Chilham.

Moving on to the Bronze Age, boats were sufficiently seaworthy, as has been amply demonstrated by the replica Dover Bronze-Age boat which has been tested in the seas around Dover and Folkestone by members of Canterbury Archaeological Trust and other paddlers, to make the Channel cross and trade with those living in western England. Copper was brought from Devon and tin from Cornwall, but something I found interesting was that sand from Dorset has been found in the bilges of the original Dover boat. Of course, as well as goods such voyages led to exchanges of ideas, languages, people and probably also religion, but what and how and when must remain highly speculative.

While bronze was a major advance on flint, iron was a considerable improvement again, and in east Kent the making of charcoal in the Blean and other forests was a big step forward. Recent excavations have greatly and will continue to enhance our knowledge of the period, and the dig on the Turing College site has uncovered a major Iron Age industrial complex as well as a remarkably fine gold coin. Other Iron Age sites that have been the subject of some field work are Homestall Wood (see last week) and Bigbury but neither has yet yielded up all its secrets, albeit artefacts from the latter have been uncovered such a fire-dogs, water cisterns and chariot wheel hubs.

The Romans could have had a lecture all to themselves, so I’ll just mention that Canterbury had two public bath complexes, the one under the St Margaret’s Street Waterstones is well known, but probably far less so that under W.H. Smiths. Also known is the theatre, although this has mainly been seen in service trenches for cables, pipes etc and there may be other parts of this massive structure yet to be uncovered. In the context of the Romans, it is probably worth mentioning that Richborough, with its largest triumphal arch north of the Alps, was an important trading place for cereals, hides and young slaves. Richborough is rightly famous today for its massive Roman wall, and, as noted above, the place will be the subject of a conference at Canterbury Christ Church in June organised by Martin Watts.

Finally David reached the ‘Dark Ages’, even though, as he reminded his audience, they weren’t ‘dark’ at all. Yes, certainly there was a significant loss in terms of technological knowledge and civilization Roman style, but the North Sea migrants were traders as well as raiders. Indeed a later 7th-century gold pendant, found in Canterbury’s London Road, imitates the art of Byzantium, the centre of eastern Christianity and civilization. Trade might also been conducted much nearer home, and kings of Kent developed links of various kinds with the more powerful Merovingians in modern-day France. I’ll leave aside the story of King Ethelbert, Queen Bertha, her bishop, Pope Gregory and St Augustine, and skip instead to the Norman Conquest and the Bayeux Tapestry, and in particular the margin that David pointed to with its representation of a wheeled plough drawn by what looks like a donkey. This return to a farming motif is important because in many ways Kent remained an agrarian county until recently, Canterbury acting as a market place and focal point of such allied industries as brewing. With that David drew his lecture to a close, his appreciative audience joining him afterwards for some well-deserved refreshments. And if this is the measure of the series of books on the history of Canterbury, they will be an extremely valuable additions to scholarship on this exceedingly interesting and important city.