A Road through the Past Archaeological discoveries on the A2 Pepperhill to Cobham road-scheme in Kent Oxford Monograph 16

Publication & archive
Oxford Archaeology carried out excavations for
Skanska Construction (UK) Limited on behalf of the
Highways Agency along a new road south of the
then existing A2 between the Pepperhill and
Marling Cross junctions. The road varied from 50m
to 80m wide, and nearly 3km of the route (some
15ha) was stripped to archaeological levels prior to
excavation. The route lay immediately north of the
line of the previously excavated High Speed 1
(HS1). Additional areas (totalling 0.85ha) were
excavated c 1km further east, where new ponds
were being created north and south of the A2 alongside
the Cobham services.
Features of every period from Neolithic to postmedieval
were found, together with residual Meso -
lithic flintwork. Early Neolithic activity included
one very large posthole associated with a flint
scatter east of Tollgate. Later Neolithic/early Bronze
Age activity was slight, except for a Beaker pit
containing a large assemblage of finds just west of
Tollgate, not far from a double Beaker burial on the
adjacent HS1.
In the later middle Bronze Age two partial enclosures
associated with probable metalled trackways
were found, one containing a house, pits/hollows
and fences, the other without internal features, but
becoming a focus for later cremation burials.
Scattered pits and cremations were also found
further west.
Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age activity was
very sparse, but early Iron Age groups of pits were
found at intervals along the route, often with fourpost
structures and occasionally ditched boundaries.
Some of the pits contained very rich assemblages of
finds indicative of ritual deposition, and also
included the largest collection of briquetage of this
period from Kent. In the middle Iron Age activity
became nucleated west of Tollgate, where another
metalled trackway had enclosures, pits and fourpost
structures either side. This settlement continued
in the late Iron Age, during which two high status
burials took place, one in a bronze-bound bucket, the
other accompanied by six brooches. Also in the
middle Iron Age a major ditched boundary was dug
overlooking the Downs Road dry valley, and burials
were made within it and at its end. A ditched settlement
was established at Cobham in the late Iron Age,
but did not continue into the Roman period.
In the early Roman period the focus of occupation
shifted to a new, larger rectilinear enclosure
overlooking the Tollgate dry valley. Only the
northern edge was examined, but this contained
one very large rich burial pit and an attached
cemetery with two more high status burials, all
dated AD 50–70. Other burials continued until the
later 3rd century AD, when settlement activity also
ceased. Fields were laid out alongside the major
Iron Age boundary, and middle and late Roman
burials continued in and alongside it, one of whom
isotope analysis has shown to be a foreigner.
Only a single isolated sunken-featured building
could be dated to the Saxon period, but three lowstatus
medieval settlements of the 11th/12th
centuries were found, two west of Tollgate and the
third east of Cobham services. All three were
characterised by sunken-featured buildings. Only
one settlement continued and grew, but was
abandoned in the mid 14th century