Canterbury Excavations, 1944–8

Extract

On 1 June 1942, occurred the German air-raid which destroyed about one-fifth of the old part of the City of Canterbury. It was soon realized that a unique opportunity existed of discovering something of the archaeological past of the city before rebuilding again concealed the wide areas now exposed.

It was not only an opportunity but a duty ; for modern rebuilding, with its deep foundations, would be bound to destroy a very large part of whatever evidence had survived until the present. The Canterbury Excavations Committee was accordingly formed by the initiative of the local Archaeological Society, and excavations under a supervisor lent by the Ministry of Works began in August 1944, and have continued three times a year up to the present.

Canterbury is one of the few Romano-British towns where there are good grounds for supposing a continuity of occupation through the Dark Ages. Thus though there was little to hint at any pre-Roman occupation, from the Roman, Saxon, and Medieval periods much was to be expected. Yet such a prediction has not turned out wholly true. On the one hand evidence for a pre-Roman Belgic settlement is accumulating ; but little of Saxon date has been found, and the circumstances of the excavations have limited the extent of the medieval discoveries.

The town could not be investigated purely as an archaeological problem, digging on sites which seemed promising and following out the plan as on an open site like Silchester or Verulam. There was a double call. Rebuilding was ever imminent, and the first sites to be rebuilt were likely to be along the main street-frontages. Attention was necessarily devoted first to them.