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Brisley Farm
Between 1998 and 2004, Archaeology South-East completed the excavation
of 9 large areas totalling 7.5ha in area in Ashford, Kent. This
work took place in advance of the development of the land for housing
by Ward Homes and Jarvis Homes. Not only has this, ongoing project,
been one of the largest of its kind undertaken in Kent, but has
revealed a hitherto unknown prehistoric and historic landscape,
elements of which are of national, if not international importance.
The project has revealed a Late Bronze Age field system overlain
by Iron Age remains which become increasingly intensive towards
the time of the Roman Conquest. The extensive and intensive Iron
Age settlement includes enclosed and unenclosed elements with
a possible cremation cemetery and other evidence of ‘religious’
or special activity. Of most significance was the discovery of
two adjacent burials with weapons; swords, spears and shields,
(colloquially known as warrior burials) within square ditched
enclosures which were probably originally covered by a barrow
mound. Such finds are very rare, especially in southern Britain,
only nine have been found south of the Humber. Likely to have
been buried at about the time of the conquest, these individuals
were undoubtedly leaders or ‘heroes’. By the later Roman period,
activity at Brisley Farm diminishes, only to re-emerge in the
medieval and post-medieval periods with a series of farmsteads.
This work has afforded the opportunity to examine landscape development
of a wide scale and, uniquely, to place the rare warrior burials
within a land use context.
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