Unexpected Roman ruin turns history on its head
The best view of a newly discovered archaeological site in Kent is from the trains thundering past a few feet away. Passengers heading towards the Ramsgate ferry ports glance incuriously out at what was a jungle of brambles and nettles a few weeks ago, not realising that they are seeing almost 2,000 years of history rewritten.
The recently uncovered structure at Richborough is a small medieval dock, neatly constructed by joining up double-decker-bus-sized lumps of Roman walls which tumbled and slid down from the ramparts of the fort further up the slope. It is built on the shingled Roman shore, one of the key sites in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD, and can be securely dated to the 14th century, since the construction technique is identical to the medieval town walls of nearby Sandwich.
The problem with the discovery is that according to the conventional history of the site, Richborough had been completely filled with silt 800 years years earlier, the once magnificent Roman fort and large town left abandoned and desolate.
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The recently uncovered structure at Richborough is a small medieval dock, neatly constructed by joining up double-decker-bus-sized lumps of Roman walls which tumbled and slid down from the ramparts of the fort further up the slope. It is built on the shingled Roman shore, one of the key sites in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD, and can be securely dated to the 14th century, since the construction technique is identical to the medieval town walls of nearby Sandwich.
The problem with the discovery is that according to the conventional history of the site, Richborough had been completely filled with silt 800 years years earlier, the once magnificent Roman fort and large town left abandoned and desolate.