From Burnished Flints to Polished Buttons

This volume brings together the results of archaeological excavations by Pre-Construct Archaeology in advance of redevelopment, at three sites in Maidstone, Kent. Supplemented by documentary research, each of these sites epitomises a different aspect of the town’s past. The earliest evidence came from investigations at West Borough School (Site 1), to the west of the town centre, where ditches, pits and associated finds provide evidence for occupation spanning the Bronze Age to Roman periods. A remarkable and apparently unique assemblage of polished flints had been buried in a Bronze Age enclosure ditch. Post-medieval cess-pits and buildings attest to the expansion of settlement beyond the Saxon and medieval core of the town, adjacent to the River Medway, at Waterfront (Site 2). At James Whatman Way (Site 3) the structural remains of the former Maidstone Cavalry Barracks were revealed. Initially constructed in the late 18th-century, these barracks only closed in the 1990s. Amongst the finds recovered a copper-alloy General Service military button is a poignant reminder of the site’s past.