No. 10 Best Lane
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Following last year's excavation within the body of No.10 Best Lane (Canterbury's Archaeology 1987-8. 11-14), a full watching and recording brief was maintained while renovation and reconstruction work was being carried out on the building. Timbers from the seventeenth-century butt-side-purlin roof (the roof parallel with the street frontage) were revealed and recorded, together with the uppermost courses of the south-west chalk-block and flint wall of the medieval building. Small-scale excavation and watching brief works were undertaken during the formation of a new ground floor slab. Here, dumps of dark brown loam mixed with alluvium were encountered, these perhaps intended to counteract a rising water table before the first masonry building was erected on the site in the middle of the twelfth century. The medieval peg-tile hearth discovered during our earlier excavation was carefully lifted during the formation of the new slab and a concrete lined tank was constructed to allow it to be displayed below the floor of the new premises. During the cutting of the new tank, a compact surface of clay and pebbles was revealed beneath dumped deposits similar to those seen elsewhere. This metalling may have formed part of a courtyard or working surface for a building pre-dating the first masonry structure. Our thanks go to Invicta Arts and Griffiths Builders for the assistance they have given us during the excavation and watching brief.
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