Three weeks into the archaeological excavations of Englefield Estate land at Little London and the Silchester team from the Department of Archaeology has made significant progress and made some exciting finds.

A series of Roman kiln structures have started to be uncovered. Some live up to the Little London Tile kiln name of the site and are huge brick and tile  production facilities, with an associated quarried out clay pit, full of rejected overfired or broken pieces.

There are also two small round pottery kilns, with associated dumps of discarded high quality pottery flagons. The kilns are remarkably well-preserved, with their stokeholes, fuel and possible flue intact. One has a central supporting plinth topped with a line of ‘tegulae’ roof tiles. Either side are larger tiles, used to support the vessels, which have broken under the weight of the collapsed superstructure. Two curved tiles ‘voussoirs’ have also been found – perfect for use in the curved arch of a kiln flue. One edge of the kiln area is defined by a 1.8m deep v-shaped ditch, its profile and the scale/early start to such a large-scale operation all hint at the Roman military being involved.

The newly found Nero stamped tile

Of particular significance is the extremely rare find of a mis-stamped tile bearing the name  Nero. The piece confirms that the site was used in the production of building material endorsed by the Emperor Nero for use in construction at Silchester. There are only 14 such tiles known in the UK including this one and one found in the 1920s at this site by the Rev, Carslake, plus the examples from the Roman town at Silchester. This example has revealed a new variation of lettering of Nero’s title. From the fragment shown below, it can be seen that the E and R from the contraction of ‘Germanicus’ are joined together and are followed by a small mark as a spacer before the beginning of ‘Nero’. There is no record of Nero having visited England but clearly felt moved to sponsor Silchester during his short reign from 54-68 AD. With two weeks still left to go, the team are confident this site has plenty more to reveal about the industry and Nero’s part in its establishment, we’ll give another update when the dig has finished and the finds have been further examined.

The open day

There has been a steady flow of visitors to the site, including many members of the local community. The site i is open daily Mon-Sat throughout the dig until 5thSeptember but in addition, well over 500 people visited the site on the recent open day, where they were taken on site tours and were able to handle many of the artefacts found so far. The team are grateful for everyone’s interest in the work and in particular to Dr Peter Warry, the Englefield Estate and to the Kolosowski family as tenants for access and their encouragement.