Surrey Archaeological Collections
Surrey Archaeological Society, 2003. (updated 2023) https://doi.org/10.5284/1000221. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Surrey Archaeological Society unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Surrey Archaeological Society
Research Centre
Hackhurst Lane
Abinger Hammer
Surrey
RH5 6SE
Tel: 01306731275
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 379
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000221
- How to cite using this DOI
SURREY ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS
The prehistoric, Roman and later landscape between Watling Street and Bermondsey Eyot: investigations at Rephidim Street and Hartley's Jam Factory, Bermondsey
ROBERT COWIE and JANE CORCORAN
Archaeological investigations at two adjacent redevelopment sites in Bermondsey provided evidence for the evolving Holocene landscape and drainage in a former valley between Bermondsey Eyot and the mainland. The sites at Rephidim Street and the former Hartley's Jam Factory, respectively investigated in 1976-7 and 2000-3, covered an area extending from Tabard Street to Rothsay Street.
The origin of the valley was a broad (c150m wide), shallow channel in the Pleistocene gravel. Initially much of the channel bed was covered by shallow flowing water, although gravel bars within the channel probably supported vegetation. Gradually the channel silted up, and by the Bronze Age the margins of the valley were dry enough for water meadows to form, with a backwater fringed by marshy sedge fen in its central part. During the Late Iron Age or early Roman period a freshwater stream exploited the southern margins of the valley. Its re-activation may have been caused by increased run-off from adjacent land, possibly caused by land clearance and drainage. This would accord with the presence of Roman ditches next to Watling Street on the south-west side of the valley. Significantly, the tidal Thames appears to have had little effect on the stream, suggesting that the north-west end of the valley was blocked off by a neck of land connecting the eyot to the mainland. In other words Bermondsey Eyot was a peninsula rather than an island.
There was no clear evidence for medieval activity in the area, and it seems likely that during the Middle Ages much of the valley would have been water meadow. Measures to improve the land began in the 16th century with the extensive dumping of earth to raise ground level. Early maps show that the two sites were farmland in the 18th century, but were gradually developed for housing and industrial use in the 19th century. Archaeological evidence for industrial activity mainly comprised the remains of Victorian tanning pits in areas adjacent to Rothsay Street and the basement of an early 20th century building associated with the jam factory.
