Guess the Place

[John Walker]

I'm not ignoring   this one, it's somewhere I've walked past a few times recently so it would hardly be a guess in the true spirit of GTP.

[johnfilmer]

Pure speculation, Sandwich?

[CAT]

Not Maidstone either MartinR


I'm unaware of the need for a defence around Maidstone to stop either people getting in, or out, though the one way system is enough 


Look more to the older towns to the east

[grandarog]

Know it ,will hold off for a while .Hopefully draw in some new blood.

[MartinR]

Well I think I can discount the Medway Towns and Ashford, so would it be Maidstone?

[CAT]

Not Canterbury MartinR.


Its a portal in a place not well known for its defences.

[MartinR]

Canterbury?

[CAT]

Many thanks MartinR.


I shall take those marks and bag the bragging rights as I had to scratch my head to remember which part of the crypt your pic was looking at. Apologies to all those others who were virtually there with this, but it was clearly in the detail with this one  [size=78%] [/size]


Here is my next, which is a passage through a gateway, but through what and to where?

[MartinR]

Full marks and bonus bragging rights to you CAT.  It is indeed the projecting area behind the original high altar.  During the 2016 dig some long bones were found there, but (AFAIK) they have not been sent for dating so all that can be said is that they MAY be Paulinus' legs.  The investigation by St. John Hope in the closing years of the 19thC uncovered a " decayed wooden coffin and bones" in this pit.

Paulinus was a monk who came from Rome.  He was consecrated bishop in 625 and accompanied Aethelburg of Kent when she went north to mary Edwin.  Paulinus became Bishop of York.  Following Edwin's death he fled south and became Bishop of Rochester.  He died on 10 October 644 or possibly 645.
When the new Cathedral was built, building started from the east end.  Once the quire was finished Paulinus could be translated and the old cathedral demolished.  The later west end of the existing cathedral enclosed the apse of the Saxon one below ground.
As CAT mentioned, from 1190 onwards the east end was extended and modernised to it's present form which involved leveling the old east end to below the crypt floor.

[CAT]

If this is where in the crypt I think it is, could this pit be the suggested final resting place of the bones of St Paulinus (d. 10 October 644)? Originally buried in the first Saxon church at Rochester, his remains were transferred to the new Norman cathedral by bishop Gundulf who intended to house the saints bones in a separate eastward projecting shrine behind the high altar. When the east end of the cathedral was added to, and lengthened, the old east end was removed leaving its foundations preserved beneath the present crypt floor to be found first by W.H. St. John Hope in the late nineteenth century and to a greater extent during the reflooring of the crypt in more recent years.   




 

[MartinR]

Yes to all three.  Now all you need to do is deduce what part of the dig it was, and (for a bonus) what is it's significance.

[Stewie]

Is this part of the 2016 archaeological investigation in Rochester Cathedral crypt? I believe they discovered the remains of an earlier Norman structure and also a flight of stairs leading to the cloisters.

[MartinR]

Not within the photo, but something Roman was found nearby.

[johnfilmer]

Something Roman under there?

[MartinR]

Yes.