Anthony B Thomas, BA (Hons), MCIfA
In c.2016 Ian Holt Lesnes Abbey Woods Estate Manager Bexley Council acquired several early photograph of the Lesnes Abbey site, one of which shows early excavation and wall restoration-rebuilding work carried out by F.C. Elliston-Erwood across the Chapter House, situated on the north-eastern side of the Cloister.
While Erwood’s work appeared to represent a formal excavation across the Chapter House site, according to some earlier accounts in c.1630-1631 there were unrecorded diggings across various parts of Lesnes Abbey, carried out by Sir John Epsley or Hippersley and his workmen, who at that time seemed to have been the owner of the Lesnes Abbey Estate.
Some historians and archaeologists suggest that Hippersley’s work represented the first real attempt at the excavation of Lesnes Abbey. In fact however, some of these early accounts suggest that Hippersley’s men only dug over the general area covered by the abbey for building materials. During this work it is also claimed that they plundered a number of tombs, lead lined coffins and other burials inside the Abbey Church, North-South Transept Chapels, Chapter House and Cloister area, removing precious metals and other valuable objects.
As this seems to represent nothing more than desecration, at the time it led one Antiquarian John Weever in c.1631 to try and record some excavations of funeral monuments across the ruin of Lesnes Abbey. He describe the church as “a long time buried in her owne ruins, and growne ouellette with Oke, Elme and Ash trees”.
Figure 1. W Clapham’s excavations at Lesnes Abbey c.1909-1913. Show’s the Chapter House
excavations with corner foundation and internal burials aligned east-west. While
some burials were recorded later excavations, It’s also possible that others may have
been ransacked by Hippersley’s workmen in c.1630-1631.
In the early 20th century large parts of the abbey were uncovered, recorded and planned by A W Clapham between c.1909-1913. Following on from his work parts of the abbey site continued to be excavated up to the 1950s by F. C. Elliston-Erwood F.S.A, Hon. Director of Excavations for the Woolwich Antiquarian Society.
During Erwood’s time at Lesnes Abbey there were stories, which suggest that some of his excavations made use of a miner’s push railway cart to move spoil and building rubble to spoil heaps across the eastern side of the site. While this seems to have come from a newspaper article in c.1951, up until recent times there appeared to be no photographic record of this railway in our site archive. So, the discovery of a photograph in 2016 is a rare find, that shows what the railway looked like and how it was constructed and used, (Fig 1).
Visually the photograph also provides archaeological data regarding what the Chapter House and various parts of the Cloister looked like during the early 1950s, how parts of the these structures were partially rebuilt, and where some of the Erwood’s spoil heaps were situated across the north-eastern side of the excavation (Fig 2).
Figure 2. F.C.Elliston-Erwood’s excavations at Lesnes Abbey c.1950s. Shows A mining style
push railway cart, used to move spoil and rubble across eastern Chapter House
excavation and wall building-reconstruction.
The Erwood photograph also shows the benefits of using a railway cart on early large scale archaeological excavations during the 1950s, but where did this idea originate from.
During Victorian times the use of narrow gauge push railway carts appears to have been well established in the mining industry where they were employed in moving large amounts of coal, stone and soil and other materials within the tight conditions often found in mine galleries, such as Chislehurst Caves Kent. The origins of their use on early archaeological sites however, seems to be less clear.
On a range of early archaeological photographs across Britain and Europe the use of railway carts seem to be rare, with the favoured method of using wheel barrows and shovels, However, when you look at some early excavation photographs from parts of Greece, Egypt and the Middle East, there are images of both single or double railway carts being employed to move spoil and large stone sometimes with spoil heaps at both ends of the excavated area. So it is possible to show that across some of these sites the use of railway carts in conjunction with mass labour were employed to full affect in spoil removal, (Figs 3,4,5,7).
Figure 3. View across early excavation of a Pyramid in Egypt in the 1920s. Shows the use of
two push railway carts being used simultaneously on one track.
One spin-off of these real life Grecian and Egyptian railway cart images on archaeological excavations can also be found in the fictional Hollywood film of Raiders of the Lost Ark made in 1981. This film follows the adventures of radical archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones, who travels to the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Tanis on a quest to find the Ark of the Covenant, and finds a large German excavation using two railway carts to move spoil from one part of the site to another, (Fig 6).
Following on from the Egyptian and Hollywood use of railway carts on early archaeological excavations, we must now come back down to earth and consider where Elliston-Erwood railway may have originated from, how it was used it across site, and what happened to it after his excavation finished.
When we consider the possible origin of his railway, this kit may have been acquired locally, rather than brought in specially from other parts of Southern Britain. This is suggested because across the Lesnes Abbey Woodlands are located the remains of several styles of mines. Some of these range from ancient small gallery and vertical shaft “Dene-Hole style” mines to 18th-19th century high gallery’s mines laid out at the base of vertical mine shafts, or alternatively cut into the side of the hillside.
Throughout a long period of archaeological and historical time, some of these mines may be connected with Prehistoric, Roman and medieval chalk-flint extraction for tool manufacture and chalk mauling across agricultural fields, flint and chalk building material and the use of chalk in the production of lime based building mortar/concrete. This is suggested because during the 19th century several excavations in Lesnes Abbey Wood were carried out across Dene-Hole mines, which had vertical shaft with lower double trefoil galleries as found in three excavations in the woods, (Marriott 1925).
Figure 4. View across one of the tunnels during excavation of the Abydos Sanctuary Egypt in
the 1920s, where railway carts were also being used to move large stone blocks
from the site.
Figure 5. View across an excavation at Corinth Greece in the 1930s. Shows two railway carts
being used on one line to remove spoil.
Figure 6. Fictional film Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981. Shows the use of two-three railway carts
used to move spoil at Tanis Egypt,1940s.
Figure 7. Photograph from early excavation in Egypt shows how hard it was to push these
railway carts up hill out of the excavation area, using three people per cart, “don’t
you just feel for these guys”
While a large number of the circular style depression earthworks recorded across Lesnes Abbey Wood may represent variants of earlier circular vertical shafts cut Dene-hole style possibly with radial galleries at the bottom, other mine-shafts recorded further up the terraced hillside may reflect later shaft and horizontal galley types, cut into the hillside.
Across the central part of the woodland there is also evidence to show that large deeply cut open quarry style excavation has been carried out in the past. From the available archaeological evidence it seems that much of this quarry extraction would have been carried out from the surface to remove gravel, sand and probable upper chalk and flint layers.
One interesting aspect of the quarry, is that it’s ground plan appears roughly semi-circular with rugged edges. This begs the question of whether this was its original layout, or did this quarry evolve out of an earlier collapsed Dene-Hole shaft and galleries, which may have been re-dug out as an open quarry in later times?
From a recent preliminary archaeological survey across selected parts of the woodland its possible to show a series of contemporary and stratigraphic sequence of structures, mines-quarries, ditches, pits and trackways, which may have been developed over a long period of time. If this is the case, then it is possible to suggest that some mine types can be tentatively dated to certain periods based on their distribution-layouts across selective parts of the woodland landscape, and as such may be compared with similar mine shafts across other sites.
When all of the available archaeological evidence is viewed together, it’s possible that some circular shafts with smaller radiating gallery’s may date from Prehistoric, Roman and/or medieval times, comparable with excavated examples found across Joyden’s Wood Cray Valley Bexley, Grimes Graves Norfolk and Cissbury Rings Iron Age Hill Fort West Sussex, (Fig 8).
Across other parts of woodland some of the higher shaft and linear passage-galley mines and open quarries may possibly date from medieval, post medieval to Victorian times, and may be connected with semi-industrial large scale excavation of chalk, flint, gravel building materials. If this is the case, then projects such as the building of medieval Lesnes Abbey, post-medieval farming estate buildings to Victorian time may help date some of these mines, along with the varied shape and size of some large radial or linear galleries between 1m-2m+ in height.
When the style and size of some of the Lesnes Abbey Woodland mining activities are compared to Erwood’s railway, the earlier vertical shaft and low gallery style were too small to incorporate a railway of this type. However, his railway cart and rails may have fitted into one of the large later mine shafts or open quarries, which were employed in the later industrial scale exploitation of chalk for slake lime mortar cement and road levelling dumps, as shown across the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society Chalk Mine during the building of the Bostall Estate along Knee Hill Lane, (LeGear 2004).
Now we have to consider what the Erwood railway cart was used for across the Lesnes Abbey excavation, and whether it could have had a dual function. Initially the railway cart was probably employed to move excavated spoil and other debris from archaeological excavation trenches to spoil heaps across the eastern side of the abbey site. This was the area where most of the Erwood’s and earlier Clapham’s excavations recorded the main buildings of Lesnes Abbey. During later years, this area was raised up so much that the eastern parkland topography is still some 1500-2000mm higher than the western side, a feature which is still visible across the parkland today.
From the available Erwood photograph, it also seems that the railway cart may have also been used to move rubble stone and possible sand-cement to the excavated Chapter House to carry out repairs and reconstruction works to its exposed foundations and primary wall courses. From this perspective, his railway probably represented a vital piece of multi-purpose archaeological and building repair kit.
Figure 8. Early Prehistoric flint mine recorded across the later Iron Age hill fort at Cissbury
Rings West Sussex. Note the central circular deep vertical shaft with small radiating
galleries at the base.
Once the excavation finished, what happened to the railway cart ? Having worked on a wide range of archaeological excavations it is usual practice to dismantle the site and move all the kit to the next project. When it came to the Erwood railway however, we now known that this did not happen.
During the 2015 programme of archaeological works across the Lesnes Abbey site,
PRM Archaeology carried out fieldwork across the site of the old 1930 -1950s Lesnes Lodge building, Area 1, which was demolished so that the current lodge building could be constructed. During this demolition work, the underlying the concrete foundations were exposed, and where necessary removed, (Fig 9).
The fieldwork revealed that some of the concrete foundation had no internal steel strengthening starter bars in it’s core. Instead, two parallel small gauge steel railway tracks had been laid in the base of the foundation trench, and the concrete just poured over the top, (Fig 10).
From their layout, it is probable that the old Erwood steel railway tracks must have just been lying around the site for a long period of time before it was scavenged for reuse in the base of the concrete foundations.
During the 2015 excavation, the origin of the steel bars was a bit of a mystery because their style and construction looked like part of an old small gauge railway, and not the sort of steel starter bar construction you would expect to find in a concrete ground beam foundation for a two storey building of the 1930-50s. However, the recently found photograph of Erwood’s railway has made the connection very clear, a curious and fascinating discovery.
Figure 9. View across the western Old Lodge Area 1 where Concrete foundations exposed were
in 2015 during demolition.
Figure 10. Trench section Area 1. Shows 1960s concrete foundation from the Old Lodge building.
Note the narrow gauge railway lines used as concrete reinforcing steel bars, probably
from the earlier Elliston-Erwood railway.
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