SUBMERGED BUILDINGS OFF BRADWELL POINT 279
arch was 7in. wide and separated from its neighbours in the row by 5in. spaces.
The flues were 18in. high from floor to top of arch and 18in. to 20in. wide
at floor-level, the crown of the arch being some 4in. thick.
Apart from a few fragments found several feet away from the kiln,
there were no traces of encaustic tile in the kiln. From the stratification
of the sand upon which the kiln and its hearth were constructed, I believe
it was in use at two periods : it may be that its first use was to make encaustic
tiles for the floor of a now-vanished building, and that after a period of disuse,
it was turned to the production of plain roofing-tiles.
There appear to be two other kiln sites adjacent, and these will be excavated
as opportunity offers.
Laurence S. Harley
Submerged buildings off Bradwell Point.—Mr. C. Mussett, in conversation
with me at West Mersea on 2 September 1950, described how he and Walter
Linnett of Bradwell had been off St. Peter's Flats some time ago at an
unusually low ebb and had seen ruins of buildings some feet high above the
sands, "almost due east of the old Chapel, about a mile and a half off".
He described the ruins as consisting of "two square buildings, almost
complete squares, and a half-round to the sutth'ard" ; he said that they were
built of what "looked like black stone blocks, smallish, about six inches
square". He could not say how far apart the two square buildings were,
or what was the exact relation of the "half-round" to them. I gathered
that by "square" he meant "square-cornered" and that both the buildings
and the stone blocks might have been rectangular.
These local stories of buildings relatively far out from the shore at Brad-
well have usually been discounted by archaeologists, who point out that the
Roman fort cannot have extended to seaward much more than two hundred
feet beyond the present sea-wall, but Mussett is known to be a reliable and
credible witness, and it seems to me that whatever he and Linnett saw at
that exceptionally low ebb, it was a structure of some kind, although not
necessarily Roman.
The subjoined sketch shows the position as agreed by Mussett after I
had sketched it, and the site seems worth of investigation at some future
favourable opportunity, perhaps by air photography on a very calm day.
Laurence S. Harley