Dvrolevum

In a dry break in an otherwise drizzly Easter Saturday we walked down the road to Ospringe, a former village, now a suburb of Faversham. Just outside the town, past a car yard on the south side of the A2, excavations were under way. The site is quite close to the road and at the bottom of Judd's Hill. The A2 follows the route of Watling Street, the Roman road, and what is possibly being dug up are foundations of part of Durolevum, a road station first noted late in the second century. For a while its location was nebulous: somewhere between Canterbury and Rochester. Then estimates placed it closer to Teynham. But recent surveys have located it either beneath or close to parts of Ospringe, so this is perhaps what's being carefully sifted and mapped at the moment. Further up the road, in the direction of London, is a ruined chapel in a field to the north, barely visible if you're driving and noticable from the railway only during the winter when the trees sheltering it aren't in leaf. The chapel has varied stone layers with some Roman work around the base. Here it is, on a clearer day: