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Founded in 1858, Maidstone Museum is home to more than 600,000 artefacts and specimens – one of the most significant collections in the south-east outside London – including fine art, natural history, palaeontology, ancient Egyptian objects, and Japanese cultural items, as well as the largest assemblage of British archaeology in Kent. This latter group has recently been redisplayed in an absorbing new gallery, Lives in Our Landscape, which explores the experiences of early hunter-gatherers through to medieval monks and merchants in the wider Maidstone area. The displays – which were created in partnership with Kent Archaeological Society, who contributed many of the objects – have almost doubled the number of British artefacts now on show at the museum, with some 1,200 finds spanning the Palaeolithic to Tudor periods.
As visitors enter the large, airy room, they step into the world of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, greeted by tall trees and the replica skull of an Irish elk, an enormous animal standing 2m tall at the shoulder, with antlers 3.5m wide, which went extinct in Europe around 7,500 years ago. A particularly eye-catching early element is a wall studded with finely worked Palaeolithic hand-axes, and close-by you can see examples of tools made by Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens. A highlight of the Mesolithic artefacts on show is a large needle last used some 8,000 years ago, while equally recognisable and relatable is a little Neolithic pottery spoon that was baked around 6,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest eating implements yet found in Britain.
As the closest part of Britain to the Continent, Kent has long been a key conduit for the flow of people and new ideas and technologies, and exhibited objects reflecting the region’s far-reaching connections during the Bronze Age include axes and other metal objects from Ireland, France, and Scandinavia. This was also a time of significant migration (see CA 338), with newcomers bringing individualised funerary practices that replaced Neolithic traditions of communal tombs. In Lives in Our Landscape, this is illustrated through a representative reconstruction of a Beaker burial, furnished with grave goods excavated from sites across the county.
This section includes two Bronze Age hoards, too, highlighting the importance of then-revolutionary metalworking techniques, and the artistry of contemporary craftspeople. One, the Boughton Malherbe hoard, found near Maidstone in 2011 (CA 267), is the third-largest Bronze Age hoard ever discovered. Among its 352 components are fragments of weapons, tools, ingots, and moulds – now a dull green colour, in striking contrast to the still-gleaming gold torcs and bracelets displayed alongside, which were recovered from the River Medway at Aylesford in the 19th century.
The Iron Age in Kent saw the rise of imposing hillforts including, at Oldbury, the largest example in south-east England. Greater organisation could have heralded an increase in interpersonal and inter-tribal violence, themes addressed by sling stones and a spearhead from Oldbury, as well as chariot linchpins from Bigbury – this site also yielded a gang chain, one of only three found in Britain, which could have been used to subdue captives destined for sale as slaves; a replica hanging close to the original allows visitors to weigh its exhausting burden in their hands. The everyday lives of Iron Age communities are in evidence as well, with displays reflecting textile- production and farming, mining and metalworking, along with the introduction of coinage from the Continent.
Eclectic artefacts
During the Roman period, cross-Channel connections became even more important: Kent served as the gateway to Britannia, linking the new province to the wider empire and a dizzying array of material and cultural innovations. These are colourfully represented in the new displays, ranging from fragments of bright wall plaster and mosaic tiles to jewellery, pottery scratched with Greek lettering, and a glass cup decorated with images of gladiators. Among such diverse delights, a highlight is a household figurine of Minerva that is so intact that it looks new; it comes from Plaxtol villa, a site associated with tilemakers whose stamped products are also held by the museum. Alongside echoes of the living, we see traces of the dead: one case holds glass and pottery grave goods from a walled cemetery near Langley – a rare form of burial ground in Roman Britain, but Kent had several, especially around Maidstone – while nearby stands a poignant lead coffin for a one-year-old child, decorated with images of seashells. Thumbnail-sized scraps of cloth displayed beside it may have come from the infant’s shroud or clothing.
Medieval and later displays lie beyond an atmospherically cloister-like line of arched stonework. Here visitors can see Maidstone Museum’s extensive and internationally significant collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts, including grave goods from influential sites like Lyminge, Updown, and Sarre, and opposite these lies the skeleton of the ‘Eastry Woman’, excavated in 2005. Examination of her bones revealed that she was around 45 and had led a laborious life, using her teeth as tools and performing repetitive tasks with her right arm; meanwhile, her grave goods are a mix of Kentish-made and Continental, and recent isotope analysis has revealed that she was an immigrant who moved from northern Europe, possibly Denmark, after the age of 12.
This story is told in more detail via a touchscreen sharing several videos about archaeological science. Another describes new insights into an individual whose skull was displayed in the porch of Trottiscliffe Church for many years before it was donated to Maidstone Museum in 1984. It had long been thought that his remains were from the Neolithic burial chamber at Coldrum, two miles from the church, but recent analysis has revealed that he actually died around AD 1430. The skull is displayed alongside a facial reconstruction created by Liverpool John Moores University, which shows a characterful man of around 30, with a large nose deviating to the right and a couple of chipped teeth.
Other echoes of the medieval and later period include carved stones and woodwork from ecclesiastical sites, decorated manuscripts, pilgrim badges, and merchants’ seals – and, as you leave, an elaborate chair, inlaid with ebony and ivory, which was reportedly sat in by Henry VIII during a visit to Allington Castle. Such eclectic objects, combined with hands-on elements (including opportunities to dress up as a Roman soldier or a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer, colour in medieval illuminations, and touch replica Roman ceramics), videos, and another touchscreen mapping local archaeological finds, evoke a varied and vibrant history, imaginatively displayed to engage all ages.
Further information: Maidstone Museum is free to enter; see https://museum.maidstone.gov.uk for more details of the museum’s opening times (which vary through the year) and collections.
All images: Paul Dixon Studios
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