Springhead, known to the Romans as Vagniacis (or Vagniacae), was a small town and religious centre situated on Watling Street near the head of the River Ebbsfleet in Kent, roughly midway between Rochester (Durobrivae) and London. Active from the mid-1st century AD through to the late 4th century, it grew up around a complex of sacred springs and developed into a roadside settlement with temples, shops, workshops and a mansio, serving travellers on the main London–Dover road.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Springhead was one of the most important religious sites in Roman Kent, combining a major ritual focus on its sacred springs with a thriving small town function along Watling Street, linking the Channel ports with London. Its temple precinct made it a regional pilgrimage destination, while its commercial activity reflects the economic vitality of roadside settlements in the South-East.
Extensive excavations, notably by W.S. Penn in the 1950s–60s and large-scale work by Oxford Wessex Archaeology in advance of the High Speed 1 (CTRL) project in the early 2000s, revealed a walled temple precinct containing at least four Romano-Celtic temples, ritual shafts, infant burials, and votive deposits, alongside domestic buildings, a possible mansio, cemeteries and evidence of industry including pewter-working. Notable finds include a ritually-deposited pewter hoard, structured deposits of decapitated infants in temple
Springhead, known to the Romans as Vagniacis (or Vagniacae), was a small town and religious centre situated on Watling Street near the head of the River Ebbsfleet in Kent, roughly midway between Rochester (Durobrivae) and London. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Springhead Roman site is classified as a Roman site — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Vagniacis (0.4 km), Roman enclosure SE of Vagniacae (0.8 km), Darenth (4.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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