Rabbit Holes in East Kent

 The effects of the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410CE and of the arrival of Germanic peoples a few decades later have long been debated.  Did the economy and the rule of law collapse or did remaining Romano-Britons continue much as before? Did the Saxons (and Angles and Jutes) arrive as warriors, clearing out the Britons towards the west and north and taking over their lands to be settled by their kinfolk, or did the new arrivals assimilate with the native population (albeit in a dominant role). Were the remaining Britons enslaved? Canterbury Museum has an excellent series of model tableaux indicating the grandeur of the city under Roman occupation with forum, amphitheatre, theatre and so on, and of that city in ruins some time later.  Bede describes a genocide and was influential for many centuries, while others (more recently) have argued for more integration. Alan Everitt in  Continuity and Colonization Evolution of Kentish Settlement uses locations and plac...

 Kent has received more than its share of visitors over the years, some of which have left their thoughts on the county. This is a brief summary of some of them, with particular reference to our corner. John Leland (1503 - 1552) was a humanist antiquary in and around the court of Henry VIII. He warned Thomas Cromwell of the risk of losing the wealth of monastic libraries during the Dissolution, and searched out books thereafter. The five volumes of his Itinerary included a chapter on Kent "Let this be the firste chapitre of the booke", he wrote; "The King hymself was borne yn Kent. Kent is the key of al Englande." His Itineraries were made between 1538 and 1543 at the height of the Reformation. The structure of the work, divided into counties, set the form of local historical writing for the future. He commended the results to the king, writing "there is almoste nother cape, nor bay, haven, creke or peere, river or confluence of rivers, breches, waschis, lakes...

  HL_PO_PB_1_1839_2&3V1n79.Local and Personal Act, 2 & 3 Victoria I, c xxxiii.pdf http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/map%20Kent%20turnpikes.jpg

Richborough was one of the most important towns in Roman Britain for at least the first half of the occupation, as it was the main port for goods and the military movements to and from the continent. They fact that it was virtually undefended for most of its life shows how complete was Roman control of England at the time. A minor unsolved mystery is which were the routes used for travelling inland from the island of Richborough, surrounded as it was by the wide Wansum Channel to the north and east and by marshes to the west and south. Over the four hundred years of occupation, there were probably a number of routes as conditions changed. Even today, paths around the English Heritage site are muddy and hampered by water-filled ditches. This map by Floodmap.net has been used to show water levels of 3m higher than today, giving an indication of the landscape in Roman times. Richborough castle (1) and the amphitheatre (2) are on the east side, with the (as yet unexcavated) town between t...

  Watsonia 1977.   R. E. RANDALL  L. japonicus is a creeping or climbing perennial most commonly found on shingle beaches but occasionally recorded from dunes and other coastal habitats. It is fairly long-lived and once established it is not likely to disappear except where coastal changes or human pressure cause this to occur. Where beaches are accreting seawards and more closed vegetation enters as humus builds up, it disappears on older shingle but persists nearer the shore where the vegetation is open.   Its seeds are avidly eaten by birds, and many animals, especially sheep, find the whole plant palatable. Brightmore & White (1963) suggest that an exceptional spread of L. japonicus at Rye Harbour from 1962 until 1964 resulted from dispersal of seeds by flocks of stock dove, Columba oenas.  The plants cease flowering and soon die when heavily or frequently trampled. In eastern E. Sussex, V.c. 14, and E. Kent, v.c. 15, L. japonicus is much more ...

 Crop marks reveal some interesting things, and again we scuttle down the rabbit hole. Google Earth shows crop marks between Great Mongeham church and Ripple, which bear further investigation.

I have long been fascinated by the low-lands between Deal and Sandwich, with marshes fed by streams which rise at Eastry, Northbourne and Great Mongeham . These chalk streams make their way to the Stour and thence to the sea, via a maze of dikes (correct local spelling), sewers and gutters through Ham Fen and Worth Marshes. Some of the water was drawn along Roaring Gutter, the Pinnock Wall and the Delf Stream to supply Sandwich (1). If the sea level were to be say 3m higher than today, these streams would presumably have been navigable towards these villages which, with the good sources of food from the marshes, would have attracted a sizeable population.  The map below illustrates this scenario, with thanks to Jim Dickson for his modelling (2).  Archaeological finds in the area have indicated settlements in the Iron Age and before, on the higher ground around what are now the villages of Worth, Eastry, Ham and Sholden, as well as evidence of Anglo-Saxon occupation in lat...

Going down a Rabbit Hole -  "To enter into a situation or begin a process or journey that is particularly strange, problematic, difficult, complex, or chaotic, especially one that becomes increasingly so as it develops or unfolds." This is an increasingly-common condition as the internet leads us willingly or not into areas of knowledge that we didn't know existed, and that free time in retirement allows us to follow. Those of us lucky enough to have built up a library of random books can now justify keeping them, gathering dust until their unexpected moment of use arrives. Time spent on these unassociated subjects leads to a mass of jottings, notes, spreadsheet and maps which risk being lost to posterity, so here's an attempt to draw some of them together for our interest in nature, local history and so on in east Kent. East Kent , for our purposes, is defined as the triangle edged by the towns of Dover, Canterbury and Sandwich (so broadly the Dover District Council...