Rabbit Holes in East Kent

  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...