Dungeness in Danger
by Dennis LeggettRomney Marshes Natural Area
their formation and change from Roman to Norman times.Pett Level lies a couple of miles south and west of Winchelsea. Some 20 miles north and east along the coast is Hythe. They mark the most southerly and northerly points of a region named by English Nature as Romney Marshes Natural Area and abbreviated to Area in this text. Midway between them is the gravel foreland of Dungeness,
The route by road from Pett Level to Hythe, via Rye and New Romney, is flat and, from a car window, largely uninteresting. It looks as if for thousands of years nothing has disturbed its widespread featureless form. Only ourselves appear to have altered its surface qualities.
But not so. This is a dynamic area, rich in its variety of wildlife, history and land forms. It is a tract of land which has appeared since the last Ice Age and within recorded history has vanished in places. It was and is in constant interaction with ourselves and the sea. Just two examples. Early in the twentieth century coal was delivered on the tide by barge to Brede six miles west and inland from Rye. In the fifteenth century Rye was an important Channel port. Now it dwells two miles inland from the sea, its once large anchorage a narrow canalised estuary of the river Rother.The testimony of change is fragmented and difficult to collate. Evidence from geology, landscape, soil, sea, plant, animal and weather sciences, together with natural history, archaeology and recorded human history, provide information of its past and present. But modem academic structures inhibit integrated studies. Finance for research is difficult to obtain.
Nevertheless there are a large number of fragments of information that allow a reasonably well substantiated 'motion picture' to be formed.Part of the scenario, of that picture, describes the changes in coastline and land form of the area. They reveal a disturbing view of the geographic history of Dungeness.
The plot of the picture has been developed mainly from three Monographs devoted to papers published by the Romney Marsh Research Trust (1) and from a book written by Jill Eddison (2). They are essential reading for anyone wanting well presented detailed accounts of past events in the Area. The broader picture given here and the errors its generalisations may incur, are the responsibility of the author alone.
The Romney Marshes Natural Area is a complex of marshes and levels as Fig(1) shows. The suggested inland Area boundary, broadly coincides with the OS 10 metre contour line and the juxtaposition of the alluvial deposits of the Marsh about older sandstones and clays of the pre Ice Age Wealden series.
The Ice Age glaciers never reached this coast but as they thawed a great volume of ice was removed inland and sea levels rose rapidly. Eventually changes slowed to present levels, and the Marsh began to develop between six and eight thousand years ago. The commonly accepted model for that development proposes a gravel barrier building out from Fairlight across the bay towards what is now Hythe. This provided the shelter that allowed a continuum of fresh water to salt marsh to expand in and from the estuaries of the rivers Rother, Tillingham and Brede. The marshes, typically, rose in level during formation. They contributed to the recession of the tideline behind the barrier. Fluctuations in the results of confrontations occurred, but the Marsh is thought to have been well established 3000 years ago.
Fig (2) suggests the situation in Roman times. The soil, geological, and archaeological evidence for the barrier is persuasive. Nevertheless an element of conjecture must be recognised. As time progresses the historical written evidence reduces guesswork.
The important change by late Saxon times, Fig (3) is the silting up of the Hythe inlet and the broaching of the gravel bank further south.
(1) Monographs No. 24 (1988) No.41 (1995) & No.46 (1998) See Reference List
(2) Romney Marsh Survival on a Frontier See Reference List No 5next: Great Storms