manifest in the defences of Pevensey is evidence of a
somewhat later date than the more conventional geometrical planning of
most of the other fortresses. But, on the whole, the Shore was probably
organized as a single unit and most of its fortifications as we know
them erected in a single epoch. In two cases only is there a suspicion
that the work of an earlier period was incorporated in the new scheme.
Good judges have wished to carry back the construction of the walls of
Brancaster and Reculver to an earlier age. Excavations may sooner or
later support their view. But, in the meantime, it presents certain
obvious difficulties. Of Brancaster we know extremely little; of
Reculver we can at least say that coins and other relics found there
suggest an occupation of the site as early as the first century A.D. On
the other hand, there is no evidence of Roman troops being stationed in
southern Britain between the time of the first conquest and the end of
the third century. If, therefore, the fortifications of Reculver should
indeed be proved to be of early date, we may perhaps suspect some
connexion between them and the classis Britannica rather than
with a military garrison of the normal type. A base for the fleet at the
mouth of the busy Thames estuary would not be difficult to explain. It
may be hoped that Reculver will at least be probed sufficiently to
determine this interesting problem.
2. RECULVER.20
Reculver holds a significant position on
the north coast of Kent, nine miles from Canterbury. Here the Blean
hills, which divide the Stour valley from the Thames estuary, reach
their eastern limit and drop to the marshes that encircle Thanet. The
uttermost outlier of these hills, on the edge of the sea and the marsh,
is a low detached mound, rising barely 50 ft. above high-water mark. The
waves wash its northern slope. Eastwards it looks out over wide levels
to the Isle of Thanet. Southwards it commands the same marshes, as they
stretch round the south of Thanet to Richborough and the eastern sea.
Westwards there is also marsh, but only a narrow strip, and the ground
quickly rises to the hills. This mound bears the ruined church of
Reculver with its far-seen spires, a vicarage, and a few cottages,
standing amid the fragments of a Roman fortress-wall.
In Roman times the scene was very different. The marsh to
south and east was then open to the sea. Thanet was a real island, and
ships could probably lie in shelter near the southern rampart of the
fort. On the other hand, the shore, that is now so close to the north,
was then far off. Here the sea has encroached largely during fifteen
centuries.. We can trace at least the later part of the process. Our
first informant, Leland, writing early in the sixteenth century (1530—7),
tells us that ‘a quarter of a mile or a little more’ divided
Reculver from the sea to the north of it. Since that date the
intervening space has been more than swept away. A plan of A.D.1600
reduces the distance to 180 yards. Somner, who died in 1669, speaks of
the church
20 For general accounts see John
Battely’s posthumous Antiquitates Rutupinae (Oxoniae, ed. I,
1711; ed. 2, 1745, which is here cited); Harris, i, 247, 377; Boys
and Duncombe in Nichols’ Bibl. Topogr. Brit. vol. i (1784);
Hasted, iii, 633 foil. (1790); R. Freeman, Regulbium (Canterbury,
1810); C. R. Smith, Richborough, Reculver and Lymne (London,
1850), p. 176; Dowker, Archaeol. Cantiana, xii, 1—13, 248—59;
Lewin, Arch. xli, 431—3, brief and adding nothing; Fox, Archaeol.
Journ. liii, 352—6; B. Willson, Lost England (1902), pp. 140—4,
brief sketch of coast erosion; and Gordon Home, Arch. Journ. lxxxvi,
260. For special references see the following footnotes. |