Note 2572 — THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR

It is hardly necessary to point out that Dungeness is of recent formation. Various theories have been advanced as to its origin (see Mr. F. P. Gulliver’s paper in the Geogr. Journal, ix, 1897, pp. 536-46, and Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, xi, 1852, pp. 212-21); and attempts have been made to determine the time at which the oldest of the shingle ‘fulls’ which constitute the ‘ness’ was formed, by calculating the rate at which the point has advanced seaward since observations began to be recorded. Elliott remarks (ib., vi, 1847, p. 476) that ‘from the best existing data’ Dungeness would appear to extend annually about two yards further out to sea; and that, as the rate of increase was probably more rapid at first, we may conclude that about nineteen hundred years have elapsed ‘since the sea first left the original “full” at Lydd’. According to Redman (ib., xi, 1852, p. 174), the increase has not been regular, and ‘during certain periods the Ness has even been stationary’: from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, he adds, the average annual increase was nearly six yards. This is probably an exaggeration. Sir John Coode (Parl. Papers, lviii, 1873, p. 457) ascertained, from particulars recorded at the Trinity House, that ‘from the year 1792 to 1850 the point advanced seaward 530 feet, or say, at the rate of 9 feet per annum; whilst from 1850 to 1871, the advance was 280 feet, or at the rate of from 13 to 14 feet per annum’. Topley (Mem. Geol. Survey,—The Geology of the Weald, p. 314) thinks that ‘the oldest fulls are 1,000 years or more old’. Similarly Drew (ib., p. 308) says that the shingle which forms Dungeness ‘must have been ... collected since the Rother first came to Romney’. See also H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, 1902, pp. 42-3. ‘In early Roman times,’ he remarks, ‘Dungeness appears not to have existed’; and he suggests that its formation was due to ‘the diversion of the Rother mouth for the purpose of reclaiming Romney Marsh’.