Note 2484 — THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR

‘It is certain,’ wrote Dowker in 1876 (Archaeol. Journal, xxxiii, 59), ‘that when the sea swept the Stonar beach, Deal had no existence.’ Even men of science sometimes use the word ‘certain’ a little rashly. At that time Dowker asserted that the Stonar beach ‘must have travelled from the cliff between Dover and Deal’. In 1887 (Proc. Geologists’ Association, ix, 174-5) he ‘pointed to the stones of which it is composed as evincing their origin from the cliff at Pegwell.... To imagine it to have travelled from the south, we must,’ he said, ‘have a shore-line cutting far back beyond the Deal beach, of which at present there was no evidence.’