The Romney Marsh
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In this section: the fifth continent --- marsh formation --- marsh drainage --- farming --- Dungeness power station --- Dungeness lighthouses --- churches --- Rhee wall

Marsh Drainage

Reclamation and Occupation
The whole Marsh is sub-divided into several different smaller marshes, each of which was reclaimed at a different time.
The map shows the division into Romney Marsh proper, Walland Marsh, Denge Marsh, Pett Level, and the Rother Levels.

Denge Marsh
Saxon land-charters show that Denge Marsh, which was surrounded on three sides by massive shingle banks, was occupied in Saxon times.

Romney Marsh Proper
The Domesday Book shows that by 1086 the whole of Romney Marsh Proper was occupied. Domesday recorded most of the churches now known there (and a few which cannot be identified now). At this time, that area was still protected from the sea on the east by a great shingle bank. So it is unlikely that any major sea-walls were needed. To the south lay salt-marsh which probably provided fish and sea-birds to augment the local diet, and reeds and rushes for houses.

Walland Marsh
None of the churches on Walland Marsh are mentioned in Domesday Book, and it was only to cope with the demand for new land caused by a sharply rising population that the frontier of colonisation moved south-west across Walland Marsh.
In the 13th century the sea broke down the shingle barrier which had previously extended across the present area of Rye Bay, from Fairlight to Dungeness. This defended the south side of the Marsh against the sea. The old town and port of Winchelsea (which stood on the shingle barrier somewhere off the present mouth of the Rother) was washed away between 1249 and 1280, and in 1280 king Edward I, ordered three senior officials to establish a new town on ”the hill of Iham”.

This is the town of Winchelsea we know today.
Sea-floods in the 1200s and 1300s checked southward colonisation, and the Black Death in 1349 brought demand for new land to an end. Then, between 1400 and 1700 salt-marshes were reclaimed for sheep pasture in connection with the Wealden woollen industry, so that by 1700 the map of Walland Marsh was similar to that of today.