V. DOVER HARBOUR
That a natural harbour existed at Dover in the time of Caesar is beyond dispute. It is mentioned under the name of Portus Dubris in the Itinerary of Antonine;[2538] and it was connected by a Roman road with Canterbury and London, and also with Richborough. Napoleon the Third[2539] affirms that it was entirely choked up about 950 A.D.; but this is a blunder, for the harbour is mentioned in Domesday Book.[2540] Even as late as 1582 it was stated by an engineer, named Thomas Digges, that ‘Before the peere was builte out, there are men alyue can remember that was no banckes or shelues of beache to be seene before Douer,[2541] but all cleane sea betwene Arteclif [Archcliff] tower and the castle clyffe’.[2542] Captain Martin[2543] holds that the remains of anchors which have been dug up out of meadows in the valley prove that the estuary was navigable as far as Crabble;[2544] and he believes that it actually extended to Water’s End,[2545] and covered the sites of the villages of Charlton and Buckland. Canon Puckle, however, argues that ‘the primitive haven’ covered a space which extended barely a quarter of a mile inland, ‘bounded by the lower half of St. James’ Street, Dolphin Lane, and Russell Street, and the east end of Dolphin Lane,’[2546] and he states that when this area was ‘partly uncovered in excavating for the new Russell Street gas works, quays and hawser-rings were brought to light’. Captain Martin’s estimate, which is based upon very uncertain data, must be regarded as an exaggeration: the estuary may possibly have extended up to Crabble, but was certainly not navigable so far except perhaps by coracles. Many years ago the remains of a Roman bath were discovered on the site of St. Mary’s church,[2547] and in 1887 a statue belonging to the period of the Roman occupation was found ‘during excavations for the foundation of the Carlton Club, in the Market Place’.[2548] These discoveries help to define approximately the western limit of the harbour; and I believe that Planche 17 of the Atlas accompanying Napoleon’s Histoire de Jules César[2549] represents it with tolerable accuracy.
MAP OF
ROMNEY MARSH PROPER
and
the parts adjacent
Reproduced from the map facing page liii of T. Lewin’s “Invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar,” 2nd. Edit. Showing what lands would have been covered by the sea at high water (medium spring tides) before the construction of the Rhee Wall. The figures denote the depth in feet, according to levels taken by J. Elliott, of the present surface below the high-water mark of Spring Tides.