Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Elliott originally held that the Portus Lemanis was the estuary at Lympne;[2628] and his opinion was quoted by superficial writers in support of this view several years after he had himself discarded it. For he finally came to the conclusion that, even as early as Caesar’s time, there was no harbour at Lympne.[2629] He tells us that ‘recent investigations in taking a series of levels over the whole of Romney Marsh have established the fact that the estuary must have been closed at the eastern extremity (where the Portus Lemanis is commonly looked for) many centuries before the sea was shut out from ... Romney Marsh Proper; for at the extreme eastern end of Romney Marsh, by Hythe Oaks, the surface of the land is 18 inches higher than it is a mile westward, a state of things that could not have existed had there been any outlet towards the east after the closing of the Marsh westward. The inset and outset of the tides twice a day to and from the estuary would have counteracted the silting, and produced not an elevation, but a depression of the surface. There is ... a regular and continuous fall of the land next the hills, from Hythe Oaks into Appledore Dowles ... the lowest part of the Marsh being 6 feet 6 inches lower than the land at Hythe Oaks. There could have been no silting after the inclosure of the Marsh, and the present level is such as it was when the Marsh was reclaimed.... The barrier which sealed up the eastern mouth of the estuary was the accumulation of shingle from the west, and (sic) which long before the historic period had reached the hills at Hythe Oaks. If Romney Marsh, at the foot of the castrum [Stutfall Castle], was dry land at that time [A.D. 368-9, when Theodosius[2630] was in Britain] and occupied by the Romans (as we know to have been the case), Stutfall could not have been the “Portus Lemanis” ... as it was not accessible from the sea, and lay a mile and a half at least from it. The sea could not have flowed there without putting the whole of Romney Marsh Proper under water to the depth of eight or ten feet every springtide.’ Similarly, Lewin[2631] states, on the authority of Elliott, that ‘the greater elevation of the soil towards the east of Romney Marsh Proper can be only accounted for by the fact that when the shingle “full” had been thrown quite across the Marsh at West Oaks ... the sea still entered from the west, and that, thenceforth, the process of silting went on for many centuries ... most rapidly towards the east, where the water was tranquil, and less rapidly towards the [site of the subsequently erected] Rhee Wall, in which direction was the scour of the current’.

‘Many centuries’ is a vague expression; but for ‘many’ substitute ‘three’, and, even for the time of Caesar, the argument still holds good,—unless Elliott’s theory of the formation of the marsh is to be rejected.

But there are writers whom Elliott’s reasoning (if indeed they have considered it) leaves unconvinced. According to Mr. George E. Fox, it has been proved by excavation that the existing castellum at Stutfall is not earlier than the time of Constantine;[2632] but Sir Victor Horsley, while confirming this statement, tells us that he has himself found ‘in the foundation of the chief gate an altar ... marked with barnacles, having been clearly at one time under the sea’; and from this he infers that an earlier fort was ‘overwhelmed by an incursion of the sea over Romney level’. Sir Victor also tells us that he has found ‘in the concrete boulder formation of the south wall ... a coin of Maximinus, who flourished 237 A.D.’, and ‘at the foot of the wall on the inner side, a Gaulish coin of Tetricus the elder, of a date about 260, and finally in the black soil of the camp, i.e. in the most recent and superficial layers, numerous coins of the Constantine family’.[2633]

I do not know whether Sir Victor Horsley concludes from these discoveries that there was a harbour at Lympne when the earlier hypothetical castellum at Stutfall was destroyed; but at all events that is the opinion of Mr. Fox. But the ‘incursion of the sea’ which Sir Victor Horsley believes to have overwhelmed the original fort, if it was not caused by an abnormally high tide rushing in between Romney and Lydd before the erection of the Rhee Wall, may have been due to a similar tide which burst the bar of shingle between Dymchurch and West Hythe. Even after the marsh had been artificially enclosed, such floods occurred. Stukeley[2634] tells us that ‘George Hunt, an old man, living in the farm-house ... says, once the sea-bank broke, and his house with all the adjacent marshes was floated’,[2635] &c.

Lewin maintained that the Portus Lemanis was neither at Lympne nor at West Hythe, but at Hythe. This, it should be noted, was the conclusion at which he finally arrived:[2636] when he wrote his book on the invasion of Julius Caesar, he held that in 55 B.C. there was a port at Lympne, although in the Appendix to that book he discarded this view, and argued that the only port was a pool harbour extending behind a shingle spit from West Hythe Oaks to a point opposite Shorncliffe. His final view, as we have already seen,[2637] was that this harbour extended no further westward than Hythe itself: but in giving utterance to this opinion he did not explain why he had abandoned the one which preceded it, and indeed made no allusion to it at all.

He states that ‘in the course of ages’, after the shingle had reached West Hythe Oaks, it ‘was again wrested aside and dashed against the hills at Hythe, between the present barracks and the more eastern of the two Hythe bridges over the canal’. He goes on to say that ‘the part between Hythe Oaks and Hythe (now Duck Marsh) was thus barred from the sea, and became a lake into which flowed the rivulet called Slabrook and other springs, and these waters accumulating forced their way back at Hythe Oaks, and there opened a way for themselves ... into the estuary in the west; but, as the flood was not considerable, the outlet was of no great breadth. The shingle spit ... was again carried along eastward until it reached Shorncliffe.... Between Hythe and Shorncliffe, however, was left behind (i.e. north of) the spit, a triangular space, into which flowed two streams ... one from Saltwood and the other called Seabrook, and the waters within this spit were gradually swollen, until they forced a passage through the shingle, at a point near the end of the elm avenue at Hythe.’ The change which his opinion underwent will be at once apparent to any one who compares the map which Elliott constructed for The Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar (facing page liii) with that which accompanies the article in the fortieth volume of Archaeologia[2638] (facing page 369). Lewin argues that it was so easy to exclude the sea from Duck Marsh that ‘probably the inclosure was made by the Britons before the arrival of the Romans. On the south-east,’ he explains, ‘the shingle bank was continuous up to the hills ... on the west the sea entered only from the marsh at the foot of the hills by a narrow channel; and all that was required was a short dam at this point between the shingle bed and the hills.’ The remains of this dam, Lewin observes, are ‘still distinguishable ... at Hythe Oaks, but the part next the hills has been swept away by the military canal. This partial inclosure, prior to the inclosure of Romney Marsh, accounts for a fact otherwise inexplicable, viz. that Duck Marsh is not within the jurisdiction of Romney Marsh.’[2639]

Perhaps. But the date of the construction of the dam is not known. May it not have been made after, or simultaneously with, the erection of the Rhee Wall, to secure Romney Marsh against all possibility of inundation, not to protect Duck Marsh, which, according to Lewin’s earlier view, was originally overflowed by Hythe harbour? In other words, is it not possible that when the dam was made Hythe harbour extended westward as far as West Hythe Oaks? This, as I have already said, was not merely Lewin’s original view: it was also the view which Elliott, his friend and adviser, retained after the publication of the article in Archaeologia. At all events this view finds expression in a map which Elliott prepared for Furley’s History of the Weald of Kent, which was not published until 1871, five years after the appearance of Lewin’s article. That being the case, and considering that Lewin did not explain the reasons which led him to change his opinion, I am unable to follow him.

In support of the theory that the Portus Lemanis was at Hythe Lewin argues, first, that Stone Street terminated at West Hythe; secondly, that the port could not have been at West Hythe; otherwise ‘the whole of West Hythe ... would have been deluged’. ‘The very name,’ he adds, ‘shows that Hythe was the principal town, and West Hythe an accretion to it.’ Thirdly, he affirms that Roman remains have been found at Hythe; and, fourthly, that a branch from Stone Street led to Hythe. He also bases an argument upon the itinerary of Richard of Cirencester, which, as every scholar now knows, is a forgery.[2640]

Stone Street does terminate, as Lewin says, at West Hythe; but the fact goes to prove that it gave access to a harbour which was at West Hythe.[2641] Granting that West Hythe would have been ‘deluged’ if the port had been there, what then? Why should it not have been? Lewin does not explain what he means by ‘the whole of West Hythe’; and, in default of this explanation, it is impossible to understand his argument.[2642] He himself, as we have seen, in his book on the invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar makes the port extend westward as far as West Hythe Oaks; and Black shows that, so far from its being true that West Hythe is merely an ‘accretion’ of Hythe, Hythe is merely East Hythe, and that it is so called in Ogilby’s Britannia.[2643] The discovery of Roman remains at Hythe does not prove that Hythe was the Portus Lemanis any more than the discovery of Roman remains at Dymchurch proves that the Portus Lemanis was there. Or rather, the discovery does not prove that the Portus Lemanis extended no further westward than Hythe; for I freely admit that it extended in front of and to the east of it. It is not proved that a branch from Stone Street led to Hythe;[2644] and if there was such a branch, the fact does not prove that the harbour did not extend as far as West Hythe Oaks. Finally, Black points out that, whereas the distance of Lympne (and, he might have added, of West Hythe) from Canterbury corresponds with that of the Portus Lemanis from Durovernum, as given in the Itinerary of Antonine, the distance of Hythe by road from the same place is two miles further.[2645]

5. The first step taken for the enclosure of Romney Marsh was the erection of the Rhee Wall. By whom and at what date this work was executed is not certainly known. It is generally attributed to the Romans; but Lewin[2646] assures us that Mr. Smiles, in his Lives of the Engineers, ‘expresses an opinion that the Marsh was reclaimed by the Belgae.’ What Mr. Smiles[2647] really says is that ‘the reclamation of this tract is supposed to be due to the Frisians’; and he does not tell us by whom the supposition is entertained, or on what grounds it is based. Lewin himself, asking whether [Appledore] ‘Dowles’ is not derived from the Celtic word dol, says that ‘if a part of Romney Marsh was named by the Ancient Britons, the marsh itself must have been reclaimed by them’.[2648] From the same word Appach[2649] draws precisely the opposite inference. ‘Apuldore Dowles,’ he says, ‘appears to be allied to the Welsh dol, a bend. If so, it would mean a bend or curve, and so a recess or bay; and Apuldore Dowles would mean the bay of Apuldore.’ Whatever may be the value of this argument, the name ‘Apuldore Dowles,’ does not go to prove that Romney Marsh was ‘inned’ by the Britons; for, as Appach[2650] truly remarks, there is no other local name in Romney Marsh Proper which shows any trace of a Celtic derivation.