[2568] Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, vi, 1847, p. 467.
[2569] T. Lewin, The Invasion of Britain, &c., 1862, pp. lxviii-lxix. See also p. lvi.
[2570] Archaeologia, xl, 1866, pp. 361-74.
[2571] Lewin observes (The Invasion of Britain, &c., 1862, pp. lvii-lviii) that as far eastward as West Hythe Oaks the shingle ‘fulls’ all curve westward, having been bent in that direction by the inrush of the tides; while from West Hythe Oaks to Sandgate they all curve towards the east. This, he says, proves that when they were formed, the mouth of the estuary near Hythe had already been closed. Appach, on the other hand (C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions, p. 21, § 9), does not believe that the shingle spit reached West Hythe Oaks. Referring to the change of curvature in the shingle fulls, he says that it was ‘evidently due to the cessation of the indraught’, which was ‘obviously caused by the erection of the ancient wall at West Hythe’. Hence, he concludes, ‘the fulls to the north of the point [where the change of curvature takes place] ... were not formed until after the wall at West Hythe was built; and as this is part of the north-eastern boundary of Romney Marsh, it follows that the fulls in question were formed after the formation of Romney Marsh.’ Lewin also mentions ‘the ancient wall at West Hythe’; but his final theory is that the erection of this dam became necessary because the shingle spit, after it had reached West Hythe Oaks, was burst by the waters, fed by the streams mentioned above (p. 532), which accumulated in the space between West Hythe Oaks and Hythe (see p. 547, infra). Appach holds that Romney Marsh was not formed until after the Romans had abandoned Britain; and he is therefore constrained to argue that Hythe Haven did not exist during the Roman occupation, and that the Portus Lemanis was at Lympne. Both of these theories will be refuted in this article (pp. 543-8, infra).
[2572] 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’.
[2573] Cot., Aug. I, i, 24-5.
[2574] The Invasion of Britain, &c., 1862, pp. lvii-lx, cxx; Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, xi, 1852, p. 169. Cf. Mem. Geol. Survey,—The Geology of the Weald, p. 312. Dowker (Twenty-third Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc., 1881, p. 66) suggests that the Hythe beach may have come from the east!
[2575] Proc. Geologists’ Association, xv, 1898, pp. 211-23.
[2576] It would be a waste of time to catalogue these blunders, which will be obvious to any one who knows the literature of the subject: but I may remark that Dowker devotes several pages to a refutation of Elliott’s earlier theory, which Elliott himself corrected in the notes with which he furnished Lewin; and that he ignored or was ignorant of Elliott’s matured conclusions. He says (p. 214) that Elliott’s ‘first paper was written to assist Mr. Lewin ... and his theory was printed with Mr. Roach Smith’s “History of Further Excavations and History of the Roman Castrum at Lympne”’. Elliott’s first paper (Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, vi, 1847) was not written to assist Lewin; nor was his second, which was printed, not in a book which neither Roach Smith nor any one else ever published, but as an appendix to Roach Smith’s Report on Excavations made on the site of the Roman Castrum at Lymne, 1852. The notes which Elliott wrote to assist Lewin were printed in the second edition of Lewin’s Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar, which appeared in 1862, and which Dowker never mentions. The unhappy man cannot even refer correctly to his own works. In his bibliographical note (p. 223) he quotes under his own name a paper ‘On the River Limen’, in Archaeol. Cant., vol. xviii, in which no such paper is to be found.
[2577] Proc. Geologists’ Association, xv, 1898, p. 219.