The ancient topography of Wissant, of the estuary of the Liane, and of the headlands of Blancnez, Grisnez, and Alprech, is discussed in the article on the Portus Itius.[2453]
The inland extension of the bay formed by the estuary of the Canche has steadily diminished since the time of Caesar; and whereas, during the last century at all events, the headland on its southern side has gained considerably on the sea, the ‘Pointe de Lornel’ on the north and the neighbouring sand-dunes have suffered continual erosion.[2454]
The country which lies between the hills of Artois and the sea, from the mouth of the Canche to the mouth of the Somme, is, as Reclus[2455] remarks, of recent formation; and, as late as the ninth century, the environs of the town of Rue, which is now about six miles from the sea, were covered by a vast shallow lake, 20,000 hectares, or about 78 square miles, in extent.
THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR
This volume is not a treatise upon the physical geography of Ancient Britain; and I am only concerned with geographical questions in so far as they are essential to a right understanding of the history. It is impossible to understand the narrative of Caesar’s invasions of Britain without considering how far the physical geography of that part of the island which was the theatre of his operations differed from what it is now.
I. BETWEEN RAMSGATE AND SANDOWN CASTLE
Thanet, as everybody knows, was an island in Caesar’s time; and Bede[2456] says that it was separated from the mainland by an estuary three furlongs broad: but the late George Dowker[2457] concluded from ‘an attentive examination of the estuary’ that it was ‘much shallower and narrower than is generally supposed’.
John Lewis,[2458] a well-known antiquary of the eighteenth century, and William Boys,[2459] the historian of Sandwich, maintained that an estuary, in which was included the harbour of Richborough, known to the Romans as Portus Ritupis, had extended from the cliffs of Ramsgate southward to Walmer, covering the sites of Stonar and Sandwich and indeed the whole of the low ground between Sandwich and Deal, and washing the shore of an island on which stood Richborough Castle. A recent writer, Mr. H. Sharpe,[2460] who endorses this opinion, argues that the Roman road from Canterbury to Richborough harbour (ad portum Ritupis[2461]) terminated at Each End. The road ‘cannot’, he insists, ‘have run to Sandwich in Roman times. Montagu Burrows ... Cinque Ports, 1888, p. 30,[2462] says—“Sandwich and Stonar are wholly English. No Roman remains have been found at either” ... there is good reason to suppose that the land upon which it [Sandwich] stands and the land over which the Sandwich end of the road runs were not formed when the Romans were here.’[2463] And again, ‘There is another reason for supposing that Each End was ... the place where the boats left the mainland for the island [of Richborough]. [The road running northward from Dover] is marked on the Ordnance map[2464] as a Roman road, and if complete would run to Each End, not to Richborough Castle or to Sandwich ... the last mile from [Woodnesborough] to Each End, is missing.’[2465]
Now, in regard to Stonar, Professor Burrows, as we shall presently see, is mistaken; and, granting that the Roman road from Dover would, if complete, run to Each End, how can Mr. Sharpe prove that it did not run further? The late George Dowker stated, in a paper which was published after his death, that he had himself ‘traced the Roman road to Woodnesborough, and thence by Each End to near the Richborough Island’;[2466] and the views of Lewis and Boys, which Mr. Sharpe endorses, as to the wide extent of the estuary at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain have been stultified by discoveries to which Mr. Sharpe does not allude. Roach Smith affirms that ‘Roman remains, indicative of habitations, have been discovered in the sand-hills considerably to the north of Sandown Castle’, and that ‘coins have been found at Stonar, opposite to Richborough’; and from these facts he infers that ‘the recession of the sea from the low land between Thanet and Walmer probably commenced at a period much earlier than has been commonly supposed’.[2467]