Registered Charity No. 297736 THE ROMNEY MARSH IRREGULAR The Newsletter of the Romney Marsh Research Trust St Mary, Kenardington St Dunstan, Snargate St Nicholas, New Romney St Peter & St Paul, Dymchurch No. 31 Spring 2008 Statement of Aims The Romney Marsh Research Trust exists to promote, co-ordinate and disseminate research into the historical, social and physical development of Romney and Walland Marshes and their immediate hinterlands. The Trust invites individuals to become, on payment of a subscription, a Friend of the Romney Marsh Research Trust and to participate in lectures, conferences, field visits and research projects. The Friends receive a biannual publication, The Irregular, which publishes research notes and provides a forum for debate. The Trust receives, raises and holds funds to meet grant applications from academic and other researchers, in order to support credible academic research into the Marsh, of a high standard, which can subsequently form the basis for a wider publication to the local communities. The Trust produces monographs containing the most recent high quality research papers. To date, four such monographs have been published, to high academic acclaim. Adopted by the Trustees of the Romney Marsh Research Trust 31st October 2005 Contents The Editor’s bit ................................................................................... 1 The Secretary writes ........................................................................... 2 Corrections.......................................................................................... 3 References received ........................................................................... 3 The Objectives and Activities of the Trust ........................................ 4 Churches in a Maritime Landscape: An examination of ecclesiastical activity on the Romney Marsh ……………………… 5 Study Day: Broomhill-Midley Sands area ........................................ 20 The Isle of Rye? .................................................................................. 22 The Grove ‘causeway’ across St Mary’s Marsh, Rye, between the 13th and 16th centuries .................................................................... 26 The Editor’s bit Having finally moved house this Irregular comes to you from Malvern, Worcestershire, where, like Rye, few of the streets are on the level. There is the usual interesting mix of papers. David Starkie makes a plea for the study of near contemporary economic history to be included in the Objectives of the Trust. What do others think? The editor will be only too happy to publish any rejoiners. Nathalie Cohen, whose MA thesis looked at various aspects of the churches on Romney Marsh has kindly produced a much condensed version for this edition, while Martyn Waller and Michael Grant report on their work to date the origins of the causeway that links Rye to the ‘mainland’. Gill Draper’s paper compliments this work by looking at the historical evidence for the Grove causeway and St Mary’s Marsh. This being the first Irregular of 2008 it includes, as usual, the booking forms for the events that are being organised through to September. Alan Tyler 1 The Secretary writes ..... This year's AGM at Tenterden was much improved by adding a social element. Roger Nixon, Membership Secretary, organised a pay-bar for an hour before Casper Johnson's excellent talk on landscape. Everyone appeared to feel that this went well - so thank-you to Roger and those who helped him. We plan to run a similar social hour before this year's AGM at New Romney Assembly Rooms, when your editor, archaeologist Dr Alan Tyler, will talk on the theme of Monuments of the Marsh from Domesday to D-Day. Bar volunteers needed. We are very lucky that once again Lympne Castle has invited us to hold our Spring Lecture there - again we have planned for a pre-lecture social hour. I know a lot members will be delighted to welcome back Sheila Sweetinburgh, a former RMRT Secretary, who, in her talk, will bring a historian's perspective to the lives of the medieval fishermen of the Marsh. We have two other events planned - the Winchelsea Archaeological Society will take us, in April on a tour of possibly the best set of (normally locked) medieval cellars in the country, while, in May, we are arranging an important study day at Bodiam Castle. The focus will be on Bodiam as the 'head-port' of the Rother and its relationship to its immediate landscape. For those who wish there will be time to visit the castle itself. The Rye Project goes well and it is time to start working on the publication phase. And this is where we need a team member to focus on funding this final phase. We need someone who can act as an administrator, assessing more precisely what needs to be done by way of publication, identifying sources of funding, filling in grant application forms and, we hope, writing some thank-you letters. The project is directed by Dr Gill Draper, who has the backing of an experienced steering committee. We have an outline publication plan in place and a good idea of possible funding sources; what is missing is someone to make it all happen. If this looks like an interesting way of contributing, as a non-specialist, to a major academic and popular research project, why not email me and I can explain what is involved in greater detail. Terry Burke 2 Corrections Irregular 30 page 14, the date of the ¼d token of ‘William Keye at the Sheepe (Ship) in Rye’ is 1652, not 1692 as stated. References received Herewith a few references to publications relevant to the Marsh and its hinterlands that have been drawn to the attention of the editor. Cohen, N. (2007) Churches in a Maritime Landscape: An examination of ecclesiastical activity on Romn ey Marsh [Unpublished MA thesis, Univ. London] Draper, G.M. (2007) ‘There hath not bene any gramar scole kepte, preacher maytened or pore people releved, other then ... by the same chauntreye’ educational provision and piety in Kent, c.1400-1640, In: Lutton, R. & Salter, E. (eds) Pieties in Transition: Religious practices and experiences, c.1400-1640 [Ashgate Press] Draper, G.M. (2007) Writing English, French and Latin in the Fifteenth Century: A regional perspective, The Fifteenth Century, VII, [Boydell Press] Hope, A. (2007) Martyrs of the Marsh, In: Lutton, R. & Salter, E. (eds) Pieties in Transition: Religious practices and experiences, c.1400-1640 [Ashgate Press] Hutchinson, J.N. (1965) A Survey of the Coastal Landslides of Kent, Note EN 35/65 Watford; Building Research Station Hutchinson, J.N. (1968) Field meeting on the coastal landslides of Kent, 1-3 July 1966, Proc. Geol. Assoc., 79, 227-237 Hutchinson, J.N. (1998) The abandoned cliff of Weald Clay backing Romney Marsh at Lympne, Kent, In: Murton, J. et al (eds) The Quaternary of Kent and Sussex: Field Guide, 65-69 [London; Quaternary Res. Assoc.] Hutchinson, J.N., Poole, C., Lambert, N. & Bromhead, E.N. (1985) Combined Archaeological and Geotechnical Investigations of the Roman Fort at Lympne, Kent, Britannia, 16, 209-236 Long, A.J., Waller, M.P. & Plater, A.J. (eds)(2007) The Late Holocene Evolution of the Romney Marsh/Dungeness Foreland Depositional Complex, UK. [Oxford: Oxbow Books] Lutton, R. (2007) Geographies and Materialities of Piety: Reconciling competing narratives of religious change in pre-Reformation and Reformation England, In: Lutton, R. & Salter, E. (eds) Pieties in Transition: Religious practices and experiences, c.1400-1640 [Ashgate Press] Simpson, P. (2007) The Continuum of Resistance to Tithe, c.1400-1600, In: Lutton, R. & Salter, E. (eds) Pieties in Transition: Religious practices and experiences, c.1400-1640 [Ashgate Press] 3 The Objectives and Activities of the Trust The Autumn 2007 Irregular included the Annual Report of the Trustees and the Objectives and Activities of the Trust. Being a fairly new member I read the Objectives with great interest and saw that the Trust exists “to promote, coordinate and disseminate research into the historical, social and physical development of Romney and Walland Marshes and their immediate hinterlands”. The essential characteristic of the intended research seems to be historical. If this is the case, why do the objectives of the Trust, as currently written, imply that the social development of the Marshes is an appropriate subject (note that historical precedes social in the list of adjectives conditioned by the noun ‘development’). I am being pedantic; I am sure most members will recognise that the intended context is social history. But why not also include in the objectives ‘economic’ history, which has its own distinct way of looking at the world? There are, it would seem to me, a number of interesting topics of contemporary economic history that are worthy of study and could be promoted by the Trust. Let me give two examples. I have on my shelves a dissertation on Romney Marsh written by Mary Roberts in 1956. I am not sure of its precise context but might have been a thesis contributing to a degree. Chapter 5 deals with land use and population, including farming, industry, settlement and communications. The piece on farming for example is most interesting and includes statistics and maps showing how farming patterns on the Marsh changed between 1937 and 1955. Might this not form the basis for a more extensive piece of work on the evolution of the agricultural industry on the Marsh during the last century? Also on my shelves is ‘New Romney: An historical and socio-economic survey and analysis of the community’, a report of nearly 100 pages prepared by students at Leeds School of Town Planning in the summer of 1968. Two of the chapters therein deal with the economic base of New Romney at that time and another chapter deals with the social profile. For example, there is extensive data on the employment structure of the New Romney residents in the 1960s, their place of work, the activity rates of the population and the general employment structure. 4 Much of the material was based on a sample survey of over 300 households. I for one would love to see this work up-dated so that we have a better understanding of how the socio-economic profile of the community has changed since the Second World War.