on a fourth-century site as survivals. It is
not credible that coins of Cunobelin, Augustus and Nero should
do that. At Reculver therefore they indicate some early
occupation. They do not indeed reveal the character of this
occupation, nor can it be easily conjectured from the general
probabilities of the case. But they may perhaps indicate that it
was brief. Unless our details mislead us, it would seem that
coins of the second and early third centuries have been found
comparatively seldom at Reculver, and not in sufficient
quantities to show a continuous use of the spot during those
years. With these faint hints we must be content. Only the spade
can tell us more.
3. RICHBOROUGH.28
Richborough is situated a little
north of Sandwich, near the eastern coast of Kent, two miles
from the present shore. It stands on a low isolated hill, hardly
a quarter of a mile in length and breadth, and hardly higher at
its summit than 60 ft. above sea-level. Round it lies the marsh.
North and northwest are the levels that divide it and all
Kent from the Isle of Thanet, and those levels spread out east
and south, where the Stour winds out to the sea. Only on the
west and south-west is the belt of marsh narrow, and the higher
ground of inland Kent comes nearer. It is a strange remote
place, the last point of vantage (as one might say) towards the
sea and the marsh. In Roman days it was different, but no less
remote. Then the marsh lay open to the sea. Salt water flowed
between Kent and Thanet. The tides came up to the foot of
Richborough,29 and its hill was an island, save
on its inland side, to the south and west. Its ancient position
repeats in several respects the position of Reculver, with added
features and on a larger scale. Reculver is the northeast
extremity of the Blean upland towards Thanet and the sea;
Richborough is the farthest outlier of the Canterbury downs
towards the same. Both spots were in Roman days almost isolated
by sea or salt marsh, and together they blocked the channel
behind Thanet and the approach to Canterbury along the valley of
the Stour. But Richborough was more than a guard-house. The sea,
which once washed the foot of its hill, provided to the east and
north a spacious haven, sheltered (as geologists think) by the
natural breakwater of Stonor beach. Reculver had probably, as we
have seen, a safe anchorage
28 Leland, ed.
Hearne, vii, 1. 138; Camden (ed. 1590), pp. 265, z66;
Battely, Antiq. Rutupinae (Oxon. 1711; ed. 2, 1745, here
cited), sec. 1026, pp. 2148, with far fewer details than
he gives about Reculver; Stukeley (ed. 1),p.118 and plate 97; W.
Boys, Hut, of Sandwich (Canterbury, 1792), pp. 835, 865,
important; King, Munimenta Antiqua (London, 1801), ii,
222, with plan and plates, partly based on information from
Boys; T. C. Bell, Arch. Aeliana, first series, ii, 372;
Thos. Wright, Archaeological Album (London, 1845), pp.
1318, partly repeated Wanderings of an Antiquary, pp.
87100; A.J. Dunkin, Brit. Arch. Assoc. Canterbury Meeting (London,
1845), unimportant; C. R. Smith, Antiquities of Richborough,
Reculver and Lymne (London, a chief authority; short account
by Lewin, Arch. xlvi, 43; G. E. Fox, Arch. Journ. liii,
352, good remarks on structural questions. The earlier
excavations are described by Dowker in Arch. Cant. viii,
114, xviii, 614, xxiv, 20119, and J. Garstang, ibid.
xxiv, 267. The systematic excavations begun in 1922 are being
published by the Society of Antiquaries as Reports of its
Research Committee (1926, 1928, etc.); see also Ant. Journ. viii,
523. Other books and articles describe Richborough, but contain
nothing that is both new and noteworthy. For articles on details
see the following notes. The objects found in recent years are
mostly preserved in a small museum on the site. Other objects,
especially those excavated by Rolfe about 1846, are in the Mayer
collection in the Liverpool Museum; unfortunately, the
provenances of many objects in this collection have been
forgotten. The ruins of Richborough Castle were purchased in
1894 by the Kent Archaeological Society, vested in a body of
trustees and fenced in; they subsequently became the property of
the Nation.
29 Boys states that a sandy
seashore, on which lay a shoe with a metal fibula in it and
human bones, was found in the marsh in digging the foundations
of Richborough Sluice, not far from the north-east corner of the
fort (Hist. of Sandwich, p. 865). |