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of mud at low water, covered with a shallow sea at high water. 

 And we may note the mouth of tlie river running through this 

 tract, with mud and sand banks on either side ; and this we may 

 picture to have been the state of the Wantsum estuary as Beds 

 described it. In this case it was quite practical to recover much of 

 the land from the sea during neap tides by the erection of sea 

 walls, and this appears to have been the case the Monks of 

 St. Augustine's having thus recovered large tracts of land. 



The maps of the district are instructive as marking the gradual 

 advance of the mouth of the river towards Pegvvell Bay, but maps 

 prior to the reign of Queen Elizabeth are not reliable, the earliest 

 of these in the author's possession is dated 1579, and here we find 

 the mouth of the river about opposite the Stonar cut. The next 

 map, that of John Speed, dates about 1608. Then there is one by 

 Emma Bowen, 1751 ; and a curious map by Christopher Packe, o£ 

 Canterbury, 1743, which traces the river sources and valleys. 

 Since these we have the Admiralty Charts and Ordnance Survey 

 Maps. In all of these we may trace the advance of the sand-hills 

 and Shellness point more and more Northward, till at the present 

 time the mouth stretches across Pegwell Bay and close in to 

 Eamsgate Harbour. It is a difficult task to trace backward, and 

 to get at the original state of this mouth of the Stour to the date 

 of the Roman occupation of Britain ; and yet with the help of the 

 data that these observations afford we can, with tolerable certainty, 

 determine what it must have been. But we must not be misled by 

 the map published in Hasted's " History of Kent," copied from 

 Battley, which gives a very false notion, and represents a deep sea 

 with wide mouth between Thanet and the mainland. In addition 

 to the Stonar beach, which contracted the mouth and left but one 

 opening towards Sandwich, there are evidences of salt marshes 

 that stood between it and the sea shore. At Pegwell, within the 

 memory of the author, there had been green meadows between the 

 cliff at Cliff's End and the sea, wLich have since disappeared from 

 the encroachments of the sea and the river's mouth. And it is 

 evident that at every turn of the mouth of the river inland, there 

 had been a destruction of the original beach, and at times this 

 destruction of the natural defences threatened to let the sea again 

 overflow the level between Minster and Ash. And we find that 

 artificial embankments had been raised for the protection of the 

 land. Such a wall is now known as the boarded groin near the end 

 of Ebbs' Elect lane. Ancient embankments then are monuments 

 that speak to us of the former presence of the waters, from them 

 we may learn that at the time of the Romans, or perhaps at the 

 time of the Saxon and Danish invasion, the mouth of the river was 

 near Sandwich, and that the bay between Sandwich and Pegwell 

 had formerly been occupied chiefly by low, swampy marshes or 

 alluvial mud banks, overflowed by the spring tides. 



