( 62 )
STONAR AND THE WANTSUM CHANNEL.
PART I.—PHYSIOGRAPHTOAL.
BY E. W. HARDMAN, LL.D., E.S.A., AND W. P. D. STEBBING,
E.S.A., E.G.S.
STONAR is a smaU parish of irregular longitudinal shape
containing 717 acres and lying between Ebbsfleet and
Sandwich on the Sandwich—Ramsgate road. It has a
written history going back to Saxon times and its existence
in the period of the Roman occupation is sufficiently indicated.
But the outstanding interest and importance of
Stonar lie in its physical and geological record. In its
stones and configuration, its closely confined encirclement
and environment, are preserved the record of vast physical
changes that occurred in the prehistoric period. The rise
and fall of Stonar were not fortuitous. Its fortunes were
moulded and determined by inexorable laws of cause and
effect which had been in silent operation for thousands of
years before the Christian era. If the effects, so far as
Stonar is concerned, were local and mainly confined to the
neighbouring chalk cliffs and the Wantsum Channel, the
causes were of far wider extent.
For clearness and convenience the physical history of
the Wantsum Channel may be summarized in the six
propositions set out below. (See map.)
1. The Wantsum strait is a partly eroded channel in
a shaUow synchme of the ChaUt which outcrops
on both sides of it. In a portion of this depression
between Minster and Ebbsfleet are the
denuded remnants of the immediately later
(Tertiary) formation known as Thanet Sand.1
1 H. J. Osborne White, " Tho Geology of tho country near Ramsgate
and Dover." Mem. Geol. Survey, 1928, p. 46. Asynolino may bo denned
as strata dipping towards a common lino in a hollow depression.
{•>£«. >fcU<*, V ^
VIEW OF THE NORTHEHN END OF STONAR. WITH THE BUILDINGS OF THE SALT WORKS.
Engraving dated 1812.
STONAR AND THE WANTSUM CHANNEL. 63
2. The dominant currents formerly swept into the
Channel through its northern entrance and pUed
up vast quantities of redeposited Thanet Sand
and the newer Eocenes round its eastern exit.
3. The Thanet chalk cUffs. formerly extended much
farther seaward, and the flint shingle eroded
from them was for a long time carried out to
sea in a southerly direction. But the accumulation
of fine materials round the eastern exit
of the Channel formed a bank which arrested
the dispersal of the flint shingle and caused it
to deposit in a narrow Une directly across the
eastern mouth of the Channel.
4. Stonar as land surface did not exist in the early
period. Its development as land was brought
about by a combination of three factors
operating successively: (a) The existence of
Thanet Sand as a backing ; (b) Accumulation
against and on it of flint shingle from the
Thanet cUffs ; (c) Deposit of silt against the
shingle. The relation of cause and effect existed
between each of these stages and its successor.
5. The formation of Stonar was the principal factor in
the silting up of the Wantsum Channel. The
tidal currents were largely blocked, the sea
channel disappeared, and there remained only
the outflow of the two Stours over a part of its
bed.
6. The next change to be noted did not develop out of
local conditions but acted in opposition to them.
Hitherto the North Sea had formed a bay
opening into the Atlantic on its northern side,
and the EngUsh Channel another bay opening
into the Atlantic on its western side. These
bays were separated by a chahk ridge which
formed a land bridge between England and the
Continent. Owing mainly to land subsidence
this land bridge at a very early date was
64 STONAR AND THE WANTSUM CHANNEL.
breached by the sea, and the straits of Dover
were opened. A huge volume of the tidal
currents rushed along the EngUsh Channel from
the Atlantic and poured into the North Sea
from the south. The easterly drift began. The
dominant tides now reached the east coast of
Kent from the south, and shingle washed from
the chalk cliffs of the South Foreland traveUed
along the coast in a northerly direction. The
Goodwin Sands were formed : shingle was laid
along the low coasts of Walmer and Deal and
formed an outer fringe to the bank of Thanet
Sand which lay beyond them.
THE CONTINENTAL SHELP.
The physical changes have extended over a wide area,
but the area has a unity of its own. Lf we look at a physical
map of Europe we see that the British Isles are the highest
part of a great continental shelf. The surrounding seas are
aU shaUow. St. George's Channel and the Irish Sea, the
EngUsh Channel, the North Sea (mcluding the Baltic) and a
belt along the west coast of Ireland and the north coast of
Scotland as far as the Shetland Isles, stand out in sharp
contrast to the deeps of the Atlantic Ocean. In the North
Sea the depth hardly ever exceeds fifty fathoms, and in
places it is reduced to ten fathoms or less. On the other
hand the Atlantic at a distance of fifty or sixty mUes only
from the Irish coast reaches a depth of over a thousand
fathoms. See especiaUy the physical maps of Europe and
of the British Isles in Sir Cyril Fox's Personality of Britain,
3rd edition, 1938.
This continental shelf has been less stable than the
continental land mass or the deep seas. A comparatively
sUght rise or faU of the shelf would increase or diminish the
land surface. There is evidence that on more than one
occasion Britain has been joined to the continent of Europe.
The South Downs has its continuation and counterpart in the
chalk hiUs of Artois in north-eastern France. It is also
clear from raised beaches, old high river banks, submerged
STONAR AND THE WANTSUM CHANNEL. 65
forests and other indications that the changes have sometimes
been of a local character and have not affected the
whole of the shelf. But they have always taken place on
some part of it.
The continental shelf would seem to have reached its
greatest elevation in the Glacial ages and to have been
foUowed by a long period of subsidence which only came to
an end in the second mUlennium B.o. In the earUer period
much of the North Sea was continuous land (see Prehistoric
England, by Grahame Clark, p. 1). In the EngUsh Channel
there was the land bridge at Dover, and Jersey was joined
to the continent. (See The Bailiwick of Jersey by Jacquetta
Hawkes and F. E. Zeuner, Ph.D., " The origin of the
EngUsh Channel." Discovery, July, 1935.)
Numerous smaUer changes not associated with any
general rise or faU of the land have taken place. Many of
these have been due to the movement of material by sea action
from one place to another. The changes in the North Sea
have to some extent differed in character from those in the
EngUsh Channel, but in both the outline of the coasts has
been altered. See the instructive section on changes of
land within the Prehistoric Period in Southern Britain in
Fox, op. cit., pp. 23-6, and especiaUy Dr. F. J. North's map,
Figure 10, on p. 25.
THE NORTH SEA.
The North Sea at the present day presents features
which are consistent with its having been in past times an
enclosed bay having an opening into the Atlantic on its
northern side. The coast Une'of HoUand and North Germany
from the Scheldt to the Elbe, the Zuider Zee and the Frisian
Islands, show exactly the low broken Une of mixed land and
sea, of sand and sUt, that we should expect to find on a lee
shore where the outflow of rivers mingles with the dying
tides. The four great estuaries on the east coast of Britain aU
open out towards the north-east: Moray Firth, the Firth of
Forth, the Wash (estuary of the Witham, WeUand, Nen and
Great Ouse) and the Thames and Medway estuary. The
numerous submerged banks of fine deposits in the Thames
8
66 STONAR AND THE WANTSUM CHANNEL.
estuary are mostly elongated towards the north-east and Ue
along the coast Une of Essex and Suffolk. Dunwich on the
Suffolk coast has been washed away by the sea and its
remains now perhaps exist in the mud banks lying along the
coast. It was Domnoc in the time of Bede (c. A.D. 730)
and at that time the seat of a bishopric. The North Sea is
deepest at its northern opening and shaUows considerably
in its southern part especiaUy south of the Dogger Bank.
These facts point to a time when the dominant tides of the
North Sea came from the north. But the clearest and most
conclusive proof is found in the southward travel of the
Stonar shingle.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL.
The evidence of tidal action in the Channel is stronger
and more uniform. The movement is aU in one direction.
The eastward drift has carried everything before it. Old
Winchelsea was swept away in 1287. Old BroomhUl
(Prumhel in c. 1165), a vttlage on the borders of Kent and
Sussex and a Liberty of Romney, has also disappeared. On
the other hand there have been gains of land on and near
the Kent coast. The ancient Cmque Port harbours of
Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich have been
choked up with shingle and sUt. As early as A.D. 741 the
mouth of the river Limene had been driven to the east as far
as Romney (see King Eadbriht's charter of Romney of that
date, B.C.S. 161, and King Offa's charter of Lydd in 774,
B.C.S. 214), and it continued to advance in the same direction
untU it was halted by the cliffs of Hythe. Then in the great
inundation of 1287 which destroyed Old Winchelsea the
river broke back and has since (as the Rother) entered the
sea at Rye. The great mass of shingle which forms the
promontory of Dungeness has been formed and is still
growing. The wide open river estuaries which form a
conspicuous element in the North Sea are not found in the
Channel. They have been smoothed out by the travel of
shingle backed by the deposit of hill- and river-wash. The
EngUsh Channel was at an early period an enclosed bay
opening into the Atlantic on its western side and these
•
LAND BELOW
JO FEET
RECoLyggl
THA N ET
CHIStETj EUU5TEH
rCOTTIN&TQ
WeSTMARS
STQwAftf**5
f ICKHAM
-t-WIN&HAM
THE WANTSUM CHANNEL AS IT REMAINS TO-DAY.
68 STONAR AND THE WANTSUM CHANNEL.
changes have aU occurred since the opening of the Straits
of Dover enabled the tidal currents to sweep through into
the North Sea.
THE WANTSUM CHANNEL.
Thanet is, or rather was, an island at the southern
corner of the Thames estuary, and was known from a very
early period. It is mentioned by Solinus (c. A.D. 280), Bede
(c. 730), Asser (893), and frequently in the Saxon charters
from 675. Asser says it was caUed Tenet in the Saxon
tongue but Ruim by the British. From Monkton and
Minster to the cliffs on the north and east sides it consists
for the most part of an elevated chahk plateau, but along the
Wantsum Channel on the west and south sides Ues a stretch
of low marsh land. The Thanet Sand of Minster extends
eastwards as far as CUffsend. It forms outUers in Weatherlease
HU1 and Richborough and a Uttle farther to the east
the denuded remnants are exposed in a long spur to a point
on the Sandwich—Ramsgate road south of Halfway House
and opposite Pepperness. The British name of Thanet,
Ruim, seems to mean marsh and to imply that the side
adjoining the mainland of Kent was best known to the early
inhabitants.
Thanet was separated from Kent by the Wantsum sea
channel. The latter is first mentioned by Bede who says :
" On the east of Kent is the large isle of Thanet containing
according to the EngUsh way of reckoning six
hundred families, divided from the other land by the river
Wantsum which is about three furlongs over and fordable
only in two places for both ends of it run into the sea."
Into the Wantsum were discharged the waters of the
river Stour which drained a large area of East Kent and
opened out into a tidal estuary at Fordwich before reaching
the Wantsum at Stourmouth. The Little Stour also reached
the Wantsum at Stourmouth, and various smaUer streams
drained into the sea channel at other places. The streams
were flat and sluggish with much sUt brought down as hiUwash
but the channel was scoured by the tides.
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