The Story of a Canal for Sandwich Harbour

Since as early as the 7th century, Sandwich became one of the most important ports connecting southern England to mainland Europe.

During medieval times the town saw great prosperity as a safe deep anchorage for merchant shipping. Indeed, successive monarchs valued Sandwich not only because of its geographical location but

also the people, seafarers who were reliable and hard working in support of shipping and the valuable communications artery with Europe. Today Sandwich is one of the best preserved walled medieval towns in England, one of the original Cinque ports, which now lies two miles inland.

By 1500 large vessels could no longer safely navigate the river as far as Sandwich and the town slowly declined as a coastal port. The last large ship passing through the Wantsum channel (now mostly the river Stour) is recorded as being in 1672. However, long before this date, several attempts had been made to create “cuts” or canals to provide better water flow to maintain the depth of Sandwich harbour for big ships.

The reasons why Sandwich and, indeed, Richborough silted up are complex. The map above shows how the coast looked 2000 years ago, illustrating how much the coastline has changed.

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Fig 1: A drawing of the East Kent coastline 2000 years ago showing Sandwich, from the Journal of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology

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Fig 2: Spit formation & Longshore Drift / Coastal & geography map

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Fig 3: Tudor canal scheme Sandwich Kent c.1548, British Library Notes catalogued as Cotton Augustus I.i.f.54]

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Fig 4: OS map showing where the remains of the Rogers Canal is marked Old Haven

The unique currents of the English Channel and the so-called longshore drift (Fig 2) create a northern migration of thousands of tons of shingle and sand, which we continue to observe today.

These deposits build up gradually into sand and shingle “spits”, which slow the flow of water and allow deposits of sand and shingle to settle. A human contribution to this process of “siltation” has been going on for millennia; from the extraction of materials from the ground, e.g. The Romans extracting clay, to the dredging, draining, the creation of dikes, sluices, tracks for animals to the building of sea walls and harbours collectively have all contributed to our changing coastline through time.

Concern grew; Sandwich harbour or haven was in decline as it became smaller and shallower. In 1551 Henry V111 passed a Land Drainage Act funded through local taxation, prompting further attempts to try and save the harbour at Sandwich.

The first attempt to build a “cut” or canal to increase flow to the Stour and harbour came in 1479 with the diverting of the river via

Lydden Bridge and the building of a sluice today known as Vigo sluice.

During this time, several sea walls were also built to reclaim salt marshes for agriculture by draining the land, keeping fresh water in or channelling seawater more efficiently. Many different surveys and plans were also drawn to dredge the river, search for springs, reroute the Stour and build canals or cuts.

In 1548 a military engineer named John Rogers devised a plan to build a canal from Sandwich near the all-important wharves to the sea on both sides of the town. The map below shows the proposed route of the canal.

In 1551 the building of the Rogers canal commenced from south of Sandwich to the sea near the

Sandwich Estate. Sadly, the plan ran into financial problems, and only a short stretch was ever built. On modern maps, what remains of this section of the canal is referred to as the “Old Haven” (Figs 4-6).

From Tudor times onwards, several detailed plans were drawn to build a canal or divert the meanders of the Stour to manage the continued silting up of Sandwich harbour.

Finally, the 18th-century competition with Ramsgate as a more suitable and cost-effective alternative was first muted, culminating in the Ramsgate Pier Bill of 1755.

The Roger’s canal was the only one of several very detailed schemes for preserving the Sandwich Haven, which today it is still possible to walk along if you know where to look.

To the author’s knowledge, only two other canals were ever built in Kent. The first is the 1799 seven-mile canal called Thames and Medway Canal, also known as the Gravesend to Rochester canal. The canal was designed to provide a shortcut for military and commercial vessels from Deptford and Woolwich Dockyards on the Thames to Chatham Dockyard on the Medway. In 1830 a long tunnel through the canal was divided into two. The railway line saw use well into the 20th century, and stretches of the canal are being restored as a leisure waterway.

The second is the well-known Royal Military Canal which runs for 28 miles (45 km) between Seabrook near Folkestone and Cliff End

near Hastings. This canal, with its distinctive zig-zag design every 500 yards to permit a line of site for gun emplacements, was constructed as a defence against the possible invasion by Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars ( 1803-1815).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank Andre Molenkamp for his help finding the Rogers Canal site.

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Fig 5: Walking along inside the canal towards the sea – Photo Jenny Wall

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Fig 6: Walking alongside the canal filled with trees – Photo Jenny Wall

REFERENCES

British Library Notes catalogued as Cotton Augustus I.i.f.54

http://www.thanetarch. co.uk/journal/?p=1315 https://www.staybehinds.com/ station/hollingbourne-instation