A seasonal fishermen's settlement at Dungeness
The fishing settlement of Dungeness was typical of many minor fishing sites found along the English coast. It had neither a sheltered haven in which boats could be anchored, nor a quay at which they could be tied up. However, it lay on the eastern shore of the ness which provided some protection for launching boats from the beach, and was particularly favoured because of the shoals of fish which could be caught close inshore.[fn1]
Dungeness is mentioned in 1052 as one of the places visited by earl Godwin when he was amassing ships. Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not state that he took ships from there, Hollister noted that the context of the passage makes clear that that was his purpose.[fn2] Ship service provided by Lydd and the manor of Denge or Dengemarsh, which included Dungeness, is mentioned in a charter of Henry II. That charter was probably a confirmation of earlier arrangements. Lydd and Dungeness were both attached to New Romney as limbs of the Cinque Ports, for they formed complementary sites.[fn3] Lydd, the main settlement in the area, was situated on an inland ridge of shingle at the edge of the fertile marshland. It also lay on the road close to the coast and, although it did not acquire a charter, it developed into a market town during the later medieval period.[fn4] Dungeness, on the other hand, was at the extremity of a shingle wasteland, which was sparsely vegetated and entirely unsuitable for agriculture.
The earliest reference identified to the settlement of 'cabons' or fishermen's huts at Dungeness is an account roll of 1356-7 and they are further mentioned in a rental of 1402.[fn5] It is, however, very probable that there were buildings to store the fishing equipment of the boats operating from Dungeness at an earlier date. By the 15th century the cabins also provided accommodation, for in 1437/8 a messenger was sent from Lydd to the fishermen at Dungeness to show them a letter concerning the raising of the siege of Guisnes Castle, a journey which would have hardly been necessary had they been returning to the town each evening.[fn6]
Lydd was extremely vulnerable to raids by the French and the town accounts record the precautions taken during the 1450s and 1460s against landings. Beacons were established, a watch was kept at the coast and a cannon moved there. In 1457/8 the town purchased a cabin by the coast, evidently to accommodate the watch and those manning the cannon. Small sums were subsequently paid for labour on the buildings and lathes, rods and reeds were bought for the roofing.[fn7]
Fishing varied according to the seasons, with herring caught in the late autumn and sprats over the winter months. Tramelling for plaice and other bottom feeders was allowed between the 15th March and 1st November, but was most common between Easter and 24 August.[fn8] Boats from Dungeness also worked the East Coast fisheries, leaving for Scarborough in June and fishing at Yarmouth in September and October. This tradition of fishing on the East Coast dates from before the late 11th century, when tolls taken from boats from Hastings are mentioned in Domesday Book under the entry for Saljluet in Lincolnshire. The same source also mentions that between Michaelmas (29th September) and St Andrew's Day (30th November) there was the king's truce or peace in Dover, implying that boats were away at that time at the East Coast herring fishery.[fn9] Boats from the Cinque Ports of Sussex and Kent had the privileges in Yarmouth of den and strand, the right to dry their nets on the beach. These rights and others had generated a long-standing enmity between the crews of the two areas.[fn10]
The size of the fishing fleet operating from Dungeness in the 1370s was very modest, although it seems to have increased subsequently. Seven boats were recorded in 1376-7 and five in the following year. There were two windlasses at le Ferhous, perhaps to haul boats on to the beach." The Ferhous itself may have been an early lighthouse. The income from the Dungeness fishing settlement increased in the 15th century, evidently as the number ofboats working from there grew. The account for the year ending 1406 records income from 'outsiders' who were using the local cabins. These were almost certainly the 'westerrunen' mentioned in later accounts, so-named because they came from the West Country. Boats from Dittisham and Sidmouth are mentioned in late I 5th- and 16th-century records.[fn12]
These 'foreign' fishermen lived in the same l;uts with the local men, although an ordinance of 1571, perhaps codifying previous practice, restricted that number to one person or one crew in each hut.
Nets were dried on the shingle by the cabins and rows of racks between 60 and 64 yards long were set close by with barbs for drying fish. 13 Capstans were used to haul the boats on to the beach at Hythe and Brighton, and were presumably used at Dungeness too, although not mentioned in the records examined. A map made in 1599 by John Stoneham shows the cabins with a few diagonal crosses which may be representations of either of the drying racks or the capstans. The cabins are also shown on the more carefully drawn map of Poker dated to 1617.[fn14]
A company or fellowship of Lydd fishermen was established in 1571, perhaps in imitation of a similar organisation formed in nearby Rye four years earlier. i; There was a particular need for such a formal body for the fishermen at Dungeness who had been acting together negotiating a lease of the stade or shore from the Crown and were charged by Lydd Borough with collecting maltots or dues from the 'westernmen'. How far the fishermen also formed a social community, as distinct from a legally associated group, is uncertain though by the late 18th century they had a common dining room situated near the cabins.[fn16]
In the medieval period the cabins are likely to have been built from driftwood and wood from wrecked boats, both because of the prevalence of wrecks along the coast and the absence of other timber in the area.[fn17] They were built in particularly exposed conditions and may not have been long-lasting.
In addition, the site of the settlement is likely to have moved progressively eastwards. The sea has moved shingle from the south side of the point round to the east shore almost continuously, and unless the position of the cabins also changed, they would have become progressively further away from the sea. It is probable that as the buildings were reconstructed, they were placed on new sites nearer to the sea, and thus the whole settlement has gradually shifted eastwards (Fig. 1).
Poker's early 17th-century map is not s_ufficiently accurate to locate the precise position of the cabins and it has not been possible to locate their sites in the field. It may be that very little trace survives of what was probably an insubstantial settlement. However, the physical geography of Denge Beach provides some indication of their likely location. Denge Beach consists of a series of more or less parallel shingle ridges, each of which in turn was a former shoreline. The morphology of these is closely related to periods of storms. It is believed that ridges were thrown up in quick succession during phases of more frequent storm events, and at least in the thirteenth century storms there was a pronounced sharpening of the ness. Very rapid change in the ness morphology may have resulted in the creation of a pit between the ridges, and this is one explanation of the formation of the Open Pits on Denge Beach. They were probably the result of the period of storms in the late 13th century.18 If this is correct, they provide an indication of the position of the coastline at that period. To west of the pits is a significant north south trending ridge (marked A-A on Figure I) which is likely to mark a quiet climatic period when the shoreline was relatively stable. The cabins were presumably to the north of these pits on that sheltered eastern shore. The site of any cabins dating from before the 13th century should probably be sought to the west of that ridge.
The Dungeness cabins are an interesting example of a settlement of considerable longevity, but one which failed to grow into more than a seasonal settlement. It is useful to contrast it with Great Yarmouth which also began in the 11th century or before as a seasonal fishing settlement of a few huts. There, a chapel was constructed in the early 12th century to serve the fishermen, and the town developed around it or nearby. 19 The cabins at Dungeness did not grow in a similar way and the site remained a dependency of Lydd. The main reasons for this were firstly its physical isolation which did not favour its development as a market centre, and secondly its position on the edge of a desert of shingle, a location which could sustain no other activity but fishing. The cabins remained a minor fishing settlement until the present century when they were succeeded by seaside bungalows, some of which themselves continue to be used on a seasonal basis.
Mark Gardiner
Department of Archaeology The Queen's University of Belfast
References
¹ For a late 19th- and early 20th-century description of fishing before the advent of trawling, see M.J. Winstanley, Life in Kent at the Turn of the Century (1978), 137-46. Folkestone.
² Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E text), s.a.; C.W. Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions on the Eve of the Norman Conquest (1962), 120. Oxford.
³ K.M.E. Murray, 'Dengemarsh and the Cinque Ports', English Historical Review 54 (1939), 664-73; Calendar of Charter Rolls 3, 220.
⁴ Its right to hold a market was challenged in 1398 by the neighbouring town of New Romney, Centre for Kentish Studies, NR/FAc 2, ff. 47r., 53r.
⁵ Public Record Office SC6/889/16; SC11/347.
⁶ Lydd Borough Archives (hereafter LBA), LY/FAc 1, f. 22r.
⁷ LBA, LY/FAc 1, ff. 54v., 56r., 58r.
⁸ A.J.F. Dulley, 'The early history of the Rye fishing industry', Sussex Archaeological Collections 107 (1969), 45; LBA, LY/FAc 2.
⁹ DB i, 1a, 375b; K.M.E. Murray, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports (1935), 19. Manchester.
¹⁰ F.W. Brooks, 'The Cinque Ports' feud with Yarmouth in the thirteenth century', Mariner's Mirror 19 (1933), 27-51.
¹¹ PRO SC6/889/27; SC6/890/1.
¹² PRO SC6/1262/13/3; PRO SC6/1107/9; A.J.F. Dulley, 'The early history of the Rye fishing industry', Sussex Archaeological Collections 107 (1969), 45; LBA, LY/FAc 3, p. 214; LBA, FAc 2, p. 177; LBA LY/ZB 9.
¹³ LBA LY/ZB 9.
¹⁴ Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, MA 189; Centre for Kentish Studies (Maidstone), U1823/P2.
¹⁵ Dulley, 'Rye fishing industry', 52; LBA, LY/ZB 9.
¹⁶ E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent 8 (reprinted 1972), 421-2.
¹⁷ Winstanley, Life in Kent, 138, 147. For wrecks in earlier centuries, see Public Record Office, SC2/180/57-65.
¹⁸ J. Eddison, 'The evolution of the barrier beaches between Fairlight and Hythe', Geographical Journal 149 (1983), 39-53; A. Plater and A. Long, 'The morphology and evolution of Denge Beach and Denge Marsh', in J. Eddison (ed.), Romney Marsh: the debatable ground (1995), 11-13. Oxford; A.L. Long and P.D.M. Hughes, 'Mid- and late-Holocene evolution of the Dungeness foreland, UK', Marine Geology 124 (1995), 266-7.
¹⁹ A. Rogerson, 'Excavations on Fuller's Hill, Great Yarmouth', East Anglian Archaeology, Report 2: Norfolk (1976), 131-245. Gressenhall; Murray, History of the Cinque Ports, 18-19.
