The English Coast: A History and a Prospect

THE ENGLISH COAST

Benacre Broad, Suffolk: a coastal landscape in transition. The Broad, on the left of the scene, is at present a fresh to brackish-water lake, separated form the North Sea only by a low barrier beach of shingle and sand. The barrier was breached during winter storms in recent years, and has later re-formed, though it will eventually breach permanently. Mature trees have been killed by rising saline groundwater, and freshwater peats are eroding on the beach. Coasts are dynamic but historic assets are fixed.

The English Coast A History and a Prospect

Peter Murphy

Continuum UK, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX Continuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © Peter Murphy 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2009 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 184725 143 5 Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand Printed and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall, Great Britain

Contents Figures

vii

Introduction

ix

Acknowledgements 1 The deep past

xiii 1

2 Lost and new-made lands

25

3 Money, money, money . . .

59

4 England defended

111

5 Bodies and souls

145

6 What next?

181

Appendix: The scientific basis

203

Notes

215

Bibliography

241

Index

265

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Figures Frontispiece Benacre Broad, Suffolk 1 2 3

A middle Palaeolithic hand axe, dredged from Aggregate Extraction Area 240, off the East Anglian coast

4

The pre-glacial North Sea and English Channel region (Parfitt et al. 2005

8

Submerged Mesolithic landscape in the southern North Sea (Gaffney et al. 2007)

20

Landscape change at the Stumble: Early-Middle Neolithic. Image by Ian Brown, from Murphy (2007)

27

Landscape change at the Stumble: Iron Age to Medieval. Image by Ian Brown, from Murphy (2007)

28

North Wootton, Norfolk. Medieval ‘sleeching mound’, and palaeochannel

39

A Middle Saxon V-shaped fish-trap at Holbrook Bay, Suffolk. Aerial photograph by D. Strachan, courtesy of Essex County Council

46

Clifton Marshes, Ribble estuary, Lancashire. A relict sea-bank, now lying in grazing-marsh landwards of the modern line of sea-defence

53

The hulk of the Tuesday of Rochestor, in the Deben estuary, Suffolk. Courtesy of Suffolk County Council

69

The West Gate, and re-located fish market and cloth-hall at Southampton, Hampshire

71

11

The Customs House at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 1683

94

12

The surviving Roman lighthouse at Dover Castle, Kent

107

13

Hadleigh Castle, Essex, constructed from around 1230 by Hubert de Burgh

122

The De La Warr Pavillion at Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, of 1935, architects S. Chermayeff and E. Mendelsohn

162

Bant’s Carn, Halangy Down, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly

168

4 5 6 7

8

9 10

14 15

For Lawrie

Introduction In this book I look back to the earliest evidence for humans in this far corner of North-West Europe, from at least around 700,000 years ago, and forward to the end of the present century, in an attempt to examine the interaction between people and the coast of England. The most compelling reasons for wanting to write this book are that it has always been at the coast that interesting and significant events have happened first, and that they look set to do so in the future. It is at the coast that the effects of climate change are first experienced, and where evidence for human adaptation in the past to environmental changes can most readily be seen. The coast has, of course, also been a cultural contact zone for millennia, in terms of trade, industry, immigration and conflict; and so it has always been a focus of innovation, danger, disease, news, gossip and fun. We are certainly at a time of great environmental and economic transition, so it is apt now to take a long view, to place current events in context. Some changes happening today, though seemingly unprecedented, in fact are not; others are entirely new. We can be sure, though, that in the future the coast and sea will become increasingly important to us, both as an economic benefit and a threat. Coastal change has fascinated people for centuries, as is illustrated by legends of lost lands, and of church bells still ringing under the sea. In archaeological terms, the volume of papers edited by F. H. Thompson was one of the first to attempt a national overview of archaeology and coastal change, and it has been followed by other review volumes.1 Barry Cunliffe has defined an ‘Atlantic’ maritime culture, linked by the trade routes of the western seaways from Gibraltar to Orkney, and originating in prehistory.2 More recently still, investigations have been extended offshore to examine submerged prehistoric landscapes and coastlines in the North Sea and English Channel.3 We know very much more about ancient events on our coast than we did even a few years ago, and our understanding of future climate change, which will impact the coast first, is also rapidly becoming more reliable.4 Archaeologists are interested first and foremost in material culture and the historic environment, in using the direct or indirect physical remains of past peoples to infer something about their behaviour. Consequently, wherever possible, I will give examples of sites and locations that can be seen and visited today. However, a book of this type inevitably draws on other disciplines: principally history, geology, climate science, palaeoecology and palaeogeography. To pull together information from such a range of sources, and to attempt to synthezise it, is risky. Inevitably it will lead to criticism, some of it justified, from specialists; but if I excite a few people’s imaginations, and inform them, I will have achieved my objective. A book

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INTRODUCTION

of this length cannot provide depth, but it can give an introduction to the subject and outline current issues, besides providing references for readers wishing to explore further. Chapter 1 takes us back some 700,000 years or more, to the earliest evidence for pre-modern humans in North-West Europe, and on to around 6,000 years ago, when the English coast had taken up very approximately its present form. Over this vast span of time, there were massive changes in climate and sea levels, which at times largely determined the presence or absence of humans. In Chapter 2 the focus is on coastal change over the last 6,000 years, and the interaction between people and the coast over that time, as they gradually developed a degree of control over their environment. Economic exploitation of our coasts and seas for trade and industry is the subject of Chapter 3. At times the coast has been a front line in conflict, and so military defence, from prehistory onwards, will be the subject of Chapter 4. The physical experience and spiritual aspirations of individuals can so easily become lost in sweeping accounts of long-term historical processes, so in Chapter 5 I will attempt to redress the balance by focusing, where possible, on individuals and local communities. Finally, in Chapter 6, I look – uncertainly – to the future and, in particular, I consider how our historic environment on the coast can be conserved at a time of great change.5 Cunliffe adapts the French historian Braudel’s concept of the longue durée to the study of the prehistoric and early historic past, referring to the ‘deep rhythm of underlying forces influencing human society’.6 Indeed, as just one example of that, some researchers now suspect that human effects on climate, and hence sea levels and coasts, date back to a much earlier period than hitherto suspected: the deforestation of Eurasia from around 7,000 years ago may have been a factor in increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and hence preventing the cooling that occurred at similar stages of earlier interglacials.7 This suggestion is debatable, but the case for anthropogenic effects on climate in more recent times is proven beyond reasonable doubt. The longue durée, a consequence of past events, plainly must extend into the future. It should be very long indeed. Archaeological sites, historic buildings and landscapes on the coast are very vulnerable to destruction by future change. What should we do about this? Does our society value these things sufficiently to fund conservation, or recording, from tax revenues? Do they matter at all to most people? My view is that one mark of the civilization of any society is its willingness to respect and conserve its heritage, and to allocate sufficient resources to do so. In difficult times there may seem to be more pressing issues than conserving historic buildings or archaeological sites; but I think that if we lose those things, we lose part of ourselves. As I end the writing of this book and decide not to incorporate anything more, I am aware that it will become out dated before it is published, particularly at its chronological edges. Ongoing research is very likely to push back in time the evidence for the earliest hominins (humans and closely related organisms) at these latitudes. Revised climate change models will, without doubt, have profound implications for the future of the coast, especially in relation to the contribution

INTRODUCTION

xi

to sea-level change of polar ice-sheet melting. Specifically, I have to end knowing that the United Kingdom Climate Change Impact Programme 2008 reports, which had been expected soon, will not now be released until spring 2009. Things will, in short, get older at one extreme, and more worrying at the other. Besides, I am writing at a time of economic confusion, which may well have effects on government expenditure, and hence on the funds available for coastal risk management and for conservation of the historic environment. There are no fixed points anywhere, or at any time, on the coast and so any account can only be a snapshot of knowledge, experience and future prediction now. For that reason, I have dated this text. Southsea 21 October 2008

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Acknowledgements To list all the archaeological colleagues and friends who have given me so much over the years would be invidious, for I might inadvertently miss someone. They know who they are. Still, I must record my enormous gratitude to Tony Wilkinson and Nigel Brown. I was encouraged by Ian Oxley and David Miles at English Heritage to write this book, and have been ably helped along the way by Tony Morris and Ben Hayes at Continuum. My long-suffering family and friends have had to tolerate my obsession with the English coast for many years. I send my especial thanks and love to Lawrence Murphy, Helen Goddard, Patricia Wiltshire and Susie Poole. I am also very grateful to Mark Dunkley, Grace Fryer, Val Fryer, Chris Pater and Patricia Wiltshire for their comments on earlier drafts. Dr Simon Parfitt (British Museum, Natural History) and Professor Vincent Gaffney (University of Birmingham), and the historic environment services of Essex and Suffolk County Councils, kindly allowed me to reproduce images: Figures 2–5, 7 and 9.

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1

The deep past Some 700,000 years ago, a group of hunter-gatherer people stayed for a while at a place near the modern village of Pakefield, on the Suffolk coast. While they were there, they made some of the flint tools that were essential for their survival.1 I write the word ‘people’, but they were not of our own species, Homo sapiens. No human remains have yet been found from that remote time in North-Western Europe; but they were most likely of the species Homo heidelbergensis, whose remains have been reported from later sites, dating to around 500,000 years ago. The tibia (shin-bone) of a Homo heidelbergensis individual from Boxgrove, in Sussex, indicates a height of around 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in), and the robustness of the bone implies a body weight of over 90 kg, or over 14 stone.2 They were certainly large and strong. We know almost nothing about their mental abilities, other than what we can infer from their paucity of innovation, over hundreds of millennia, in tool manufacture. Some ancient geniuses invented tool types that worked: that was good enough, and those forms remained in use for unimaginable times. Early hominins were certainly not mentally like us, for whom innovation is everything. They might, or might not, have had language, although the mutated form of a gene implicated in modern human language development – FOXP2 – has been detected in DNA extracted from more recent Neanderthal bone, placing the origin of this mutated gene to before about 400,000 years ago.3 How conscious they were of themselves in time is even more irretrievable: we cannot know whether they had animal-like perceptions of their place in existence, living principally in the present, or human-like perceptions, looking to the past and future. As the late John Wymer remarked, assuming either could be badly misleading. The current interpretation is that this was a brief colonization of North-West Europe by hominins, at the extreme edge of their geographical range, during a short-lived warm climatic phase. Like all animals, they would have had a core habitat, to which they were well adapted, and peripheral areas into which they could expand, if environmental conditions changed favourably for them. The Pakefield hominins may not have been adapted either physically or culturally (in terms of the use of fire and, so far as we know, clothing or the construction of shelters), for a cooler North European climate. Their expansion north was ended by climatic deterioration and it certainly left no lasting environmental imprint. However, current work is likely to modify our perception of the capacity of early hominins to cope with a cool climate. They may prove to have been more inventive and adaptable than anyone thought. The landscape that the Pakefield hominins inhabited was very different from that

2

T H E E N G L I S H C OA S T

of today.4 Rather than an open beach and cliff line at the edge of the North Sea, the local environment was then low-lying and marshy, with wetland plants, reeds and alder trees, close to an extensive river estuary; and there was open grassland and oak woodland nearby. These varied habitats would have supported a range of herbivore prey, from deer to elephants, besides plant foods, shellfish and fish. Flint for making tools was available from river gravels. Later, around 500,000 years ago, sites such as Boxgrove, Sussex and Happisburgh, Norfolk were again visited by hominins during other warm climatic phases and, by around 400,000 years ago, NorthWest Europe was occupied during most warm phases. There is an unexplained absence, or at least paucity, of evidence for hominins in England between around 200,000 and 70,000 years ago, to which we will return. A digression into geological terminology is necessary, not only to explain some of the main terms used in this chapter, but also to illustrate changing perceptions of our own place in time over the last 150 years. The last 2.6 million years of the earth’s history comprise the Quaternary period. The defining feature of the Quaternary has been a trend towards cooling of the global climate but, within that general trend, there is now evidence, from analysis of oxygen isotopes in deep ocean cores (see Appendix), for a series of over 60 major climatic fluctuations over the last 1.65 million years.5 After around 500,000 years ago, these fluctuations intensified, resulting in repeated alternating glacial, and warmer interglacial, stages at the latitude of the modern British Isles. Within the major cold and warm stages, there were also shorter-lived warm (interstadial) and cold (stadial) events. The main climatic fluctuations are known as Marine Isotope Stages (MIS), and are numbered backwards from the present, our modern warm stage being MIS 1. Earlier warm stages therefore have odd numbers, cold stages even ones. In Britain, and on the Continent, there are various other terms for glacial and interglacial stages, generally based on the names of places where sediments relating to them were first described. I have used some of these terms below, since they are widely used in other publications, but sparingly. The Marine Isotope Stages provide a helpful aide mémoire to the relative ages of sites and deposits, and to climatic conditions. The Quaternary is conventionally divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The term ‘Pleistocene’ was developed by the pioneering geologist Sir Charles Lyell, to include the ‘Ice Age’ or ‘Glacial Period’. Later in the nineteenth century it was realized that in fact there had been more than one glacial stage, separated by interglacials. The pioneering studies of Clement Reid, who examined glacial and interglacial deposits, and the plant remains which they contained, on the Norfolk coast were instrumental in developing this understanding.6 We now know that, at times, glaciers expanded as far south as the modern Thames Valley, and global sea levels fell by more than 100 m, so the land mass of England was connected to the Continent as a peninsula. During interglacial stages, there was thermal expansion of the world’s oceans and glacier ice melted, so that sea levels rose. At such times, Britain was once more an island, and there were warmth-loving animals and plants, such as hippopotamus and water chestnut (Trapa natans), in its rivers.7

T H E D E E P PA S T

3

The latest glacial stage of the Pleistocene, known in Britain as the Devensian (after the river Deben in Suffolk), ended around 12,000 years ago, and was followed by the second epoch of the Quaternary, known as the Holocene (from Greek, meaning ‘completely recent’), within which we live. It refers to the period over which glacier ice has retreated to high latitudes and high altitudes. When the term ‘Holocene’ was first coined, our present warm post-glacial stage was considered to differ from the previous warm interglacial stages. It was thought that the ‘Ice Age’ was over. This might be viewed as one of the last relics of an anthropocentric and Eurocentric view of the world, since it was known in the nineteenth century that it was over this time that anatomically modern humans permanently colonized and inhabited NorthWest Europe. There seems to have been an implicit assumption that the appearance of Europeans of our own species must mark some fundamental change. However, given the evidence we have now for repeated climatic fluctuations, it is almost certain that we live in an interglacial stage, and that a new glacial stage should lie ahead – were we not now interfering with the earth’s climate, with unpredictable outcomes. Viewed like this, the Holocene is really no more than just one further stage of the Pleistocene, termed the Flandrian (after the deep sediment sequences of this period in Flanders). Both terms – Holocene and Flandrian – remain in use, even today, and an international scientific journal still uses the former as its title. During the Holocene, or Flandrian, the general trend has been one of warming, though with some sharp, and very rapid, climatic oscillations. Over the vast span of time represented by the Pleistocene, hominins of at least two species and, more recently, our own species, Homo sapiens, lived by hunting and gathering, in what were later to be the British Isles. Farming was a very late arrival, around 6,000 years ago. In archaeological terminology, the period from around 700,000 to 10,000 years ago is named the Palaeolithic, divided into Lower, Middle and Upper. Most of the tools that have been recovered are of flint, though other types of stone, including chert and quartzite, were also used. Collectively, they are known as lithics. The Lower Palaeolithic is represented by ovoid or pointed flint hand axes or bifaces (termed the Acheulian industry, after St-Acheul in the Somme – the ‘type site’ where these tools were first recognized), and rather crude flake tools (Clactonian, after Clacton-on-Sea in Essex). At one time it was thought that the Clactonian flake tools were more primitive and earlier, but it is not that simple: the evidence now is that very accomplished and elegant hand axes were made at least from 500,000 years ago in Britain. Tool production depends on cultural traditions and the quality of the raw material and, for one reason or the other, in parts of Eastern Europe a tradition of producing hand axes did not develop. Flake tools are perfectly adequate functionally. They are generally found in Britain in deposits formed early on in successive interglacials, when the climate was still warming, but hand axes mainly come from somewhat later interglacial deposits. It is possible that this reflects repeated early colonization by the flake-using hominins of the east of Europe first and then, later in each interglacial, by hand-axe-using hominins migrating from the south. However, flake tool production certainly became more sophisticated later, with the development of the Levallois technique (again named

4

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after a French site). It involved careful reduction of a flint nodule to make a core, from which the finished tool could be struck with one blow, and required a greater degree of imagination, spatial perception and preparation. Human remains are rare and fragmentary in Pleistocene deposits, but, at least in the earlier part of the period, Homo heidelbergensis was the tool-producing hominin and, later on, early forms of human akin to Homo neanderthalis – Neanderthal people – were in England. Middle Palaeolithic technology was certainly produced by Neanderthalers, from around 200,000 years ago: the distinctive artefact is a new type of refined and carefully finished hand axe with a flat base (see Figure 1). The technology of the Upper Palaeolithic, produced by Homo sapiens from around 40,000 years ago, shows a mastery and control of the raw material to make refined flint points and blades.8 During the subsequent Mesolithic period, dating from around 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer groups had to adapt to an ameliorating climate, local extinction of cold-climate herbivores such as reindeer and horse, and expansion of woodland. Characteristic tools include flint axes and adzes with their cutting edges made by a single transverse blow, and microliths – very small flint blades which were mounted in wooden shafts (for use as arrows) or in hafts as cutting implements. Our understanding of the chronology of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, and of the massive changes in climate, sea levels and environmental conditions which occurred, are based on a range of techniques derived from many areas of science. Scientific dating techniques, and the form in which dates are presented

Figure 1. A Middle Palaeolithic hand axe, dredged from Aggregate Extraction Area 240, off the East Anglian coast.

T H E D E E P PA S T

5

in the text (such as cal bc, a calibrated date expressed in calendar years bc), are outlined and explained briefly in the Appendix.9 Alongside these innovations, new marine geophysical and geotechnical methods are permitting reconstruction of ancient landscapes which are now submerged beneath the North Sea and the Channel. It is not possible to give a full account of these methodologies in a book of this length, but a short introduction is given in the Appendix. They underpin the new results which are summarized here and in Chapter 2. In Table 1, a schematic summary of chronology and environmental change, in relation to early human activity, is presented.

THE LOWER AND MIDDLE PALAEOLITHIC As noted above, the earliest evidence for hominins on the land area that is now England comes from freshwater and estuarine sediments of the Cromer Forest Bed Formation at Pakefield, Happisburgh, and other places on the East Anglian coast. However, the fact that a hominin site has been found on the coast today might have nothing at all to do with its original geography: sea-level change has been on such a massive scale that Pleistocene sediments originally deposited well inland are often now exposed in coastal cliffs. The sediments at these East Anglian sites were deposited by rivers which flowed eastwards from the north and Midlands of England across East Anglia, which have been named the Bytham and Ancaster rivers. They were subsequently obliterated by later glaciations, which completely modified the drainage pattern of the region.10 The date of around 700,000 years bp (Marine Isotope Stage 19, or MIS 19) for the Pakefield site is based on analysis of small mammal remains and palaeomagnetism (see Appendix). At this time, before the first glaciation of the region, there was a continuous land connection between England and northern France along the chalk ridge of the Weald–Artois anticline (see Figure 2). North of this ridge, there was a large bay of the North Sea, into which flowed the precursors of the Rhine, Elbe, Thames, and the Bytham and Ancaster.11 To the south of the chalk ridge was a southerly, or Manche, embayment. The early Somme and Seine, a river which flowed along the present-day Solent, and other lesser rivers of southern England drained into the Manche Embayment. Quaternary geologists are still uncertain exactly when the Weald–Artois ridge was breached. Nevertheless, it is clear that in the Anglian Glacial Stage (c. 450,000 years ago: MIS 12), glacial meltwater, flowing in summer from the ice sheets which covered much of Britain and Scandinavia, formed a huge freshwater lake to the north of the ridge. It is thought that a relatively small breach in the ridge was first formed by river erosion, and this then allowed the huge volume of water in the lake to flow southwards across it in a catastrophic flood. Unimaginably torrential flow enlarged the breach, and eroded a major south-west-flowing river system, known as the Channel river, which captured drainage from the Thames, the Rhine and the rivers of southern England and northern France.12 The Channel river is likely

Table 1 The Pleistocene and Holocene Years bp (Before Present) 0

Marine Isotope British stages Stages (MIS) 1

Holocene (0–10,000 bp)

Archaeological periods (approximate dates)

Notable events on coasts

Mesolithic and later

Rapid sea-level rise in Late Devensian and Early Holocene: North Sea submerged

Late Upper Palaeolithic: human absence around glacial maximum, c. 22,000 bp 2–4

Devensian Glacial Stage

50,000

Low relative sea level around glacial maximum Upper Palaeolithic Middle Palaeolithic

100,000

150,000

5e

‘Ipswichian Interglacial’

6

Cold Stage

7

‘Aveley Interglacial’

Apparent human absence around British Isles isolated from Continent 200,000–70,000 bp

200,000 British Isles isolated from Continent

250,000 8

Lower to Middle Palaeolithic

300,000 350,000 400,000

9 10 11 12

‘Purfleet Interglacial’ Hoxnian Interglacial Anglian Glacial Stage

British Isles isolated from Continent Lower Palaeolithic

British Isles isolated from Continent Weald–Artois pericline breached at this time? Glaciers as far south as Thames Valley

Years bp (Before Present)

Marine Isotope British stages Stages (MIS)

Archaeological periods (approximate dates)

Notable events on coasts

450,000 13 500,000

Palaeolithic coastal activity at Boxgrove on the Goodwood–Slindon Raised Beach at +40 m od 14

550,000 15 600,000

16

650,000

700,000

17 18, 19

Note: OD = Ordinance Daterm. Sources: Simplified from Bridgland (1994: 7); Stringer (2007: 300); and others.

Palaeolithic activity in riverine and estuarine habitats at Pakefield

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Major palaeorivers Anglian ice limit Archaeological site

North Sea Embayment

Bytham

Happisburgh

Thames Boxgrove Abbeville

Manche Embayment

Somme

Figure 2. The pre-glacial North Sea and English Channel region (Parfitt et al. 2005).

to have been a barrier to human migration as the climate improved in subsequent interglacials, and hominins repeatedly moved north.13 Even more significantly for human movements, once the chalk ridge had gone, the North Sea and Channel were one continuous sea whenever there were high sea levels during interglacial stages. For the first time, Britain became an island, or rather an archipelago. This had very significant effects on the later colonization of this outlying corner of the Eurasian continental landmass by humans, animals and plants. If they could not spread northwards or westwards fast enough during the warming conditions at the end of a glacial stage, rising sea levels would prevent their spreading to the British Isles at all.14 However, global change in sea level, caused by climate change, was not the only factor affecting the positions of coasts during the Palaeolithic. Over the last 500,000 years there has been tectonic uplift of the earth’s crust in southern England, caused, ultimately, by movement of the plates which form the surface of the earth. Ancient shorelines have been lifted well above sea level to form raised beaches, which are especially well recorded in Sussex. The highest, and oldest, of these, at +40 m od, and dating to around 500,000 bp, is the Goodwood–Slindon Raised Beach, which extends east to west for some 20 km. At Boxgrove, West Sussex, a beach surface was buried beneath rubble eroded from a chalk cliff during a later cold phase, which protected it from later disturbance until the site was found during sand and gravel quarrying. The site was occupied by early hominins in an interglacial stage,

T H E D E E P PA S T

9

pre-dating the breaching of the Weald–Artois ridge. They may have been attracted initially by seams of good-quality flint in the chalk cliff; but, besides the evidence for flint-knapping and production of hand axes and other tools, animal bones with evidence of butchery, using flint tools, were recovered. Careful examination of the cut marks on the bones shows that they were made before scavengers, such as hyenas, left their teeth marks. This is important, for it establishes that the hominins at Boxgrove were active hunters, not just competing with hyenas and birds to scavenge the remains of prey left from the kills of lions, wolves or other predators. Human remains from the site include two teeth and part of a tibia, most likely belonging to the species Homo heidelbergensis.15 Further south, the Aldingbourne Raised Beach (at about 24–27.5 m od, c. 450,000–400,000 bp), the Brighton–Norton Raised Beach (c. 15 m od, c. 245,000–186,000 bp) and the Pagham Raised Beach (c. 3 m od, c. 100,000 bp) have been dated by means of amino acid racemization and small mammal remains (see Appendix). In Chichester Harbour, Pleistocene sediments outcrop in the modern intertidal zone.16 The Sussex Raised Beaches are of international significance, for they are certainly amongst the largest areas of buried and preserved Palaeolithic land surface in the world. So far, only one site on these ancient beaches, at Boxgrove, has been extensively examined by archaeologists. There must be many other occupation sites and, as techniques improve, future archaeologists will be able to learn much more about the lifeways of early hominins in England. There are also Palaeolithic raised beaches elsewhere. At Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight, raised beach deposits are visible in cliff sections, and Palaeolithic tools have been recovered from the vicinity.17 However, Pleistocene raised beaches are not confined to the south. There is one at Sewerby near Bridlington, Yorkshire, which has an Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) date of c. 120,000 bp (see Appendix), placing it in MIS 5e, the Ipswichian Interglacial.18 Later Lower to Middle Palaeolithic sites are exposed on the foreshore and in cliff sections at many places on the coasts of the south and east of England. They include sites in river sediments of the ancient channel of the Thames, exposed at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.19 Beach, cliff and inland exposures of the sediments infilling the river channel at Clacton, dated to the Hoxnian Interglacial stage (MIS 11, around 423,000–380,000 bp), have produced abundant flint tools, mainly made from flakes and cores rather than hand axes, with bones of deer, wild cattle, horse, elephant and rhinoceros.20 The site has also produced the only surviving Palaeolithic wooden artefact from England – the tip of a spear made of yew.21 At most prehistoric sites wood is not preserved, so it is easily forgotten that flint tools were not the only types of artefacts made by Palaeolithic people. There are many other examples of coastal exposures of Palaeolithic sites. Several hundred Lower Palaeolithic artefacts have been collected from the beach at Priory Bay, Isle of Wight, eroded from terrace gravels of the Solent river, and stratified artefacts have more recently been recovered.22 They derive from gravels at the top of the cliff, at about +40 m od, and could be contemporary with the material from Boxgrove at a similar elevation. There is also Lower and Middle Palaeolithic material from cave sites, including Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, and Windmill Cave, Brixham. As it happens, these

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caves are now on the coast, but they were far inland when occupied. Until recently, we were aware that very large areas of sea off our coasts were, at times, land; but we knew next to nothing about submerged Palaeolithic archaeology, apart from artefacts brought up in fishermen’s trawl nets. This has changed, largely due to the fact that finding new areas on land for the extraction of sand and gravel has proved increasingly difficult. Aggregate companies have been encouraged by government to get sand and gravel from offshore, and to land the aggregate closer to consumers at wharves, from which disruption on roads, caused by lorryloads of aggregate, can be minimized. Offshore dredging of aggregates, deposited by rivers during the Pleistocene, is now a major industry, and obviously has the potential to damage or destroy submerged prehistoric sites.23 On the aggregate wharves, Pleistocene animal bones and human artefacts – from Palaeolithic tools to the remains of ships and crashed aircraft – are often found. Once in a while, a landed cargo includes large numbers of Palaeolithic artefacts, such as the 28 hand axes and associated flake tools, and animal bones, dredged from off Great Yarmouth in February 2008 (see Figure 1). They were landed at an aggregate wharf at Flushing in the Netherlands, where they were collected and identified. Finds such as this indicate that there are undisturbed Palaeolithic sites under the North Sea. They will be very hard to investigate but, since they have been submerged and buried under later sediments for hundreds of millennia, we expect that they will be exceptionally well preserved. Environmental Impact Assessments are now routinely undertaken before large-scale offshore developments (such as aggregate extraction, wind farms, pipelines and cables), in order to comply with an EU Directive 24 and this includes assessment of potential impacts on submerged landscapes and archaeology. The techniques used are described in the Appendix, but include marine geophysical prospection (sonar and seismic survey), collection of sediment cores to provide information on dating and ancient environments (palaeoecology), and grab sampling in an attempt to collect artefacts. A good working relationship has been established between archaeologists and the aggregates industry, through individual site investigations, and via a levy on the industry – the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, or ALSF – which is used to support offshore research relevant to minimizing impacts on submerged sites.25 The ‘Seabed Prehistory’ project was supported by the ALSF, and was undertaken by Wessex Archaeology. It made use of a range of methods in a staged way, beginning with geophysical survey. Bathymetric and side-scan sonar surveys were used to determine water depths and the form of the seabed.26 Shallow seismic (sub-bottom) survey was employed to investigate the geology below the seabed, which was then examined further by means of vibrocores. These also provided sediment samples for palaeoecological analysis and dating. Grab-sampling surveys were also undertaken, within some areas, to recover human artefacts and other prehistoric remains in the topmost seabed deposits. The results, from study areas off the Humber and the East Anglian coast, and in the Channel, have provided new information on landscapes dating from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic. As discussed above, the earliest evidence for hominins in England, around

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700,000 years ago, has come from now-extinct west-to-east-flowing river systems which must have extended further west into the area of the modern North Sea. Bytham river sediments are known to have survived being transported and overridden by glacier ice on land, at High Lodge, Mildenhall, Suffolk and elsewhere, so it seemed reasonable to expect that they might survive similarly offshore.27 However, survey offshore from Pakefield and Happisburgh did not detect riverine sediments that had survived more recent glacial and marine erosion in the area examined: relatively recent seabed sediments overlie ancient marine deposits known as the Wroxham Crag Formation.28 Off Great Yarmouth shallow marine deposits were dated by OSL dating to the Cromerian Complex (MIS 16–14), contemporary with the earliest evidence for human occupation in Britain. Freshwater sediments dating from the Wolstonian stage (MIS 9, 8, 7 and 6) to the Ipswichian Interglacial (MIS 5e) included charcoal. Of course, charcoal can be produced by wildfires, but this is a tantalizing hint of possible human presence at a time when there is otherwise very little evidence for it. The absence or paucity of archaeological evidence for the presence of hominins in what later became the British Isles between around 200,000 to 70,000 years ago, despite intensive examination of suitable deposits on land, is puzzling, since the kinds of habitat that they had occupied in earlier interglacials were present then.29 Indeed, there was an especially warm phase during the Ipswichian Interglacial (MIS 5e), around 125,000 years ago, which one would expect hominins to have found especially pleasant, judging from the environments of hominin sites elsewhere in Europe and in Africa. At present, the reasons for this absence are not fully understood. It is possible that rapid sea-level rise during interglacials isolated the British Isles before large populations of hominins could migrate into the region, and the Channel river may also have been a barrier to migration at times of low sea level. If a few groups made it, they might have been isolated and vulnerable. There may have been so few hominins that they did not make up a biologically viable breeding population, and so became extinct. An alternative explanation is that the deposits that have preserved hominin sites in nearby Continental areas – which are deeply buried beneath thick layers of windborne dust, known as loess – just do not exist in England. Further work on submerged offshore sites should help to produce more evidence one way or the other. A second offshore ALSF project has examined and mapped part of the southern North Sea Mesolithic landscape using 3D Seismic data.30 Although the data-sets available only permit low-resolution mapping, they are perfectly adequate for detecting major ancient landscape features, even where these are buried beneath more recent marine sediments. The survey focused on the western part of the southern North Sea, east of Flamborough Head and north-east from the Norfolk coast. The results relate mainly to submerged Mesolithic landscapes, but landscape features including ‘tunnel valleys’, eroded by water flowing under, and out from the fronts of, glaciers, have been mapped, besides a Late Glacial lake on the site of the modern Outer Silver Pit. In more recent times, after around 45,000 years ago, we can examine the

Table 2 The post-glacial: a summary (approximate dates) Years bp (Before Present) 0

Quaternary subdivisions

Archaeological periods (approximate dates)

Main climatic trends

Vegetation

Main events on coasts

Post-Medieval/Early Modern

Modern climate

Modern landscape

Government direction of coastal defence

Little Ice Age Medieval 1,000

Increased deforestation, Catastrophic storms expansion of farmland Early medieval warm period

Early Medieval/ Anglo-Saxon Holocene or Flandrian 2,000

Deterioration Late Antiquity Roman

Warmer

Some very localized woodland regeneration

Large-scale land claim and embankment begins in coastal wetlands Coastal wetlands abandoned

Rate of RSL rise slowing; some land claim

Iron Age Deterioration: higher rainfall and lower temperatures 3,000 Increasing deforestation, From around 3200 bp, renewed estuarine expansion of farmland sedimentation in coastal wetlands Bronze Age Coastal Neolithic settlements submerged 4,000

Years bp (Before Present) 5,000

Quaternary subdivisions

Archaeological periods (approximate dates)

Main climatic trends

Neolithic

Vegetation

Main events on coasts

Neolithic woodland clearances locally

Holocene or Flandrian Post-glacial climatic optimum: warm and wet

Mixed decidous woodland including lime, oak, elm and hazel Rate of relative sea level (RSL) rise slowing c. 5,700 bp; extensive peat formation

6,000 7,000

Increasing warmth

Mixed deciduous woodland including oak, hazel and pine

Dogger Hills submerged by 6000 bp Rapid sea-level rise, 8,200–5,700 bp, from –9 m od to –4 m od Dover Straits submerged c. 7,000 bp

8,000 9,000

Mesolithic Increasing warmth

Birch and pine woodland RSL rising rapidly but with some spreading north still-stands

Cold: periglacial

Tundra (Younger Dryas) RSL low: the area of the southern North Sea was land

10,000 Pleistocene

Late Upper Palaeolithic

Sources: Evans (1975); Simmons et al. (1981); Wilson et al. (2000); Murphy (2007); and others.

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landscape of what was later to be the North Sea with a finer focus, and with a more precise chronology, provided by radiocarbon dating (see Appendix). We have a good deal of information about the animals inhabiting the area during the Devensian, or last glacial, Stage between around 45,000 and 22,000 years ago, from the vast numbers of bones recovered by fishing trawlers from the Brown Bank, roughly midway between England and the Netherlands, and from the Yarmouth Roads, off East Anglia.31 There is also information on the vegetation of the region, obtained by pollen analysis and radiocarbon dating of peat blocks which have been trawled up. There was at least one interstadial phase around 40,000 years ago, when warmer conditions briefly prevailed, but overall the landscape was dry and cold, dominated by grassland vegetation, and completely treeless. This was a habitat that survives nowhere on earth today – the Mammoth Steppe, which extended continuously from England to Siberia. Vast herds of large herbivores abounded, including woolly mammoth, woolly rhino, reindeer, the giant deer Megaloceros, and musk-ox; and predators included the European sabre-tooth cat Homotherium and hyena. The herbivores kept the grasslands grazed short, so there was little standing vegetation. Along the contemporary shoreline – far away from today’s shore – there were walrus, harp seals and ringed seals. Beluga, killer whales and grey whales swam offshore and no doubt occasionally stranded. Humans were certainly present in the region over at least parts of this period, as shown by sites now in nearby terrestrial locations and by artefacts trawled from the seabed, but we know little about their ways of life. They must have made specific cultural adaptations to these demanding conditions, but these people could not have been very similar to the modern Inuit, for in the dry, cold climate of this time there was little or no snow. There is no exact ethnographic parallel today. The last glacial maximum was a still harsher climatic phase, after around 22,000 years ago. We have no evidence for human life in the polar desert, which extended over what was later to become England and its seas, around that time.

THE UPPER PALAEOLITHIC The Upper Palaeolithic, dating from around 40,000 years ago, is marked by the presence of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) before, and after, the most severe phase of the Devensian Stage. The last glacial maximum had made the region uninhabitable, but our species returned once the climate improved, around 15,000 years ago. The Neanderthal people were by then extinct. Upper Palaeolithic sites on the modern coast, post-dating the last glacial maximum, include Hengistbury Head, and Titchwell, Norfolk. At Titchwell, late Upper Palaeolithic ‘long blades’ (up to around 150 mm in length, representing highly skilled flint-working) have come from a submerged land surface beneath peat, which is only exposed at extreme low tides.32 Artefacts of this type were produced by hunter-gatherers at the end of the last glacial stage and in the early post-glacial, around 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, when relative sea levels were still low. When occupied, the Titchwell site would

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have been well inland, and there was still a continuous land connection with the Continent. Late Upper Palaeolithic artefacts have come also from cave sites around Morecambe Bay, including Kirkhead Cave and in the south-west, at sites such as Kent’s Cavern, Devon.33,34 At times of low glacial sea levels they would, of course, have lain well inland. Further remains from the late Upper Palaeolithic include the skeleton of an elk associated with antler barbed points from Poulton-le-Fylde.35 On the Holderness coast, sediments at the base of Skipsea Withow Mere have produced a Palaeolithic flint blade and bone harpoon, again associated with elk bones.36 However, these sites were not located at all close to their contemporary coastlines, and tell us nothing about exploitation of coastal food resources.37

THE MESOLITHIC The Mesolithic period lasted for over 5,000 years, from around 9600 to 4000 cal bc (see note 9 and Appendix for an outline of radiocarbon dating, and the way in which dates are presented). It is in some ways the Cinderella period of English prehistory.38 As we have seen, during the Palaeolithic there were spectacular changes in climate, the extent of ice sheets, sea levels, landscapes, vegetation, and fauna; and the region was colonized successively by at least three different species of hominins, the last our own species. The introduction of farming in the Neolithic after around 4000 cal bc led, eventually, to the establishment of permanent settlements, more complex societies, and the building of impressive monumental structures such as Stonehenge. Although some recently excavated large post-pits at Stonehenge indicate that at least one Mesolithic community in England was capable of largescale timber construction, the intervening Mesolithic is often seen as a hiatus, when nothing much happened for 5,000 years or more. This perception is not helped by the unspectacular character of most dry-land Mesolithic sites, which often consist of little more than scatters of flint artefacts, with a few insubstantial dug archaeological features, representing the remains of temporary campsites. Evidence from pollen analysis has been used to learn something about the impacts of Mesolithic people on the forested landscapes they inhabited (see Appendix); but the evidence is slight, and open to a range of interpretations. There was change in the Mesolithic, though; but we know little about it because we have often been looking at the wrong sites. There are good reasons for thinking that the focus of Mesolithic life was on coasts, by lakes, and in river valleys – wetlands in general – and rather few sites in these environments have yet been investigated. This is partly because the most extensive area of wetland was in the southern North Sea basin and is now submerged offshore. In addition, many other Mesolithic wetland areas are now deeply buried beneath later sediments on land, and so are rarely accessible for study. In the Early Mesolithic (c. 10,000–6,000 cal bc), wetlands were certainly exploited more intensively than uplands, for example at Starr and Seamer Carrs in the Vale of Pickering; this may have been related to the hunting of animals coming to drink at lakes and watercourses, though it could also indicate

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the importance of fishing.39 In the Later Mesolithic (c. 6,000–4,000 cal bc) there was increased exploitation of present-day upland areas such as the North Yorkshire Moors. This might have been related to increased population densities caused by sea-level rise, pushing people into more marginal areas where there were fewer food resources.40 Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities had to adapt to very rapidly changing environmental conditions, and to the pressures on their societies that these caused. Their ways of life were certainly not unchanging. One constant feature of Mesolithic societies, however, was that groups would have occupied large territories, perhaps on the order of 50 km across, within which they moved seasonally to exploit different food resources. Martin Bell proposes a model for the Mesolithic of western Britain in which lowland ‘aggregation camps’ were occupied near estuaries by the entire community over winter.41 Around March some, or all, of the group might have moved to the open coast, and to upland areas between June and August, before a return to the coast around September. This is based, in part, on direct evidence of food remains from sites, combined with knowledge of the present-day seasonal availability of plant and animal foods. But it also relies on inferences about likely past behaviour derived from studies of modern huntergatherers. It is a model, not necessarily correct, but it provides a helpful way of thinking about Mesolithic lifestyles. Before discussing the new archaeological evidence for submerged Mesolithic landscapes and sites, a short summary of some evidence for Mesolithic sites along the modern coast is needed. Mesolithic sites are known from coastal exposures in the north-east, including an Early Mesolithic lithic assemblage from Hart, County Durham.42 A Mesolithic hut has been excavated at Howick, Northumberland and its significance will be discussed further below.43 The infilled meres of the Holderness coast, visible in coastal sections, have already been referred to: besides the Upper Palaeolithic artefacts and elk bones from Skipsea Withow Mere, the site has also produced a bone spear, probably of Mesolithic date, from a deposit that also included deer bones.44 Along much of the Lincolnshire coastal marshes, land surfaces of Mesolithic date are deeply buried beneath later marine sediments, and that is also true of the present embayment of the Wash, which was then a low-lying area of mainly wooded land, submerged by marine transgression from around 5400 cal bc.45 Along the fen edge, and in the river valleys draining into the fens, dense scatters of lithics have been recorded. Many of them come from slightly raised ridges and hills within the wetland landscape, though this could be because sediment cover is much thinner on higher ground, so artefacts are more likely to be brought to the surface by ploughing. Our understanding of site distributions and preferred locations for occupation could be biased. Nevertheless, a Late Mesolithic site still stratified within deep sediments was recorded at Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire and, surprisingly, some undisturbed sites beneath a very thin cover of peaty soil have survived modern intensive agriculture, for example at Marham, Norfolk, where lithics came from the surface of a fossil river beach or sand bar, directly beneath the ploughsoil.46 Survey in the Essex estuaries in the 1980s examined two large Mesolithic sites at Maylandsea in the Blackwater and

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Hullbridge in the Crouch, besides minor concentrations of flints at other locations. The enormous collections of lithics from these two sites imply repeated, but not necessarily continuous, occupation over a long period. The Hullbridge site was first recorded by F. H. Reader in 1911 and, despite erosion over nearly a century, it is still producing huge quantities of flint blades, cores and flakes, implying that the site is of considerable extent.47 Both sites were well inland when occupied, and were located on the banks of freshwater rivers. They could be interpreted as inland bases from which hunting and gathering forays onto the North Sea lowlands were undertaken – examples of Bell’s ‘aggregation camps’.48 In Dorset, headlands which developed during recent marine transgression have produced evidence for Mesolithic activity, notably on coasts between Portland and Fleet, and from Southbourne to Hengistbury. However, these sites would, when occupied, have been further inland. There is Late Mesolithic material from sites on the Exmoor coast, and a domestic site at Hawkcombe Head, near Porlock, produced evidence for a temporary structure and hearth, probably related to the contemporary coastline.49 The apparent coastal distribution of Mesolithic material in Cornwall may reflect bias in collection, but sites at Gwithian, near St Ives, imply a concentration of population around a developing estuary.50 The North West Wetland Survey has extended the picture of Mesolithic coastal settlement along the North Wirral, near Sefton, and in the valley of the river Alt, with concentrations of lithics at Banks, near Southport, and on the north side of the Ribble estuary at Peel.51 There is a clustering of later Mesolithic finds on raised beaches around the Esk estuary and west Cumbria.52 Mesolithic sites in the north-west have, so far, been detected mainly from surface lithic scatters, apart from the subfossil footprints from Formby.53 Footprints made on soft surfaces of intertidal mud, and then preserved by being rapidly covered with later sediments, provide an unusually vivid picture of past animal and human activity. They are ephemeral for, once exposed on the modern shore, they erode rapidly. At Goldcliff, on the Welsh Severn shore, a remarkable series of Mesolithic animal and human footprints has been recorded.54 Of the 149 mammal tracks, 83 were identified as red deer, 5 roe, 37 indeterminate deer, 6 aurochs (wild cattle) and 2 wolf.55 There were also bird footprints at Goldcliff, mainly of crane and grey heron, but also oystercatcher, black-headed gull, common gull and terns. The human footprints recorded ranged from those of infants as young as three years to those of adults. At Formby Point in Lancashire, foreshore exposures of sands and silts, from which later overlying deposits have been eroded away, also show a series of human and animal footprints. Footprints occur at two levels within the stratigraphic sequence: the lower ones are on intertidal marine sediments, whereas the more recent ones were made during the early phases of the development of a dune or dune slack environment. The latter are dated to at least as old as 3350–1730 cal bc, and thus probably post-date the Mesolithic, but the older sets of prints are not dated as yet.56 Over 145 human trails have been recorded, as well as tracks of red and roe deer, unshod horse, aurochs, cattle and crane. The human footprints indicate mean heights for adult men and women of

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1.66 m and 1.45 m respectively, but children’s footprints predominate. Footprints thought to be of men are frequently associated with those of red deer and indicate ‘an above average speed and cadence’, with the implication that they reflect hunting. By contrast, those of women and children suggest a slower pace and different types of activity, such as shellfish collection. The rapid rise in relative sea level during the Mesolithic also led to submergence of woodlands, in both dry and wet situations. In the south and east of England these surfaces generally lie well offshore, but in the west, between north Devon and Lancashire, there are extensive exposures of Mesolithic submerged forests on the coast, many dating between around 7000 and 3500 cal bc and thus later Mesolithic to early Neolithic in date.57 Some of the western Mesolithic examples have been surveyed in detail and dated by radiocarbon or dendrochronology (tree-ring analysis), for example, at Gravel Banks and Severn Beach, near Avonmouth.58 Not infrequently they have provided evidence for human activity in woodland, including a skeleton of a boar with associated microliths – perhaps an animal wounded during hunting, which escaped to die in wet woodland – and a wooden windbreak with an associated dense area of charcoal. Submerged forests at Minehead and Porlock Weir have also produced Mesolithic artefacts. The direct evidence for Mesolithic coastal fishing, shellfish collection and wildfowling is considered in detail in Chapter 3. It comes from wooden structures representing stationary fish-traps, and from middens – deposits or mounds of food waste – which have produced shells of edible molluscs and bones of fish, birds and mammals. To sum up, the evidence we have at present indicates a focus of Mesolithic activity in coastal and inland wetlands, although upland areas were also exploited, at least seasonally. By far the largest (and probably the most significant) wetlands, however, were in areas that are now under the sea, in the southern North Sea, along the Channel coasts, in the Severn estuary, and off the coasts of North-West England. It is precisely these areas, of course, that are the most difficult to investigate. Submergence of landscapes offshore from the present English coast was a consequence of relative sea-level rise caused, ultimately, by climate change. By around 13,000 years ago, the southern part of the North-West Europe continental shelf was ice-free, and the overall subsequent trend has been towards rising mean temperatures. There were, however, rapid climatic oscillations. There was a short period of intensely cold climate (the Late Glacial stadial) around 11,000 years ago, when glacier ice readvanced and periglacial vegetation extended southwards once more.59 Later mean temperature rise was not a gradual process either: a sudden rise to roughly modern values seems to have occurred rapidly at around 7850–7550 cal bc.60 There was a lag before global sea-level rise followed – for the oceans take time to warm – but soon sea levels rose very rapidly. Reconstructing the effects of this process in detail, for the largest wetland area in the North Sea, is fraught with difficulty, due to lack of precision about the rate of relative sea level (RSL) rise, combined with the generally low relief of the terrain. This means that relatively small changes in RSL would have had disproportionately large effects on the positions of coastlines. There was certainly an initial rapid sea-level rise

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from around –20 m od at c. 12,000 cal bc to around –17 m od around 6000 cal bc, –10 m od at 5000 cal bc, and –7 m od at 4000 cal bc, with a slower rate of rise later.61 Estuaries expanded, submerging peats formed in freshwater wetland habitats, and inundating former dry-land Mesolithic landscapes.62 However, the evidence for regional sea-level changes can only be based on sediments (see Appendix). There might have been sea-level falls, but these would not result in any sediments being deposited, and so would be undetectable. Nevertheless, sea-level tendencies were predominantly positive (i.e. rising) through most of the Holocene.63 From this information, models of the submergence of the North Sea have been developed.64 High ground on the low-lying North Sea plain, including the Dogger Hills, became isolated as islands by around 8,700 years ago, which were finally submerged around 7,500 years ago, to form the modern Dogger Bank. The Dover Straits were submerged around 7,000 years ago, and fully marine conditions had been established over most of the southern North Sea and Channel by around 6,500 years ago. The development of major freshwater-to-brackish-water lagoons to the south of the Dogger Hills, from around 9,000 years ago, and in the Southern Bight, are potentially of great significance in terms of Mesolithic population, for such low-lying areas would have been ecologically diverse, providing the range of coastal brackish and freshwater wetland food resources, known to have been favoured in the Mesolithic. The major estuary on the site of the modern Outer Silver Pit, and the areas of salt marsh around it (discussed further below), must also have supported comparatively dense Mesolithic populations.65 At the same time as this process of submergence occurred, rising mean temperatures permitted the northwards spread of plants and animals requiring warmer conditions, onto the diminishing areas of land.66 Pollen analysis of sites now, or formerly, in coastal locations in the East Anglian fens and on the Essex coast shows that Late Glacial vegetation of grassland, heath and low shrubs was successively replaced by woodland of birch and pine, then of hazel, elm, oak, alder, and finally by woodland dominated by lime, oak and hazel.67 Cold-climate grazing animals, such as reindeer and horse, were replaced by animals adapted to a warmer climate and woodland conditions, including red and roe deer and pig. This broad-brush picture of changing coastlines, vegetation and fauna is fine so far as it goes. However, to understand what was happening in archaeological terms, we need a more detailed understanding of landscape change in the Mesolithic. This is being provided by offshore surveys. The latest sediments found during survey of the offshore extension of the river Arun – the palaeo-Arun – are of Mesolithic date.68 A sample of peat collected by grab sampling, and dated to 8200–7740 cal bc, produced oak charcoal dated to 8230–7960 cal bc. This could have been produced during wildfires, but flints considered to have been humanly produced were also retrieved by grab sampling in the same area. Other studies, further west along the South Coast, have demonstrated that, during the Mesolithic, the coastline of the Solent area was very different from today’s.69 The Solent river flowed eastwards, along the line of the present seaway of the Solent, to the north of the Isle of Wight,

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and was joined by tributaries including the Test and Itchen, and rivers flowing from the present-day Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester harbours. A separate river system flowed east and then south from Poole harbour. Pollen analysis of peats from Langstone harbour indicates local vegetation of grassland and sedge fen with alder carr in the Late Mesolithic, surrounded on higher ground by woodland of lime, oak, elm and hazel. Following the breaching of a containing chalk ridge, which extended from Old Harry Rocks to the Needles, after about 7,500 years ago, the drainage pattern was altered and the western Solent formed. At around the same time rising sea levels resulted in the submergence of Poole and Christchurch harbours.70 3D Seismic data from the western part of the southern North Sea have been used to map a very extensive area of Mesolithic submerged land surface, covering some 23,000 km2 of the modern seabed, in Birmingham University’s North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project. This defined a length of 691 km of submerged Mesolithic coastline.71 (See Figure 3.) The main Mesolithic coastal feature defined was an early Mesolithic lake. It was later submerged to form an east–west tidal inlet in the position of the modern Outer Silver Pit, around 100 km west of Flamborough Head. It was roughly the same size as the modern Severn estuary, and was associated with massive elongate sandbanks up to 18 km long. Surrounding this inlet, and the channels which drained into it, were extensive areas of former salt marsh and intertidal flat, and over 1,600 km

Figure 3. Submerged Mesolithic landscape in the southern North Sea (Gaffney et al. 2007).

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of former freshwater rivers and streams, as well as lakes and wetland areas. Less familiar palaeogeographic features were salt domes and other elevated features, at the foot of which river channels became diverted.72 The Mesolithic landscape revealed by this study is in some ways very familiar – a predominantly flat, lowland landscape of estuaries, salt marsh and mud-flat, rivers, lakes and wetlands. Other features seem quite alien, however, for salt domes are not visible on land today. This evidence from offshore areas, and in our present-day estuaries, allows us to begin reconstructing the main physical features of now-submerged landscapes, the positions of coastlines, and the changing character of vegetation and fauna. Will it ever be possible, however, to get a meaningful picture of Mesolithic populations and site distributions? The best-preserved submerged landscapes are at depths where diver inspection is impracticable, so most of our information comes from remote geophysical survey. At present, we have to explore them using methods analogous to those used to investigate other planets. In these circumstances, the likelihood of recovering artefacts from undisturbed deposits is remote. Although Mesolithic sites have been recorded in intertidal estuarine areas, only one fully submerged Mesolithic site is known in England, at Bouldnor Cliff in the Solent.73 This is in marked contrast to the situation in the shallow Danish coastal waters, where middens, hearths, burials, and a circular hut have been found.74 The work at Bouldnor certainly shows that hearths and possibly wooden structures can survive at submerged sites off the English coast. However, the Danish hut was submerged under shallow, tranquil Baltic waters, and was itself a very shallow archaeological feature, only 20 cm in depth. Whether such a slight feature could survive erosion by the currents of the Channel and North Sea remains to be seen. In general, habitation sites are likely to be marked by no more than concentrations of charred plant material, bone fragments, and stone and bone artefacts. In principle artefacts, and other evidence for a human presence, could be collected by means of a grid of seabed grab samples: indeed this method has produced some finds as part of the palaeo-Arun survey.75 Still, at present, searching for submerged sites is like the proverbial search for the needle in the haystack. The evidence is that there was a low-density scatter of artefacts and charcoal right across prehistoric landscapes, with concentrations of material denoting ‘sites’.76 The question is: how can we be sure when we have actually found a site?77 As the sea level rose, the offshore landscapes were lost, zones of coastal mud-flats, salt marsh, grassland and woodland migrated landwards and to higher elevations, the lower parts of river valleys became estuaries, and the total land area available for Mesolithic people diminished. The impacts on humans living there were first considered by Bryony Coles, who named the Mesolithic landscape of the North Sea ‘Doggerland’, and more recently by Nic Flemming.78 What might these impacts have been? Population densities were low in the Mesolithic, by modern standards; but, as noted above, Mesolithic communities generally lived a mobile lifestyle and needed large territories to exploit food resources available at different times of the year – including fruits and nuts, and migrating birds, mammals and fish. It is likely that the landscape would have been fully populated in terms of the lifestyle of the

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time. There must have been migrations of populations from areas being inundated, and probably competition between groups for the remaining territory. Recent excavations have shown that Mesolithic people, at times, did build permanent habitations, and it is possible that this was related to changes caused by rising sea level.79 At a clifftop site at Howick, Northumberland, a sequence of three successive huts has been dated by radiocarbon to between 7850 and 7650 cal bc. They were around 6 m in diameter and were conical, made of wooden poles with a central hearth, rather like a North American tepee: indeed, this form of more permanent building may well have developed from the temporary, and partly portable, structures in which people generally lived. There is no direct evidence for the roof covering, but it could have been of thatch, turf, bark or hide. The size of the huts suggests that they would have accommodated a family group, although archaeological survey shows that there were other habitation areas nearby, so the occupants of the excavated huts could have formed part of a larger community, all living around the valley of the Howick Burn and its small estuary. Relative sea level has risen by about 5 m since the Mesolithic in this area, but the contemporary coast would only have been about 100 m further away than that of today. The inhabitants lived in a locally varied environment, from woodland to the coast, which provided a wide range of foods, so it is possible that their lifestyle might have been less mobile than that of some other Mesolithic groups. Charred plant remains from the site show that hazelnuts were an important part of their diet. Animal bones were not well preserved, but some remains of seal, pig and bird, and shells of dog whelk, winkles, limpets and mussels represent their animal foods. Remains of a fox are likely to indicate an animal hunted for fur, and there was also one toe bone of a wolf or dog (the two cannot be distinguished from this bone), which could either have been from a fur-bearing animal or a hunting companion. The skull of a domestic dog has certainly been found at a slightly earlier Mesolithic site at Star Carr in Yorkshire. Elsewhere in the world, in more recent times, there have been permanent coastal settlements with primarily hunter-gatherer economies, such as the Kwakiatl (or Kwakwaka’wakw) and other indigenous people of the Pacific North-West coast of the modern USA and British Columbia. Abundant marine food resources in that area permitted an affluent, sedentary lifestyle and an elaborate material and ceremonial culture. The festival or ceremony known by Europeans as ‘potlatch’ gave families the opportunity to acquire prestige and status by giving away goods, a practice that could become highly competitive. However, the richness and variety of food resources along the Northumberland coast in the Mesolithic would not, in itself, explain the permanent structures of the Howick people: after all, the food resources they exploited were available both earlier and later, yet the hut site went out of use after just some 200 years of use, around 7650 cal bc. A few other similar hut sites have recently been excavated in the north and west of Britain and, so far, they all seem to date from the same relatively short period of time in the early eighth millennium bc. Clive Waddington suggests that this phase of permanent building was a consequence of coastal change.80 Between 8000 and 7000 bc land

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in the southern North Sea basin was rapidly submerged, and communities there would have been obliged to seek new territory on higher ground. Although only a relatively narrow coastal fringe would have been inundated in Northumberland, there could have been a ripple effect of increased population pressure from the south, or even long-distance migration northwards along the contemporary coast. Construction of permanent huts could have been a way of warning incomers that this land had occupants, and thereby claiming territory. We can only conjecture whether population pressure resulted in conflict or a peaceful assimilation of incoming people.

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2

Lost and new-made lands William Whiting’s hymn ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’ includes these memorable lines, referring to God: Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep

But even when that fine hymn was written, in 1860, there can have been few people living and working on the coast who supposed that there was anything divinely appointed about the sea’s limits: it was well known that its limits could change, as a result of natural coastal processes, and following land reclamation. Despite this, there seems to have been a general presumption in the nineteenth century that reclaimed land would remain claimed, thanks to the latest technological developments in coastal defence and land drainage. What we would now call ‘environmental issues’ did not figure very highly in the intellectual climate of the Victorian age, and only the most acute and dramatic natural events were perceived as threatening. Accounts of coastal change by geologists were not seen as reflecting a current or pressing problem, but rather as a disinterested academic study, illuminating past processes.1 We view things differently now. In the previous chapter, I outlined the very long-term processes that resulted in regional-scale changes in the positions of coastlines across the North-West European coastal shelf from around 700,000 years ago. Here, the focus becomes finer. I shall consider coastal change during the later part of the post-glacial (Holocene, or Flandrian) period, after Britain had become an island, and the coastline had taken up something approaching its present form, around 6,000 years ago. This date roughly coincides with the arrival of the earliest farmers in England, around 4000 bc, so it makes a convenient cultural, as well as environmental, full stop. The key point to bear in mind is that coastal change, though driven ultimately by global processes of climate change, has taken various forms in different parts of the country. Regional variations in geology, topography, wave climate and sediment transport have all had effects on the character and positions of coastlines, and their rates of change. Locally, the existence of barrier beaches or dune systems has often meant that areas at, or below, mean sea level which would otherwise have been sea were actually land – at least temporarily. Sequences of sediments from adjacent estuaries and embayments can be very different, reflecting local variation in their environmental histories; and patterns of prehistoric coastal settlement are also very variable, partly in response to this. Examples from several coastal areas are

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outlined below. However, prehistoric and later people did not merely respond to coastal change. There is good archaeological evidence for the human exploitation and, later on, modification and transformation of the coast, especially of its wetlands; and this, too, is part of the story.2

PREHISTORY Relative sea level (RSL) changes around the English coast have been reconstructed from sediment sequences, especially in estuaries (see Appendix).3 There has been a broadly threefold process of submergence in the Thames, Severn and Southampton Water during the post-glacial.4 As was noted in Chapter 1, from around 8,200 to 5,700 years ago, mean sea level rose rapidly from around –9 m od to –4 m od, and estuaries expanded, submerging freshwater wetlands and inundating former dry-land Mesolithic landscapes. After around 5,700 years ago, the rate of RSL rise slowed, and freshwater peat-forming vegetation, such as reedbeds, began to expand over former salt marsh and mud-flats. In places, mud-flats became dry, and soils developed on them, providing new land for Neolithic communities to exploit. After around 3,200 years ago, freshwater coastal wetlands and dry-land areas were once more submerged by tidal waters, minerogenic sediments (mainly clays and silts) were deposited, and mud-flat and salt marsh expanded around the developing estuaries. The south-eastern part of the North Sea landscape, lying off the present Essex coast, comprised a lowland area of soft geology, drained by the former seawards extensions of the rivers Stour, Blackwater, Crouch, Thames and their tributaries. The Thames floodplain overlies a very deep sequence of sediments consisting of freshwater peats and estuarine clay/silts, over 15 m thick at Tilbury. Analysis and dating of these sediments enabled Devoy to define the process of relative sea-level change from around 8,170 years ago.5 He defined a sequence of transgressive overlaps, named Thames I–V (when the sea advanced inland and clays/silts were deposited), and regressive overlaps (Tilbury I–V), when marine conditions retreated and freshwater peats were formed. Of particular archaeological significance is the Thames III transgression, which resulted in widespread submergence of a fringe of coastal land, and sites on it, around 3,850 to 2,800 years ago.6 One effect of this transgression was to seal abandoned dry-land settlement sites beneath layers of sediments, including estuarine clays, detritus mud, and peats. Though submerged (at least at high tide) these sites have been protected from the processes of weathering, root and animal disturbance, and truncation by ploughing, which have so badly damaged similar early prehistoric sites that have remained on land. Only now, as the sediment cover erodes away, do former landscapes and sites become visible once more. The results of survey work in Essex during the 1980s at first suggested that similar extensive exposures of submerged prehistoric landscapes would be found at many other locations elsewhere on the eastern and southern coasts, but it now seems that such exposures are uncommon.7 Apart from

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a site on Hoo Flats in the Medway, where a scatter of lithics and pottery of Mid- to Late Neolithic date on a submerged land surface has been discovered, extensive exposures have rarely been reported.8 The Essex sites are thus more significant than was first realized. One area has been studied intensively: a mud-flat known as the Stumble, north of Osea Island in the Blackwater estuary, Essex.9 At the Stumble there is an extensive intertidal exposure of Neolithic land surface (approximately 560 × 160 m when first located), at an elevation of –0.20 to –0.45 m od. So far as we can tell, this area was not different from other areas of lowland Neolithic valley landscape: it just happens to have been submerged later on, and then protected by sediments. The Neolithic palaeosol (buried soil) survives extensively, and the surface is still littered with flint artefacts, waste flakes, and sherds of pottery. In 1985–6, a programme of systematic artefact collection, test-pitting, small-scale area excavation, and analyses of soil micromorphology, palynology, plant macrofossils and faunal remains was undertaken (see Appendix). Subsequent work has involved monitoring and recording areas of land surface newly exposed by erosion.10 On the basis of this work, a long-term reconstruction of changing environments and land use at the site is possible (see Figures 4 and 5). During the Early to Middle Neolithic, from 3685–3385 cal bc, the area was

Figure 4. Landscape change at the site of the Stumble: Early–Middle Neolithic. Image by Ian Brown, from Murphy (2007).

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Figure 5. Landscape change at the Stumble: Iron Age to Medieval. Image by Ian Brown, from Murphy (2007).

low-lying land, around 1 km from the nearest tidal creek. It was drained by freshwater streams. Soils formed on London Clay ‘head’ supported primary woodland dominated by lime, oak and hazel. There were small-scale woodland clearances associated with farming and exploitation of wild foods and other resources. Abundant charred remains of cereals (mainly emmer wheat) and flax, and some bone fragments of cattle and pig, have been recovered, together with charred remains of wild plant foods (hazelnuts, sloe, hawthorn, roots and tubers), and some bones of red and roe deer. Although the occupants of the site were plainly farmers, remains of wild plant foods were just as abundant as those of cultivated crops, which shows that the collection of wild nuts, fruits and roots remained important. As relative sea level rose, the Blackwater estuary expanded and, by the later Neolithic, soils in the vicinity were becoming waterlogged, freshwater streams were becoming tidal creeks, and a zone of salt marsh expanded progressively inland. Rising groundwater resulted in the death of trees at the site (and ultimately the preservation of their root systems), and a thin organic sediment spread over the former land surface. The area became increasingly uninhabitable. The latest evidence of human activity on the land surface is from a ‘burnt flint mound’, dated to 2490–2285 cal bc. Prehistoric mounds and spreads of heatshattered flints are often found in wetland areas. We do not know what function they served, and they may have had more than one purpose. By analogy with more recent Irish sites for which there is some literary evidence, it has been suggested that some were ‘feasting sites’, where water was boiled, using hot stones, for cooking; but,

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in fact, most examples in England have produced little in the way of food remains. An intriguing alternative suggestion is that they represent the remains of bathing sites akin to North American ‘sweat lodges’ or Scandinavian saunas.11 Later, during the Bronze Age, rising RSL resulted in the area becoming salt marsh and mud-flat. Wooden structures, probably related to salt-marsh grazing and fishing, were constructed, and settlement sites were relocated to the dry soils of the adjacent gravel terraces. From the Iron Age to the Early Medieval period salt marsh and mud-flat resources continued to be exploited. Neolithic sites which were evidently not settlements are also now exposed in the intertidal zone. At Purfleet, in the Thames estuary, there is a foreshore outcrop of peat, the base of which is dated to 2554–2313 cal bc, and which overlies a Neolithic land surface. Shells of land snails from this surface show that it was exposed long enough for woodland to develop on it, before peat formed in increasingly wet conditions. The site has produced polished stone axes (one of them of Cornish Greenstone) and an unstratified butchered bone of an aurochs, a species of large wild cattle. We do not know just what people were doing there, though hunting, wood collection and plant food collection are all probable.12 The latest radiocarbon date from a site occupied before the submergence of the Essex coastal fringe is from a pit, which produced part of an Early Bronze Age vessel known as Beaker, at Jaywick (2460–2144 cal bc).13 In complete contrast to the Essex coast, the Isles of Scilly comprise an archipelago of islands and rocks of metamorphosed Palaeozoic and intrusive granitic rocks about 45 km west of Land’s End. They illustrate, in microcosm, the process of progressive submergence that has affected the entire British archipelago since the latest (Devensian) glacial stage ended around 12,000 years ago. As in Essex, however, changes in RSL strongly influenced patterns of human settlement and economic activity. At first, Scilly was a single island but, by around 3000 bc, rising sea levels had separated St Agnes, Annet and the Western Rocks from the northern islands. Radiocarbon dating and palaeoecological results from intertidal peat shelves imply that all the islands could have been separated at high water from around 1000 bc.14 Although a small collection of possibly Mesolithic artefacts has been recovered from St Martin’s, it seems that the islands were not regularly occupied until the Neolithic, and that permanent occupation only began in the Bronze Age. Pollen and archaeological evidence indicates that large-scale farming began at that time. Prehistoric stone structures exposed in cliff sections or in foreshore exposures include hut circles, field boundaries, cairns, cist graves and stone alignments, but in many cases these are not closely dated. The stone field walls may have originated in the Bronze Age, but probably continued in use as late as the Early Medieval period.15 Although most are assumed to be of late Bronze Age date, the chronological evidence is quite sparse. By the Early to Middle Iron Age, the woodlands of the island had been largely cleared.16 Settlement sites at Halangy Down, St Mary’s and Nornour indicate continued occupation between the Iron Age and Romano-British period. Neolithic artefacts have been found at a number of locations in the Severn

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estuary, but activity in a submerged land surface at Oldbury involved not just deposition of artefacts but also, as in Essex, the digging of pits and postholes. This represents a ‘more than transitory occupation’ and is dated to 4330–3980 cal bc.17 Evidence for Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age activity (2570–2200 cal bc) is provided by a wooden structure in the fill of a palaeochannel at Peterstone, interpreted very tentatively as related to fishing. However, the evidence for Neolithic activity in the Severn estuary is sparse overall, compared to the adjacent Somerset Levels, where 30 wooden trackways, converging on probable settlement sites, have been recorded. Moreover, isotopic analyses of human bones from around the estuary indicate that the individuals represented did not consume a diet with a high proportion of marine foods. The focus of interest seems to have been on inland wetlands, rather than the estuary itself. A Bronze Age site buried under wind-blown sand has been recorded at Gwithian on the north Cornish coast, and at Brean Down, Somerset four separate phases of Bronze Age occupation are separated by blown sand.18 Palaeoecological analysis of peats in Langstone Harbour, Hampshire indicates a shift from an open fen habitat to carr woodland, consisting of oak, yew, willow/ poplar, birch and alder. The land that later became the harbour was, in the Neolithic, a low-lying area drained by freshwater rivers, with open fen and carr.19 Evidence for earlier Neolithic activity is very slight – just a few leaf-shaped flint arrowheads that might have been lost in hunting over hundreds of years. There is no reason to think that there was significant or permanent Neolithic activity in the area of the later harbour. The Sussex coast includes several estuaries and embayments. At some periods they were isolated from the sea by shingle spits and barriers, which formed due to longshore drift of sediment in an easterly direction from around Selsey Bill. This had the effect of diverting the mouths of rivers eastwards, and allowing mud-flats, salt marsh and, ultimately, freshwater wetlands to form in back-barrier environments. Peat began to form behind coastal barriers at different times, in the Ouse Valley, on the Willingdon Levels near Eastbourne, at Coombe Haven near Bexhill, and at Worthing. As the peat surface dried out, fen-carr woodland developed. The remains of this woodland are today exposed as ‘submerged forests’ on the shore at Bulverhythe and elsewhere. In the Willingdon Levels, a Late Bronze Age timber platform was constructed on the peat surface at Shinewater Park.20 The Shinewater platform, covering some 2,000 m2, was constructed on piles, with horizontal oak timbers and an upper layer of hazel rods, and with hearths on the top surface. It was connected to dry-land by a substantial timber trackway, and appears to date to around 900–800 bc.21 The hearths imply that there was domestic activity, though the high quality of finds, and the presence of human skeletal remains from the small area so far excavated, might also suggest ritual ‘placed’ deposition (see Chapter 5). After the Late Bronze Age, peat surfaces along the Sussex coast were overlaid by marine and estuarine sediments, though again not synchronously. This probably reflects the breaching of shingle barriers at different times at separate places, due to local factors, in later prehistory. Late Bronze Age activity on the drying coastal

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peat marshes of Shinewater Park does not seem to have lasted long, and may have been ended by catastrophic breaching of a shingle barrier in a storm. Further east, in Kent, the present Dungeness Foreland did not exist at all around 3000 bc. There was a broad embayment between the present sites of Rye and Hythe, with a shingle spit at its south-west margin, related to the eastward longshore drift on this coast. By around 1000 bc the spit had developed to form a major barrier, extending to less than 10 km from the site of Hythe, which enclosed and protected a back-barrier environment of salt marsh, freshwater wetland and raised bog.22 Prehistoric sites along the coasts of south-west, southern and eastern England thus indicate quite different patterns of activity. In Essex, there were Neolithic settlements and farming on the coastal fringe and estuaries, but in the Severn estuary and in Langstone Harbour, in apparently similar environments, the evidence for human presence is slight. In later prehistory, from the Bronze Age onwards, coastal settlement on dry peat surfaces behind coastal barriers was possible at some locations, for example in Sussex, but on more open coasts settlement sites shifted inland to higher and dryer land. The contemporary intertidal zone on the latter coasts was unsuitable for settlement, but was not abandoned: it provided grazing, fish, shellfish and wildfowl, all of which were exploited.

SUBMERGED FORESTS Neolithic landscapes were largely forested, but the extent and character of prehistoric woodlands usually has to be inferred indirectly from pollen evidence. However, interpretation of this evidence is often difficult. Species of trees differ significantly both in the amounts of pollen produced, and the mode and distance of its dispersal. Moreover, pollen from any given site would have come from a range of different woodland types, sometimes over a very large area. However, submerged forests, now exposed on beaches and estuarine mud-flats (first described and discussed scientifically by Clement Reid), provide direct, and very specific, information about prehistoric woodlands.23 During the Mesolithic, rapid RSL rise led to the submergence of woodlands which have been preserved by later sediment cover at many sites (see Chapter 1). In the Neolithic, freshwater wetlands expanded over former areas of salt marsh and mud-flat, due to reduced rates of RSL rise, and wet valley-floor woodlands developed widely. Submerged forests of this period are visible between tides all around the English coast. Just to give some of the better-known and most accessible sites, and at the risk of embarking on a catalogue, in the North-East there are examples at Cresswell, Hauxley, Seaburn, Hartlepool Bay, Hornsea, Owthorpe, and Easington, and in Lincolnshire between Mablethorpe and Skegness, and at Ingoldmells and Sutton-on-Sea. A submerged forest at Immingham is dated to around 6,680 years ago, though other submerged forests on this coast may be of later date.24 In Norfolk there is a submerged forest at Titchwell, and there are beach exposures of Holocene peat with remains of alder trees at Sea Palling dated to between around 5,000 and 2,200 years ago.25 On the

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Essex coast, remains of isolated oak trees, rooted into a mineral palaeosol, are widespread in the Blackwater estuary, one of which has given a radiocarbon date of 2858–2468 cal bc; and valley-floor woodland is also represented, for example at Clementsgreen Creek, in the Crouch estuary, where submerged woodland of alder and oak is dated to 2873–2509 cal bc. In the Thames estuary at Purfleet roots from woodland including ash, alder, yew, elm and holly produced a date of 2554–2313 cal bc.26 A prehistoric submerged forest has recently been recorded on the North Kent coast, at Darenth, and could be contemporary with those at Purfleet and Erith.27 In Langstone Harbour, submerged in situ trunks of oak and willow have been dated to between 3360–2910 and 2300–1950 cal bc.28 In the West Country, there are submerged forests at St Ives, Porlock and Minehead29 and they are widespread in the North-West, especially to the south of the Ribble, along the Wirral and in the Mersey and Dee estuaries. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Along the Holderness coast former lakes or meres, infilled with sediments, are exposed in cliffs. Although these are not strictly submerged forests, they do illuminate other aspects of prehistoric valley woodlands. At Withow Gap, Skipsea, erosion of freshwater mere sediments exposed numerous tree trunks and branches, and a radiocarbon date of 3771–3370 cal bc suggested that these could represent the remains of Neolithic trackways or platforms. However, excavations in the 1990s produced wood with clear beaver toothmarks, suggesting that at least some of these structures were beaver dams, or dispersed parts of them.30 Although radiocarbon dates are available from a number of submerged forests, and one, on the Wootton–Quarr coast on the Isle of Wight, is dated by dendrochronology to 3463–2694 bc, few have been examined in detail.31 The example on the Thames foreshore at Erith, Kent is an exception.32 It extends for over 640 m of foreshore. Radiocarbon determinations indicate a surprisingly long duration, from at least 2580–2200 cal bc to 990–790 cal bc – Late Neolithic to Late Bronze Age – with trees of differing dates exposed at various levels on the shore. Alder was the dominant tree throughout the Neolithic. In the eastern (earlier) part of the site, however, other species including maple, ash, oak, holly, elm, yew, birch and willow/poplar indicate a mosaic of dry and wet conditions with very marked local variation in species composition. Most trees were mature and widely spaced, with trunks over 40 cm in diameter. In the western part of the site, somewhat later in date, there are fewer yews but more birch and willow/poplar, and shrubby species such as dogwood, alder buckthorn and buckthorn imply moister and more open woodland. Alder became increasingly dominant in Bronze Age woodlands at the site and other tree species occurred only at very low levels, reflecting rising ground water on the floodplain. On the opposite Essex shore at Purfleet smaller-scale sampling of similar but a less extensively exposed submerged forest suggested local dominance of ash, alder and yew, from 2554 to 2313 cal bc.33 Besides giving us the evocative experience of walking through woodlands that perished thousands of years ago, sites of this type are especially helpful in enabling us to visualize the character of mid-Holocene valley-floor woodland. The most obvious feature that they demonstrate is the extreme local variability of prehistoric woodlands. A wide

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range of tree species is present, distributed as a complex mosaic, responding to small-scale variations in topography and soil drainage.34

COASTAL CHANGE IN THE HISTORIC PERIOD Compared to the vast changes of coastlines during the Pleistocene and early Holocene, changes occurring over the last two thousand years have been minimal in scale. Yet, since population densities have been much higher, and coastal settlements have represented a much greater investment of resources and effort, the impacts on human society have been far from trivial. It is no longer an option just to pack up and go, as people presumably did in prehistory when coastal areas became uninhabitable. The evidence for climate change, and its effects on relative sea levels, during the last 2,000 years comes from several sources. Oxygen isotope analysis of polar ice-cores, especially from Greenland, has provided a detailed record of temperature change, besides providing information on levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the storminess of climate, as registered by levels of dust and sea salt. The ice-cores preserve a record of periodic cycles in climate, of varying cyclicity, ranging from those related to the major glacial–interglacial stages to shorter time periods. Two of the 6,100-year cycles can be correlated with a phase of mid-Holocene cooling, and with the so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ of around ad 1500 to 1850. This latter cold phase has been implicated in the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland.35 Dendrochronological (tree-ring) analysis of samples from three areas of northern Eurasia indicates relatively warm climatic phases around ad 350–500 and 700–800 and a more significant phase of warming from the late tenth century.36 The Early Medieval warm period is generally referred to as the ‘Little Optimum’.37 Due primarily to thermal expansion of the world’s oceans, warm climatic phases resulted in global (eustatic) sea-level rise and marine transgression. The late Romano-British, Middle Saxon and Early Medieval warm phases were associated with transgressions, although there would have been a lag between mean temperature change and sea-level change, since the world’s oceans take time to warm.38 Another significant factor affecting coasts is storm frequency and intensity. Most coastal change – especially cliff erosion and the breaching of natural coastal barriers such as spit and dune systems – occurs rapidly during storms. Storm incidence and severity at any specific latitude in the past is difficult to reconstruct from scientific evidence, but collation of the historical reports from the medieval period indicates an exceptionally severe, and sustained, phase of storminess in the late thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.39 There have, of course, been isolated severe storms at other times as well. Changes in RSL, tidal levels and storm frequency have had very significant effects on coastal land use and settlement over the last two millennia. In the early Roman period, a widespread marine regression permitted expansion of farming and settlement onto former coastal and estuarine wetlands in the Humber Wetlands.

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At Kingston-upon-Hull, Romano-British field systems have been recorded at –3.8 m od, and at South Ferriby a Roman road surface on the Humber foreshore ranges from about +1.2 to –0.3 m od.40 In the East Anglian fens, an extensive transgression deposited the ‘Upper Silts’ or ‘Terrington Beds’, which were later colonized and farmed on a large scale in the Roman period.41 However, many Romano-British settlements and industrial sites in coastal wetlands in the Severn estuary and other lowland areas were abandoned, due to marine transgression, before the end of the Imperial administration in the early fifth century.42 Many sites are sealed beneath substantial depths of later estuarine sediments, though at present the latter are often not well dated. A typical example was provided by the excavation of a section of the Fen Causeway, the main east–west Roman road across the Fens, at Nordelph, Norfolk.43 The route at this location crossed an area of salt marsh. The fills of the drainage ditches alongside it included waterlogged remains of salt-marsh plants, besides insect remains including dung beetles, reflecting the horse- and oxen-drawn traffic. It was always a difficult route to maintain: the gravelled carriageway had a very high camber, and had been resurfaced at least once. Between resurfacings there was a thin layer of silt which produced foraminifera derived from well offshore, indicating at least one major sea flood. Finally, though, the road proved impossible to sustain and it was buried under laminated intertidal silt and sand. The abandonment of a major road, one of the defining infrastructure elements of Imperial authority, is an especially graphic illustration of the impact of marine transgression in the late Roman period. It appears that the Fens were largely abandoned and that recolonization did not occur until around ad 700.44 Away from such low-lying coasts, much of the Roman coastline of Britannia has been entirely lost, along with the associated coastal settlements, havens and military bases. In many places, erosion over the last two millennia has produced a modern coast a kilometre or more inland from that of the Roman period.45 In Lincolnshire there is evidence for inundation starting in the early second century ad, becoming more rapid in the fourth and fifth centuries; by the Late Saxon period the coast may have been around 1 mile to the east of its present position.46 Textbook maps of Roman Britain based on modern geography may therefore be very misleading. The combined effects of warm climate, higher global sea levels, increased storminess, and a peak in the incidence of spring tides had catastrophic effects on coasts in later periods, especially between around ad 1250 and 1600. Basil Cracknell lists 173 coastal settlements which were either lost or severely damaged in these centuries.47 Losses were especially severe on the coasts of Holderness (East Yorkshire), Lincolnshire, East Anglia and parts of the South Coast. On Holderness alone, around 23 settlements disappeared. However, even the predominantly hard-rock coasts of the South-West were affected. In Somerset, increased storm frequency and severity led to inland migration of sand dunes, which now surround the isolated church at Berrow, and there were extensive sand-blows on the north coast of Cornwall from St Ives to Crantock. The port of Ravenser Odd (also known as Ravensburgh or Hrafnseyrr), in a

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sheltered location to the west of the spit of Spurn Head, on the Humber, was progressively destroyed due to the long-term migration of the spit westwards. A storm surge in January 1362 finished it. The Frisian port of Rungholt went under at the same time. There are regular historical records of serious flooding from the late thirteenth century onwards in Lincolnshire, documenting losses of churches and entire settlements. Skegness was destroyed during storms in 1526.48 John Leland noted in the sixteenth century that ‘there was ons an haven and a town waullid having also a castelle. The old town is clene consumed and eaten up with the sea . . . At low water appere yet manifest tokens of old buildings’.49 It is possible that the ‘castelle’ was a Roman coastal fort. The Suffolk coast consists mainly of unconsolidated London Clay, Pleistocene sand ‘Crag’ deposits, glacial till and outwash sands and gravels. Erosion of these soft deposits has historically been severe.50 The village of Easton Bavents was lost in the later Middle Ages, and nearby parishes, especially Covehithe, have been reduced in size. Maps indicate a loss of some 1.2 km there since about 1780. The most significant loss, however, was of Dunwich. Dunwich was a significant place in the Early Medieval period: the probable site of Dumnoc, from which St Felix of Burgundy converted East Anglia, a town with three churches and 290 burghers in 1086, and capable of supplying 40 ships for Henry III in 1229 during the French Wars. The harbour was progressively restricted by shingle, damaged by storms from 1286, and finally destroyed by a storm of 1326. Thereafter the remainder of the town was progressively lost by cliff erosion, with major losses in 1328, 1347 and on into the sixteenth century.51 With the demise of Dunwich’s haven through silting, neighbouring Southwold increased in prosperity and could afford to improve its own coastal defences. There has been significant loss of land at Aldeburgh, too: a map of 1591 depicts three streets parallel to the beach, but by 1787 only two survived, and the Moot Hall, which used to be in the middle of town, is now almost on the beach. Longshore drift progressively resulted in the extension of Orford Ness southwards from the town of Orford (around 1530) towards its present 16 km extent. In fact, it appears to have attained almost its present size and form by the seventeenth century. The effects were to create large areas of salt marsh landwards (later reclaimed) and to narrow and constrict the channels of the Alde and Blyth.52 The lost fishing port of Shipden-juxta-Mare, north of Cromer, Norfolk, is mentioned in Domesday. Its church was destroyed by erosion before the end of the fourteenth century, together with a pier constructed to shelter the fishing boats of the community. The old church site is probably about 400 m offshore from the present pier: the submerged feature known as Church Rock, reputedly part of its ruins, became a danger to shipping, and was demolished in 1888. There is still a mass of rubble at the site, which is marked by a buoy.53 The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads were originally extensive valley-floor pits from which peat was extracted to fuel the cities, towns and monasteries of East Anglia – then the most populous part of England. Oliver Rackham estimates that some 900 million cubic feet of peat were extracted in the early Middle Ages.54 This major industry suddenly declined in the late thirteenth century, most probably due to inundation of the

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pits in the great flood of December 1287.55 Old Winchelsea and Promehill, on Romney Marsh, were also casualties: 300 houses were destroyed in Old Winchelsea in 1250, and both towns were destroyed in the same storm of 1287 that ended large-scale Broadland peat extraction. At New Romney, over a metre of flood silt was deposited in St Nicholas’ church – remarkably at an elevation of over 4.88 m od. At the same time there were massive floods on reclaimed farmland south of the Rhee Wall, and the channel of the river Rother was diverted, which left Romney without a throughflow of fresh water to flush its harbour free of sediment.56 From the later thirteenth century, coastal change led to silting in the harbours of most of the Cinque Ports (see Chapter 4). In Sussex, the early ports of Old Winchelsea, Shoreham and possibly Hastings had each developed at a river mouth, where an easterly-extending spit protected the harbour from south-west gales. However, due to extension of the spits further east, resulting from longshore drift of shingle, the harbour mouths could be blocked or deflected, as at Shoreham. Alternatively, if the spit was breached, the harbour became directly exposed to storms, as at Old Winchelsea, which was progressively destroyed from the 1250s onwards.57 Dover’s port was originally at the estuary mouth of the river Dour, but this too silted up during the Middle Ages. In 1495 an entirely new harbour was established, at the Archcliffe embayment, which, with the addition of a breakwater, became known as Paradise Bay, but there was a continual need to remove sediment from it. Maintaining havens on the South Coast thus called for ongoing effort, and in places proved ultimately impossible. These events were by no means confined to England. De Grote Mandrenke, the storm surge that hit the Netherlands in January 1362, drowned untold thousands. In Lower Saxony it is thought that permanent breaching of sea defences began in the 1287 flood, and in 1362 Jade Bay expanded massively, and was not reclaimed until the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The entire Frisian coastline between the rivers Ems and Weser was completely reshaped by medieval storms.58 In short, the late thirteenth to sixteenth centuries were the ‘critical centuries in the evolution of our present coastline’.59

EXPLOITING COASTAL WETLANDS Exploitation, as defined by Stephen Rippon, involved making use of the resources provided by estuaries, mud-flats, salt marshes, brackish-water swamps and open beaches without significantly changing these habitats.60 The principal resources considered here will be sea water itself (for salt production), seaweed, unmodified salt-marsh grazing, crop production (initially on unembanked coastal marshland), wildfowl, fish and shellfish. It is important to note that there is nothing especially ‘primitive’ about exploitation of unmodified coastal habitats. Where that was the most economically viable option, simple exploitation of resources continued into recent times. Coastal activities which had a greater environmental footprint will be discussed in Chapter 4.

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SALT Salt was in the past a vital commodity, used for the curing and preservation of foods, principally meat, fish and dairy products. A supply of salt helped to ensure adequate food stores through the winter months, and could be used to convert a fish catch into a processed product suitable for trading over long distances. The raw material was essentially free, except for the effort involved in saltern construction. Salt production from sea water in England was, however, a highly energy-intensive industry. Centres of salt production have shifted through time, partly depending on fuel availability, besides the changing locations of the main urban markets. Early evidence for salt production comes from a Bronze Age saltern site at Fenn Creek, South Woodham Ferrers, Essex dated to 1412–1130 cal bc and a second, also of Late Bronze Age date, from Tetney Lock on the Lincolnshire Marsh.61 Salt might well have been produced before that, but there is no evidence for it as yet. It is, however, from the Late Iron Age that our earliest evidence for industrial-scale production comes. This continued, and expanded in scale, at many locations into the early Roman period. In practice, separating late prehistoric from early Roman sites is difficult in many places, for datable artefacts are few. The characteristic indicator of salt production of this date is known as briquetage – coarse red, lightly fired ceramic objects, which comprised the structures of evaporating hearths, and the containers in which the brine was evaporated. Scatters of unstratified briquetage on foreshores are usually the first indicator of a nearby eroding saltern during archaeological survey. Besides this, well-preserved sites include inlet channels, settling tanks (to allow sediment to precipitate from the sea water), and hearths. Where sites remained in use for long periods, mounds of waste material – briquetage and ‘red earth’ – accumulated. In Essex these became known as red hills, and the term has been applied more widely in other counties by archaeologists.62 Iron Age and Roman salterns have been recorded from many locations. The North Kent marshes have produced abundant evidence for Roman salt production, often associated with pottery manufacture, although here briquetage and other debris from the industry was not mounded up to produce red hills.63 New saltern sites identified during recent survey include a Romano-British site at Elmley Reach and a first millennium bc site at Dagnam saltings.64 Very large numbers of Essex red hills are known, and more continue to be detected by field survey and aerial photography.65 There is a concentration of sites in the Blackwater estuary, but they have been recorded from all the Essex estuaries. To the north, in Suffolk, red hills are less frequent, possibly because of increasing distance from the Roman city of Colchester and other centres of urban population, but red hills are known along the Suffolk coast and estuaries, mainly to the south.66 There are sites in Norfolk, and a Roman saltern at Middleton and a Middle Iron Age site at Cowbit, Lincolnshire have recently been fully excavated.67 Numerous other first millennium bc and Roman salterns are known in the western and southern silt fens. On the Lincolnshire coast, a cluster of Iron Age to RomanoBritish salterns around Ingoldmells and Marshchapel has been known since the

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1840s and recent survey work has detected more.68 Indeed, it is possible that the coast around Skegness was the place named by the Roman geographer Ptolemy as Salinae.69 On the South Coast there was salt production around the Isle of Purbeck, and late prehistoric and Roman saltmaking also occurred in Langstone Harbour, and on the Isle of Wight at Fishbourne and Quarr.70 Poole Harbour was the main area for salt extraction in the Roman south-west, at sites such as Ower, though salt was also produced in parts of the central and north Somerset Levels.71 Further north, there was Roman salt production at Coatham, Teeside.72 Almost wherever conditions permitted and there was a market for the product, there was Roman salt production. By the Late Roman period, the Essex salt industry seems to have ceased, though the red hills remained in use, perhaps as cattle refuges on the marshes in times of flood.73 The Romano-British salt industry in the Severn estuary, notably at Highbridge and Huntspill, appears to have lasted longer, from the first to third or fourth centuries.74 Rippon discusses the relocation of the salt industry from SouthEast England to the west after the second century, concluding that there is no simple explanation, but that a shift of wealth to the west, the exploitation of inland brine springs, and even state control might be implicated. Overall, Rippon argues, the extent and types of land use in different regions are likely to have related to patterns of private estate structure, possible Imperial landholdings, and the requirements of urban and military centres for agricultural produce or other commodities.75 Management of local woodlands to ensure continuity of fuel supply would have been essential. An Iron Age saltern at Cowbit, Lincolnshire produced only alder and willow/poplar charcoal. These are all lightweight woods, which make poor fuel, and they may have been converted to charcoal before use. Charcoal production from wood was commonplace in historic times.76 From a Roman saltern site at Morton Fen, Lincolnshire Rowena Gale identified a similar range of wood charcoals to that of the Iron Age Cowbit site, including alder, ash and willow/poplar, but charcoal was much sparser and stem diameters, where determinable, much narrower (<5 mm), implying that cutting was too frequent for regenerating stems to reach a large size.77 Possibly, local woodlands were being overexploited. Other charred plant material, including bracken and horsetail stems, and cereal processing waste was more common than wood charcoal, perhaps to make up the shortfall. Another Roman saltern, at Middleton, Norfolk, produced a very diverse range of wood charcoals – alder, birch, hazel, heathers, apple and related trees, sloe, oak, willow/poplar, yew, gorse and broom – indicating that fuels had to be obtained from a variety of habitats, including woodland on dry soils, wet carr woods and heathland. Where wood was in short supply peat was used. It is possible to demonstrate the use of peat as a fuel by obtaining radiocarbon dates on charred macrofossils of peat-forming plants. For example, at London Lode Farm, Nordelph, Norfolk, charred remains of saw sedge (Cladium mariscus) from the debris of a Roman salt-producing site were dated to 400–170 cal bc and 820–510 cal bc. These dates are obviously much earlier than the Roman saltern site itself, by up to 900 years, showing that sedge peat originally formed in the Iron Age was being used as a fuel.78

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Rather few Anglo-Saxon salterns have been recorded, although excavation at Burnt Hill, Marshchapel, Lincolnshire provided evidence for a Late Saxon site, including an inlet channel and storage tanks. Brine appears to have been boiled in open pans, supported on ‘hand bricks’ – a form of briquetage. The absence of remains of ceramic pans might suggest these were of lead.79 From at least the eleventh century, there seems to have been an expansion in production, judging from the numbers of sites recorded historically. Salt pans are listed in the Domesday Book, and plainly were valuable assets: 22 in Hampshire, 61 in Sussex and Kent, 22 in Essex, 10 in Suffolk and 34 in Lincolnshire. Later medieval salt production, on the Lincolnshire marsh and elsewhere, involved a different technique from that used in the Iron Age and Roman periods. Rather than direct evaporation of sea water, the surface crust of sediments on sand or mud-flats was used. This crust includes a very high concentration of salt, due to wind evaporation, to the extent that salt sometimes crystallizes naturally on the surface. Surface mud or sand was collected, placed on some form of filter, and sea water poured through, to leach out the salt that the sediments contained. This technique produced a very concentrated brine solution, and so required less fuel for the final stage of evaporation.80 The huge quantities of waste sand and silt produced went to form the large saltern mounds that characterize this part of the coast, and elsewhere (see Figure 6). There are extensive remains from Lindsey and around the Wash.81 At Mablethorpe, and around Wrangle and Friskney, saltern mounds extended towards one another so as to form, in effect, sea defences, and several churches in the area were constructed on them. In places, for example at Wrangle, lines of late medieval saltern mounds, or ‘tofts’, delineate the contemporary shoreline.82 In Essex, place names

Figure 6. North Wootton, Norfolk. Medieval ‘sleeching mound’ and palaeochannel.

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such as ‘Barrow Marsh’ indicate a later misinterpretation of such saltern mounds as burial mounds. Salt production in Suffolk continued in the Middle Ages: besides the salt pans recorded in Domesday, one was constructed as part of the development of Orford by Henry II in the 1160s.83 In the north, the Premonstratensian abbey at Cockersand was involved in the salt industry, and there was widespread salt extraction on the West Cumbrian coast at Calder, Furness and Holmcultram, under monastic control. There was also saltmaking around the Solway and Morecambe Bay, and some sites have been recorded archaeologically. Early evidence for the possible use of coal for direct boiling comes from the thirteenth century at Saltom, on the West Cumberland coalfield.84 Medieval salt extraction was also widespread on the Cleveland coast, and there are many salt mounds around Coatham. Sea coal was used for brine evaporation at South Shields.85 Post-medieval salt production took more obviously industrial form, with a more elaborate infrastructure. On the South Coast, by 1743, Hampshire had 18 salterns, particularly around the Solent. Lymington was one centre of production. Sea water was fed into holding ponds and thence to shallow ponds for preliminary evaporation by sun and wind. The concentrated brine was then pumped, by wind power, to cisterns via wooden pipes. From the seventeenth century, the cisterns were made of riveted iron, around 2.4 m square and 0.2 m deep. Evaporation was coal-fired in boiling houses, the coal being imported from the Tyne. The product was shipped from Lymington to Poole, and thence to Newfoundland for salting fish, amongst other markets. The salt works at Lymington are associated with stone-built quays.86 Salt production remained important on the South Coast into the nineteenth century. In Chichester and Langstone harbours saltern sites are shown on early maps and place names related to the industry persist at a number of locations, such as ‘Great Salterns’ beside the Eastern Road into Portsmouth.87 The Southwold Salt-Works in Suffolk was in peak production in 1750, supplying the local fishing industry, and did not finally close until 1900. However, by the sixteenth century, coastal salt production was concentrated in the north of England and Scotland.88 The post-medieval salt industry in the northeast was coal-fuelled, using a virtually free ‘pan coal’, a by-product that was useless for house coal. It was centred on South Shields and the south Northumberland coast. The coastal industry declined in late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, due to competition from the inland rock salt of Cheshire, and the finding of other industrial uses for the pan coal. A separate salt industry developed around Teesside in the late nineteenth century, due to the discovery of rock salt, which was the basis of the later Teesside chemical industry.89 There was also new industrial production from inland rock salt, at Northwich, Nantwich and Middlewich, in the north-west.90 Import duties on foreign salt were removed in 1823, coastal salt production away from the coalfields became less economic, and there was continuing competition from the inland rock salt sources. Against the trend, however, the Maldon Sea-Salt company in Essex continues to produce its ‘curious crystals of unusual purity’ from the exceptionally saline waters of the Blackwater estuary.

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SEAWEED Seaweeds do not survive in archaeological deposits, for they decompose rapidly, but soil samples from archaeological sites occasionally produce the more durable remains of small molluscs, crustaceans and other organisms which are associated with seaweed on shorelines. For example, Roman deposits at Culver Street, Colchester produced shells of molluscs too small to be human foodstuffs, with remains of small shore crabs.91 In view of the evidence for cultivation at the site, it seemed probable that these represented the durable residues from strandline litter and/or seaweed, imported for use as manure. Seaweed or kelp was used in prehistory and later periods either as manure or fodder and, even in the nineteenth century, seaweed was collected commercially to improve nutrient-poor Cornish soils.92 Having a high sodium and potassium content, seaweed was also used as a raw material for the glass and soap industries from at least the eighteenth century. Orkney supplied North-East England to fuel kelp-burning, the return cargo being coal.93 Kelp-burning was established on the Isles of Scilly in 1684 by the Nance family from Falmouth, based on the island of Tean, and the industry remained a significant part of Scilly’s economy for some 150 years. The kelp was dried, and then burnt in small stone-lined pits along the shore to produce soda ash, which was shipped to Bristol and Gloucester. Some 40 to 50 kelp-burning pits were operating on Scilly in the early nineteenth century, and several can still be seen.94

COASTAL GRAZING Aerial photographs of the north Norfolk coast show the routes of droveways, along which livestock were driven from coastal farms to graze on salt marsh. These were not constructed: trampling by stock along the same routes, over unknown periods of time, compacted the marsh clay and fertilized it with droppings, resulting in linear variations in modern vegetation which can still be seen from the air. There is no way of telling how old these routes are, but there is certainly good evidence that unprotected coastal marshes and mud-flats have been used for grazing at least since the Neolithic: footprints of humans and cattle in estuarine sediments, associated with domestic cattle bones, at Oldbury Flats, south Gloucestershire are dated to 3100–2150 cal bc.95 At the Bronze Age timber circle at Holme-next-theSea, Norfolk, plant macrofossils and insect remains indicate that the monument was constructed on salt marsh, and remains of a dung beetle (Apodius cf sphacelatus) could indicate nearby grazing by domestic animals.96 Excavations of archaeological sites, in advance of gravel extraction, have demonstrated a high density of later Bronze Age farming activity along the Thames and Blackwater estuaries in Essex. Settlement sites include a sub-square ditched enclosure at Lofts Farm, Chigborough, which had an interior roundhouse and rectangular building.97 Pollen and plant macrofossil evidence from wells and watering holes from this site, and others nearby at Chigborough and Slough House Farms, indicates a locally open environment of grazed damp grassland, with evidence for

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woody plants – probably in part derived from hedgerows.98 These sites seem to have had a largely pastoral economy, and were well-placed to exploit salt-marsh pasture nearby. Some intertidal prehistoric wooden structures along the Blackwater have been interpreted as ‘sheep bridges’, placed to allow the livestock access to, and from, salt-marsh grazing. On the Thames floodplain, hurdle trackways of similar date probably had the same function.99 In the Humber estuary, Bronze Age hurdle trackways are aligned parallel to the river channel, in places crossing creeks, and these might also be related to movement of stock as part of a pastoral farming system.100 During the Middle to Late Bronze Age, the Sussex coastal plain and the area of Chichester harbour also formed part of a farmed landscape, including field systems, roundhouses and barrows. One intertidal timber structure, dated to 900 cal bc, is known from Hayling Island.101 Middle Bronze Age rectangular wooden structures have been recorded on a foreshore peat shelf at Redwick, in the Severn estuary, with footprints of cattle, sheep/goat, horse and humans.102 Excavations and palaeoecological studies at the Bronze Age and later site at Brean Down, near Weston-super-Mare, have produced evidence for a coastal settlement with an economic base largely focused on grazing, with little evidence for cereal growing.103 These, and other, sites elsewhere show that coastal marshes were extensively used for grazing by the Middle to Late Bronze Age. This grazing economy persisted, on some marshes, for millennia.104 At Goldcliff, on the Welsh Severn shore, there is clear evidence for the presence of cattle on unclaimed marsh during the Iron Age. Numerous cattle hoofprints are associated with trackways and rectangular buildings dated to the fourth to third century bc. Prior to the construction of the Second Severn Crossing, excavations at Hallen revealed Iron Age roundhouses within small enclosures, dated to the second to first centuries bc, separated by a stream. The environmental evidence indicated that the site was at first on the edge of a salt marsh, but later there was extension of grassland vegetation in response to marine retreat. Animal bones from the site were mainly of sheep but cattle and pig were also present. The site is thought to have been a seasonally occupied grazing settlement.105 At Snettisham, in Norfolk, a multi-phase complex of fields and droveways, covering an impressive area of around 2 km2, has been defined by aerial photography. It is probable that, during the Late Iron Age and Roman periods, this system formed part of a pastoral economy, involving salt marsh and upland grazing at different times of year.106 Roman and medieval midden deposits at Leigh Beck, Canvey Island have produced bone assemblages dominated by sheep/goat with some remains of cattle, pig and domestic chicken, and sheep; and cattle were the main species represented in deposits at Middle Saxon sites in the East Anglian fens.107 On the north Kent marshes fragments of Romano-British ceramic strainers and sherds of cheese presses, notably at Burntwick, indicate cheese production.108 Seasonally occupied shepherds’ sites are defined by the place name ‘wick’: the Old English place name indicated a dairy farm on both the north Kent and Essex coasts. Subsequently, some coastal grazing marshes were protected by sea defences, and water levels were managed. Along the Severn estuary there are large areas of

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linear, narrow spade-dug gullies and ridges (‘ridge and furrow’) with associated gripes or grips (boundary ditches) and rhynes (drainage channels), related to management of water levels of estuary-edge grasslands. Dating is uncertain, but some systems probably date back to the medieval period.109 The Lincolnshire grazing marshes supported large flocks of sheep: wool production was the principal product between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, in part providing the income for numerous fine churches and for the construction of Lincoln Cathedral.110 From the sixteenth century onwards the Lincolnshire marshes were used both for fattening cattle and for sheep. Sheep also predominated on the Suffolk grazing marshes in the early Middle Ages, but by the sixteenth century dairying and bullock fattening became more important. Many of the cattle were ‘stores’ for fattening, driven overland from Wales, Scotland or even Ireland. The system involved grazing on the marsh for much of the year, but moving livestock to inland pasture in the winter to avoid degrading the waterlogged marsh soils. In summer, water levels in the dykes were kept high to provide drinking water and to confine stock.111 On the north Norfolk marshes, a stone-built late medieval building, locally known as Blakeney Chapel, was recently excavated before its inevitable destruction by coastal erosion. In fact, it proved to be not a chapel, but a domestic structure. A sixteenth-century map of the area includes cartoon-like illustrations of a man with a dog, and depictions of long-eared or horned animals that might be seen either as rabbits or goats. The excavations produced relatively abundant rabbit bones, and so the site is provisionally interpreted as a warrener’s lodge.112 In the Middle Ages, rabbits, which had originally come from Spain, were tender animals requiring careful management in constructed and enclosed warrens, and protection from predators and poachers. The tough feral rabbit of the English countryside only evolved in more recent times. Rabbit farming might seem an unexpected form of grazing on coastal marshes, but the Blakeney site is well drained, on a sand and gravel island or ‘eye’, above general marsh level. Moreover, it is isolated by extensive tracts of marsh from most intruders, animal or human. Another example of a coastal warren comes from Pencarrow Head in the Fowey estuary. It is isolated by a wall with projecting coping stones to prevent escapes and exclude predators.113 The conversion of coastal grazing marsh to arable in the twentieth century has sometimes been seen as an entirely new development. However, some areas of grazing marsh do not pre-date the fourteenth century: before then, the land was under the plough. Nevertheless, changing economic pressures in the twentieth century resulted in a 25 per cent loss of grazing marsh to arable between 1990 and 2000 alone in Lincolnshire, with comparable losses elsewhere. Besides the adverse effects of this change on coastal wildlife, archaeological earthworks such as field systems, settlement sites and saltern mounds have been destroyed by ploughing or intentional bulldozing.114

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COASTAL ARABLE FARMING There is now evidence for crop production in some unprotected coastal areas even before floodbanks were raised. Excavations have been undertaken at Middle to Late Saxon settlement sites at West Walton, Walpole St Andrew and Terrington St Clement in Norfolk, and at three sites at Gosberton, Lincolnshire, all in the Fens. The Middle Saxon sites were located on the slightly elevated ground of roddons, extinct creek channels infilled with silt which, due to differential sediment compaction, stood out as low ridges above potential flood level in the flat, low-lying Fenland landscape. Analysis of molluscs and foraminifers from the fills of drainage ditches shows that the ditches functioned, in effect, as salt-marsh creeks, and there was evidence for at least one marine flood. Charred and mineral-replaced crop plant remains were recovered from all sites.115 Barley was the most frequent cereal crop at most sites, together with oats and some remains of rye, bread wheat, horse-beans, peas, flax/linseed and hemp. Seeds of Brassica species (cabbage, etc.) were common in several samples from West Walton, and these could represent a cultivated plant. Significantly, the charred crop remains included a high proportion of waste chaff, not just grain, which indicates local crop-cleaning and, by inference, local production. The predominance of barley at these coastal sites is thought to have been related to its salt tolerance compared to other crops. Experimental work in the Netherlands has shown that ‘four-row’ barley, the crop represented at these Middle Saxon sites, is the only cereal capable of producing acceptable yields in highly saline environments.116 The similarity of these samples of crop plant remains from the Fenland to those from early medieval coastal sites in the Netherlands is striking117 and it seems likely that, faced with common problems, early farmers on the Fen siltlands and on the Dutch coast developed similar agricultural systems, perhaps independently, relying primarily on salt-tolerant crops. In short, the evidence now is that permanently occupied farms were established on the highest ground available in the Fens from the Middle Saxon period onwards, mainly on roddons. Arable farming was possible, but this was a very hazardous environment subject to marine (and sometimes freshwater) flooding. The productivity of the silt Fenlands evidently provided sufficient incentive for Anglo-Saxon farmers to accept the risks of living there all year round, even before construction of the sea bank. The modern intensive agriculture of the East Anglian fens therefore has more ancient origins than might be suspected at first sight. As Stephen Rippon has emphasized, land reclamation in the medieval period involved a major outlay of capital, both in terms of construction and maintenance.118 To be profitable, a maximum return was needed and this involved a mixed farming economy incorporating arable and meadow, not just pasture. Documentary records demonstrate this. For example, the yields of oats and barley were especially high at the manors of Canterbury Cathedral on Romney Marsh, compared to those from their inland holdings. More generally, the economic significance of coastal arable farming in the medieval period is easily underestimated.119 At Maltby le Marsh,

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Lincolnshire, in 1272 there was twice as much arable as pasture, with a still higher proportion at Cumberworth in 1277. The shift towards an emphasis on grazing followed the adverse environmental conditions of the fourteenth century, and the Black Death. Sheep-rearing, being less labour-intensive than arable farming, was one solution to the labour shortage experienced after the Plague. In archaeological terms, the survival even today of large areas of medieval ridge and furrow in the Lincolnshire Marsh shows that former ploughland, now used for grazing, has not been cultivated since the medieval ploughing ceased. Well-preserved medieval settlement earthworks survive today in areas of pasture, and again show that there has been no ploughing since the settlements were deserted.

WILDFOWLING Direct evidence for hunting and consumption of wildfowl comes from bones found in archaeological deposits of Mesolithic and later date. On the Isles of Scilly seabirds were exploited from prehistory until recent times, for meat, feathers and oil. Bronze Age middens (mounds of food waste) have produced remains of guillemot, razorbill, raven, goose, gannet, white stork, and possibly swan, whilst later deposits at a site on Bryher also included bones that were probably of the extinct great auk.120 To give just one example of avian remains from later coastal sites, deposits from Middle Saxon settlements in the silt fens of Eastern England included bones of wild geese, duck, coot, small waders and a harrier.121 Early wildfowling must have involved various techniques of netting, with arrow-shot for the largest species, but there is no indisputable archaeological evidence for this, apart, perhaps, from rectangular post-settings of Late Bronze Age date on the Wootton–Quarr coast, Isle of Wight, which have tentatively been interpreted as representing hides for wildfowlers.122 Wildfowl, including swans and other species, figured prominently in the menus of royal banquets in the Middle Ages, indicating that they were high-status foods. By the Early Modern period, after firearms became available, wildfowling became sport, not merely subsistence. Daniel Defoe, in the seventeenth century, refers to the ‘infinite number of wildfowl’ in the Blackwater estuary, especially around Osea Island, ‘so well known by our London men of pleasure’.123 On a more commercial scale, punt-gunners used large-bore shotguns to devastate flocks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first permanent structures designed to catch wildfowl were decoys. The word is believed to have come from the Dutch eende (cage) and kooy (trap), anglicized to ‘decoy’. In Suffolk, decoys were certainly a seventeenth-century introduction from the Netherlands.124 Typically they consisted of a central round or polygonal pond from which led a number of ‘pipes’ – tapering channels, curved so that their ends were invisible, and covered by netting, with low screens of reeds on one side, and ending in a detachable ‘bow net’. Flocks were lured into the pipes, using tame decoy ducks, and a dog (traditionally named ‘Piper’, after the Pied Piper of Hamelin) which jumped over and around the screens, responding to whistled commands. Its repeated brief appearance, and then concealment, proved irresistible to the

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inquisitive ducks, which swam down the pipe. Finally, the decoy man would jump up to startle the flock, leading them to take flight down the pipe and into the net. There was a decoy at Waxham, Norfolk in 1620, and others continued in use into the twentieth century. The catches were enormous: for example, over 9,000 wildfowl were caught at Nacton, Suffolk in 1925–6. The decoys were hardly ‘sporting’, and fortunately are no longer in operation. Decoy ponds today survive at some coastal sites in the east of England and elsewhere, as water-filled ponds, but many are now infilled and on reclaimed land under arable crops, where they show as one of the stranger types of crop mark in aerial photographs. In the West Country, decoys possibly of eighteenth-century date survive at Porlock and, somewhat ironically, Slimbridge, now the headquarters of the Wildfowl Trust.125

FISH-TRAPS/WEIRS Offshore sea fisheries, and the development of historic fishing ports, will be considered in Chapter 3. Near-shore line-fishing from boats or the shore itself dates back at least to the Mesolithic: bone fishhooks have been found at some Danish Mesolithic sites.126 Stationary stone and timber fish-traps, however, provide more widespread evidence for early fishing methods. The principle is simple, and persisted for millennia: an obstruction, built in an estuary or sheltered shore, most effectively V-shaped with its wide mouth facing upstream, will catch fish on a falling tide (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. A Middle Saxon V-shaped fish-trap at Holbrook Bay, Suffolk. Aerial photograph by D. Strachan, courtesy of Essex County Council.

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Late Mesolithic fish-traps are known from the coasts of most North-West European continental countries, especially Denmark, and have recently been reported from a site at North Wall Quay, Dublin.127 The Irish examples are of two types: either V- or C-shaped structure of wattle fences, with a trap at the apex, consisting of a woven basket held in place by stakes. They are dated to around 6100–5700 cal bc and were at an elevation of around 6.3 m below mean sea level. Early Neolithic fish-traps have been recorded at Bergshenhoek.128 No traps as early as that have yet been reported from England, although at Goldcliff in the Severn estuary Late Mesolithic layers produced abundant fishbones, mainly of eel, but with significant amounts of goby, bass and smelt. The fishbones included a high proportion of small and immature individuals, which could imply the use of traps or nets, in near-shore areas.129 A Neolithic wattle panel, dated to 3932–3665 cal bc, from an exposure of estuarine grey silt in Hartlepool Bay has been interpreted as part of a fish-trap. The fragmentary panel, originally 0.9 m in height, was constructed of unusually thin hazel stems, and is thought to be too insubstantial to have been part of a trackway or fence. Although not in situ it shows similarities to a panel from Olelyst, Denmark of similar age, which was found in association with vertical stakes, thought to form part of a V-shaped trap.130 On the north coast of the Isle of Wight between Wootton and Quarr, small V-shaped post-settings of Neolithic date are interpreted as structures intended to secure conical basket traps.131 In the Humber wetlands, the earliest direct evidence for fishing is provided by a 1.3 metre-long wooden structure of coppiced hazel poles from New Holland on the Lincolnshire Marsh, dated to around 1720 cal bc, and interpreted as a fish-trap.132 There is only tentative evidence for stationary fishing in later prehistory and in the Roman period but, from the sixth century ad onwards, fish-traps once more became important. Anglo-Saxon and later fish weirs are abundant in the Severn estuary and north Devon. There was a distinction between the hedge weir, or haecwer, and basket weir, or cytwer. In the Domesday record for the Severn and Wye valleys there were 91 cytweras and 4 haecwers.133 Basket weirs involved the use of conical baskets of wicker, placed behind V-shaped arrays of hurdle panels. These were termed weirs in Somerset, but kidells in Shropshire. At Tidenham there were 65 basket weirs in the Anglo-Saxon period, producing a catch including sturgeon, herring and, most surprisingly, porpoise. Fifty-six fisheries are recorded at the manor in Domesday. In Minehead, Blue Anchor and Bridgwater Bays are the remains of hundreds of weirs. The weirs in Bridgwater Bay have provided the only scientific dates for fishing structures in the Severn: dendrochronology shows that two samples of wood from them were felled in ad 932 and 966.134 Some stone fish weirs and composite stone/timber traps also survive, most of which appear to be of medieval date. There was a salmon fishery in the river Frome under the control of Wareham Priory from at least 1160 to 1861, and the remains of the twelfth-century weir were still extant in 1950. Wooden fish-traps appear to have been infrequent on the Dorset coast – only two examples are recorded.135 The surviving method of using baskets, called putts or putchers, arrayed in rows on wooden frames appears to have originated in the post-medieval period. There

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were over 1,100 putcher weirs at Tidenham in 1866, and one putcher weir was still in use in 1969.136 An unusual type of fish-trap has been recorded near Minehead, consisting of circular walls of beach cobbles surrounding a central cobble-heap. They were specifically constructed for trapping conger eels, which inhabited cavities in the central heap. Fishermen would disturb the heap at low tide, which led the eels to ‘escape’ into the pools confined by the outer walls, from which they could be netted.137 Hedge weirs occur everywhere, but are virtually the only type of trap known from the East Coast. They are typically large V-shaped lines of posts, which supported vertical hurdle panels (or in the west and south, boulder walls), and funnelled fish within the enclosed tidal prism towards a basket, or other means of trapping, at the apex of the V. There are frequently horizontal hurdle walkways parallel to the walls, presumably used both for maintenance and to collect any fish which became trapped away from the apex. Having said all this, there does not seem to be a formal well-defined typology for these structures, and there were many local variants. At least seven different types have been distinguished on the Somerset coast alone.138 It is unclear, as yet, whether these were designed to catch particular species of fish, whether they represent changes in construction methods through time, or both. On the East Coast, traps have been dated by radiocarbon: on the Essex coast at Bradwell-on-Sea, Collin’s Creek in the Blackwater and elsewhere, in Suffolk at Holbrook Bay on the Stour, and at Barber’s Point and Holme-nextthe-Sea in Norfolk.139 Intertidal fish-traps certainly remained in use into recent times, but the dates from East Anglia and Essex reveal a very distinct clustering of radiocarbon dates. The majority of determinations fall in a range between cal ad 600 and 900, apart from a few ‘early’ outliers from Holme (possibly indicating construction before the sixth to mid-seventh centuries) and some structures of Later Saxon date. At present the evidence suggests an intense phase of activity in the east of England in the seventh to ninth centuries, and reduced activity thereafter. New archaeological survey is extending the geographical range and known density of these traps, and they are now being reported from many locations around the English coast. Others have been reported from the estuarine areas of north Kent. Timber-and-wattle fish-traps have been recorded at Shornemead and Shellness, north Kent and there is another possible example from Damhead Creek.140 There have been few studies of the wood and timber from which these traps were constructed, though a very small sub-sample of seven hurdle panels has been examined from the trap at Collins Creek, Essex.141 They were made of oak, willow, birch and hazel roundwood. In the laboratory, the diameters of samples from the rods and poles used were measured and annual rings were counted, but they did not show any clear clustering in terms of size or age, as would be expected in managed woodland: coppicing (cutting the tree stools at ground level to encourage new, straight growth) usually produces stands of coppice poles of fairly consistent size and age. Presumably, this lack of clustering relates to the enormous amounts of wood required, so that roundwood from many types of woodland, managed in different ways, was stockpiled and became mixed together before final use.

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Calculating the quantities of wood needed is difficult, but the size of the East Coast fish-traps gives some indication: the trap in Holbrook Bay consists of multiple lines of posts, and its southern arm was at least 300 m long. Just getting sufficient wood for construction of the trap would have been a logistical challenge, let alone building it. Previous discussions of these structures have tended to focus on when, why and by whom they began to be constructed. It is perfectly plain that to obtain the necessary supplies of wood and timber, and to oversee the construction project, some central authority would have been required. One argument is that early monasteries were involved.142 Religious were not, of course, the only people who ate fish; but the fish-traps could be seen as precursors of later monastic fishponds. But why is there so little evidence from radiocarbon dates for construction after the Middle Saxon period in the east of England, even though we know that some were still used in the nineteenth century? There are several possibilities. First, the traps may have been so effective that they rapidly depleted estuarine fish stocks to below economic levels, and then mostly went out of use. If so, they could represent a precocious example of the current worldwide problem of fish-stock depletion. Secondly, if they were under monastic control and direction, then the economic and social disruption related to the ninth-century Anglo–Danish conflict, and the incorporation of eastern England in the Danelaw, might have meant that new construction ceased, at least for a time. Finally, there is abundant evidence in the form of fishbones from urban archaeological sites for increasing exploitation of cod, herring and other fisheries in the North Sea and beyond from around the tenth century.143 These new sources of supply might have reduced the profitability of estuarine fish-traps.

SHELLFISH Evidence for the consumption of marine molluscs during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in England is exceedingly sparse, and largely confined to the west of Britain. Sites of these periods directly on the contemporary coast have been submerged by rising relative sea level. However, inland sites and those at slightly higher elevations have provided some evidence: Upper Palaeolithic deposits at Gough’s New Cave, Cheddar contained shells of a small cockle species (Laevicardium crassus) and whelks, imported inland presumably as ornaments.144 Fossil Pleistocene mollusc shells from the East Anglian Crag appear to have been traded to Belgium across the North Sea landscape prior to its submergence.145 In South-West England and Wales there are some Mesolithic and later shell middens comparable to those in Denmark and Scotland.146 The Danish examples are largely composed of shells of oyster, cockle, mussels and winkle, with bones of fish (especially eels), seabirds and marine mammals – species of seal, mainly grey seal, dolphins and porpoises, killer whale and occasionally other whale species. In England, middens are of varied composition. The midden at Westward Ho! was composed largely of mussel, cockle, Scrobicularia plana and carpet shells (Venerupis spp), and that at Culverwell

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near the south tip of the Isle of Portland was composed of limpet, periwinkles and topshell.147 However, compared to the very high density of Danish Mesolithic shell middens (from c. 5600 cal bc onwards, though mostly around 4600–4400 cal bc), examples are very rare in England.148 Moreover, although shell middens remain significant archaeological features throughout prehistory in Denmark, examples post-dating the Mesolithic are comparatively uncommon elsewhere around the southern North Sea coasts. Andersen’s distribution map of sites on North-West European coasts shows plainly that coastal middens are virtually confined to areas where the earth’s crust was undergoing uplift, or was stable (North-West Denmark, Brittany, Scotland, Ireland and parts of South-West England). In areas of crustal subsidence, including the eastern coasts of England, Mesolithic coastal sites, including middens, are now well offshore beneath the North Sea. There is no reason to suppose that marine resources were less important in this area, but the evidence is now submerged. Although submerged shell middens may well survive offshore, locating them or distinguishing them from natural shell banks will pose problems. Later Neolithic pits close to the cliffs and intertidal flats of the Wash at Hunstanton, Norfolk have produced shells. Mussels predominated, and their relatively small size implied either collection from high up in the intertidal zone, or such heavy exploitation that few mussels could grow to full size. Other species included winkles, topshells, dog whelk, oysters, cockle and other bivalve species, besides a cuttlefish ‘bone’ probably collected dead on the beach. Apart from this, shells of edible marine molluscs are uncommon at prehistoric sites in the east, though three whole oysters were placed with a Bronze Age cremation in a cist at Deeping St Nicholas, Lincolnshire. In Essex, a Beaker burial from Southchurch was accompanied by a deposit of cockle shells, and a Middle Bronze Age site at North Shoebury produced dumps of mussel shell.149 Limpets were collected on rocky shores: for example on St Agnes, Scilly there is a prehistoric and Romano-British site, including circular stone buildings and limpet middens.150 The experience of eating them today leaves one suspecting that they were collected mainly as bait for line fishing, or as a famine food of last resort. At Roman sites right across England, oysters are commonly the main shellfish species, though at some sites mussels are equally or more important. The Romans are widely credited with the introduction of oyster culture to Britain, though the evidence for this is sparse and still questionable.151 The only Roman (and medieval) coastal ‘midden’ site known from the East Coast is that at Leigh Beck, Canvey Island, Essex.152 It is plainly not simply a deposit of food waste, but incorporates shells stransported by natural processes, besides mature valves of Scrobicularia, possibly used as bait for line fishing in the Thames estuary. At Culver Street, Colchester, carpet shells were unusually frequent. 153 They are still commonly eaten in Mediterranean countries today. For obscure reasons, they are rarely sold at English seafood stalls, but feature as ‘clams’ in Italian restaurants. In general oysters predominate in deposits at Anglo-Saxon and medieval sites, particularly inland. At some sites close to the coast, there was exploitation of a wider

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range of shellfish beds. Mussels were notably common in waterfront deposits at Whitefriars Street, Norwich, where dense deposits of crushed mussel shell occurred. These were thought to indicate specialized exploitation of estuarine mussel beds, probably in the Breydon Water area, close to Great Yarmouth.154 At Castle Acre, Norfolk cockles comprised 57 per cent of total shells, with mussels at 27 per cent. This seems to indicate a focus on exploiting intertidal flats in the Wash.155 One other ‘minor’ shellfish species, Ensis siliqua, the razorshell, has been found in medieval deposits at several sites in Norwich and from Castle Acre. This indicates more than accidental collection, for the living animal is a very active burrower: razorshells were a minor component of the diet in medieval Norfolk. They are traditionally collected at exceptionally low tides in Orkney, where they are known as ‘spoots’ and regarded as a delicacy. At Fishergate, Norwich abundant shells of small inedible marine species probably represent the debris from cleaning shellfish catches before sale. Crustacean remains, including edible crab, also occur occasionally in early fifteenth-century and later deposits at Norwich, but not before then: the products of the ‘Cromer Crab’ fishery do not appear to have been traded inland before the late medieval period.156 The crab and lobster fishery of north Norfolk continues today, and is based on beach-launched, double-ended, clinker-built boats.157 Some evidence for management of oyster beds during the Roman and medieval periods comes from detailed study of shells from archaeological deposits.158 There is also field archaeological evidence for post-medieval oyster farming: for example, oyster pits, dug into salt marsh, are widespread around the Essex coast, in Suffolk along the rivers Ore and Butley, and in Norfolk at Burnham Overy, Heacham and elsewhere. Most are rectangular, ranging from 5–20 m across, although less regular forms also occur, which might perhaps be of earlier date. In general they cannot be dated, except where archaeological features can be matched with beds shown on early maps, as in the 1825 Burnham Overy Enclosure Map. The pits were partly used to raise stock from spat to relay natural beds in main river channels, and to store and ‘fatten’ catches.159 At Seaton Carew arrays of rectilinear pits cut into bedrock known as ‘hullies’ were used for keeping shellfish.160 The Essex oyster fishery is concentrated on the estuaries of the Blackwater and Colne, with a traditional ceremony, presided over by the Mayor of Colchester, to open the fishery each September. Mersea Island is an important centre. On the north Kent coast, Whitstable oysters are especially renowned. In the South-West nearly a quarter of Britain’s oysters are today reared in the Helford estuary. The fishery certainly dates back to the sixteenth century, and there are historical records of disputes between manorial lords, those to whom they had leased the right to fish, and fishermen dredging illicitly. In Suffolk, the towns of Aldeburgh and Orford also disputed the right to take oysters from the Alde.161 Before about 1850, oysters were still a cheap and plentiful food, prompting Sam Weller’s comment, in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, that ‘poverty and oysters always seem to go together’. The favourite food of Dr Johnson’s cat, Hodge, was oysters, and the great man was obliged to go to market every morning to buy fresh ones. As late

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as 1840, they were only 4d per dozen, but over-dredging depleted the stocks, resulting in oysters becoming a scarce luxury food.162 There were attempts at regulating the natural beds of the South Coast in the late eighteenth century, involving a closed season from May to August. Even so, oyster fishermen at Emsworth had to seek poor relief, due to depletion of their fishery, by the 1830s. The situation in the south was not helped by ‘poaching’ of local stock by Medway fishing vessels, who dredged undersized shellfish for relaying in the Thames. More effective regulation followed the Sea Fisheries Act 1868. To maintain production, there were several attempts at oyster cultivation in the nineteenth century, culminating in the South of England Oyster Fishery in Langstone harbour, developed by the entrepreneur Harry Lobb, who had studied French methods. Unfortunately, ‘spatfall’ – establishment of young oysters – proved unreliable at Langstone, and conditions further deteriorated due to sewage pollution and the introduction of American oysters and predators. In 1902 a new sewer was constructed, discharging onto the oyster beds at Emsworth. This led directly to the illness of guests at banquets at Southampton and Winchester, and to the untimely death of the Dean of Winchester. The subsequent ban on the sale of Emsworth oysters lasted until 1914, and the Langstone fishery closed in the 1920s. Timber structures thought to be parts of the oyster pens of the South of England Oyster Fishery, and associated brick structures constructed in the late 1860s as part of a ‘scientific’ oyster farm, can still be seen in Langstone harbour.163

RECLAIMING COASTAL WETLANDS The seabanks of the lowland coasts of England are the visible archaeological evidence for landscape transformation – the conversion of mud-flats and salt marsh to agricultural land (see Figure 8). However, transformation was not the inevitable choice when the future of landholdings was being considered. In some areas during the Middle Ages, unreclaimed sheep pasture was a valued asset, for example on Halvergate Marshes, Norfolk.164 Indeed, as we have seen, there is abundant evidence for widespread exploitation of grazing and other coastal and marine resources, including salt, wildfowl and coastal fisheries, in the medieval period. These were all significant economic assets, which would have been diminished by conversion of coastal wetlands to grazing and arable. Still, reclamation was often chosen as the most profitable option. Many early sea walls, and other embankments, survive at their original locations and are still functioning as defences, though they were often later raised and, most recently, armoured with rock rubble or concrete blocks. In their modern form, they are often not recognized as archaeological structures, since so many of them continue in use. Others, such as the Late Saxon Fenland seabank, are now well inland, having been superseded by later defences that are further seawards. Some banks were damaged during storms and never repaired. Examples include the fragmentary sections of sea wall breached in a storm surge of 1897 along the Crouch and Blackwater estuaries in Essex. In places there is a ‘fossil’ submerged

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Figure 8. Clifton Marshes, Ribble estuary, Lancashire. A relict sea-bank, now lying in grazing-marsh landwards of the modern line of sea defence.

late nineteenth-century agricultural landscape behind these former defences, now lying in an intertidal area.165 Taken together, the sea defences of England are by far the largest archaeological earthworks in the country, the product of enormous, arduous human effort over nearly two millennia. Sea walls more or less certainly of Roman date are known, or suspected, from the Solway Firth, East Anglian Fenlands, east Kent, Somerset and Severn estuary.166 Land claim during the Roman period in the Severn estuary has been inferred from several lines of evidence, in particular the surface elevation of reclaimed land (reflecting long-term dewatering and compaction after reclamation), and the presence of surface scatters of Roman pottery, which imply settlement and/or manuring of fields with domestic and agricultural waste. Documentary references, and the survival of medieval ridge and furrow, may also indicate a medieval or earlier date.167 In the upper Severn, the Great Wall of Elmore runs for 800 m across the alluvium at Bridgemacote, with a stone revetment along its south-west side. This might suggest that it was a sea defence, rather than a flood defence for already reclaimed land, and it might be one of finest examples of a Roman sea defence to be identified in Britain. However, there is no direct archaeological dating for this structure, and the evidence for its being so early has been questioned.168 The abandonment of coastal marshes between the third and fifth centuries ad on the English coast, and the coasts of the near Continent, is seen by Stephen Rippon as resulting from a range of factors: marine transgression, economic change, political insecurity, and large-scale population movements were probably all involved. Coastal wetlands were recolonized as early as the late fifth century

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in the northern Netherlands, and in several other regions there was settlement by the seventh to ninth centuries. Raised settlement mounds up to 7 m in height and around 200 m in diameter – termed terpen in the Netherlands and Wurten on the German coast – formed a key component of recolonization of the coastal wetlands in the Low Countries.169 Definite examples of extensive raised settlements on coastal marshes in England are lacking, although some extant farm buildings in the Essex marshes are on slightly raised platforms. As noted above, in the fens of Norfolk and Lincolnshire settlements were established on roddons from the Middle Saxon period (c. ad 650–850), and arable production began before construction of seabanks.170 There is no evidence from the Fens at this time for flood embankments, although ditches were dug to manage drainage immediately at, and around, settlements – an example of landscape modification, in Rippon’s terminology. The major phase of land claim in the Mid- to Late Saxon period, when parts of Fenland, Romney Marsh and the coast of Somerset were embanked, coincided with new phases of land claim on Continental coasts, for example in Lower Saxony.171 Charters suggest that embankment may have begun in the eighth century in north Kent, but it was certainly under way in most areas by the tenth and eleventh centuries. From the twelfth century onwards, the general trend was towards reclamation in back fens and coastal marshes for mixed agriculture, though with local and regional specialization in production. There was a long-term trend in the high medieval period towards landscape transformation, which can be explained in terms of socio-economic factors: in particular, the evaluation of the costs and benefits of reclamation by large estate holders – lordly, monastic and episcopal. For example, Thornton Abbey, in the Lincolnshire Marsh, of which only the enormous gatehouse survives, was one of the richest Augustinian houses in England. Its revenues came in part from coastal wetland resources.172 Nevertheless, independent initiatives by local communities remained important in some areas. Frequently, small parcels of land were reclaimed piecemeal and progressively, and the process is consequently not well documented.173 In the thirteenth century the establishment of the Commissioners of Sewers was an early move towards, ultimately, national regulation of flood defence and land drainage. Dating medieval land claim precisely, at any specific location, is frequently a problem, though there is some documentary evidence for medieval sea defences. For instance, the Biggar Bank on Walney Island, Cumbria was built by monks of Furness Abbey in the thirteenth century, and in the parishes of Slimbridge and Frampton on the Severn, medieval seabanks (including a recorded reclamation by Thomas Berkeley of 1335–6), still survive on the ground.174 However, documents frequently relate to maintenance rather than construction. Documentation for sea-wall construction in the post-medieval period is much more extensive. Getting reliable archaeological evidence to date flood defences and sea walls is likewise difficult. Anglo-Saxon and medieval earthworks – sea walls, their borrow dykes, counter-walls and estuary embankments – are often, but not invariably, sinuous in form, commonly following pre-existing natural features such as creeks

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or dune systems. By contrast, post-medieval and modern defences tend to be rectilinear. In Suffolk, for example, post-1700 land claim is broadly distinguishable from the more irregular drainage pattern of land claim before 1700, mainly in the south, partly adapting natural channels, in contrast to the more rectilinear pattern of the latter, mainly in the north.175 At some locations banks can be dated archaeologically where they overlie, or are overlain by, deposits including stratified datable artefacts. In principle, scientific dating techniques, such as OSL dating of sandy sediments underlying banks, or radiocarbon or tree-ring dating of timber components, can be applied, but this has rarely been done. One example comes from Foulness, Essex, where dendrochronology showed that timber used in a complex internal timber framework for a sea wall was felled in 1483–9.176 Typically, aerial photography of areas of seabanks shows a complex pattern of banks and counter-walls reflecting successive phases of new land claim, both large-scale and piecemeal, with repairs of sections damaged in storms: this is the case between Burnham Norton and Burnham Overy, Norfolk, for which there is documentary evidence for embankment between the mid-thirteenth century and 1822. Nevertheless, relating the surviving structures to these historically recorded activities is difficult, except for the final phases.177 Various methods of embankment were used, depending on local conditions. One form, known as ‘warping’, involved placing hurdles, brushwood or (where stone was available) low walls to reduce current flow and enhance silt deposition, thus raising the surface level of the foreshore. The land created could then be embanked. Sea walls and flood banks themselves were commonly constructed from clay, often dug from a ‘back ditch’ or ‘borrow dyke’, which itself had a role in land drainage, receiving drainage from field ditches and channelling water towards sluices which, in the medieval period, were simple wooden flap-sluices.178 Elsewhere material for constructing banks was obtained from foreshore mud: the Late Saxon Fenland Seabank, for example, was constructed in short lengths at each low tide. Foraminifera from an archaeological trench through the bank at Clenchwarton, Norfolk indicate that it was raised in short, discrete lengths: mud-shifting began at the limit of low tide and progressed up the shore as the tide rose.179 Some seabanks were simple structures of clay, but some included internal timber frameworks (as at Foulness), stone revetments or projecting groynes.180 In Lincolnshire, especially at Wrangle on the western shore of the Wash, and in the north-east of the county, lines of late medieval saltern mounds or ‘tofts’ developed along the contemporary shore, and were subsequently linked together as a tidal defence. At Wrangle, the so-called ‘Roman Bank’ is seawards of this line of defence, so plainly it cannot be earlier than late medieval; elsewhere there are documentary records of the bank’s existence from the early thirteenth century. Stretching for 150 miles south from Chapel St Leonards, the ‘Roman Bank’ looks superficially to be of one build on the map, but plainly it is not; parts could well date back to the Late Saxon period.181 Hulks were often incorporated into sea defences. Forty Thames barges were recorded before they were destroyed in the construction of the Medway Tunnel. At Purton, Gloucestershire remains of some 42 timber and concrete vessels

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including barges, lighters, a schooner, a barque, a ketch motorboat and Severn trows, dating from at least 1876, have been recorded.182 The long-term process of landscape transformation was regionally and locally variable in character, depending largely on coastal geomorphology, but in a few areas reclamation history can be reconstructed in some detail. Two areas in particular show a pattern of early reclamation of marshes forming behind developing coastal spits, followed by more ambitious land claim and drainage management. In east Kent, for example, the Deal–Sandwich sand and shingle spit developed in a northerly direction from at least the Roman period. In the low-energy environments behind it, mud-flats and then salt marsh developed by natural processes; and these coastal wetlands were ideal areas for land claim by successive reclamations, or ‘innings’. The earliest identifiable defence is the Lydden Wall, which appears to have been already in existence when Anglo-Saxon Hundred boundaries were defined in the tenth century. It is possible that the wall is of Roman date. Certainly archaeological evidence indicates an interest in the marshes at this time: the Roman villa at Shoulden is located close to the marsh edge, and there was settlement on the developing spit. Villa estates seem to have been instrumental in initiating wetland reclamation in the Somerset Levels and might have had a similar role in Kent. Later innings, progressively further north behind the extending spit, are defined by the Edwards Wall (c. 1270–85), Downs Wall (c. 1309–10), Ealdesalctor Wall (1331) and, after the economic disruption of the Hundred Years’ War, the Langley Wall (c. 1470). Reclamation continued into the eighteenth century, and the drainage system was further developed in the nineteenth. Concurrently, the mouth of Sandwich Haven became increasingly narrow due to the extension of the spit, and progressively silted. New cuts were dug across the spit and reclaimed marsh, linking to other streams, so as to increase the flow in the Haven and reduce silting, beginning in 1479. Later entirely new access channels were cut. Ultimately, however, Sandwich lost its haven. As elsewhere, medieval reclamation was undertaken by major landowners (here Christ Church Priory) and also minor ones. A survey directed by Edward I in 1289 established ownership, responsibilities for maintaining sea walls and drains, taxation on occupiers to fund works, and a bailiff to oversee them. These activities were taken over by the East Kent Commissioners of Sewers, following the Land Drainage Act 1551 of Henry VIII.183 In Suffolk, land claim on salt marshes was certainly under way at Orford by 1169/70, if not earlier.184 Grazing marsh had also been created on the bank opposite Orford Castle, where the ‘King’s Marsh’ was used for sheep grazing. Grazing marsh was normally divided into parcels under individual ownership, though some marshes were common land. During the sixteenth century there was continued reclamation. Although partly levelled during later works, some of the sea walls associated with this and earlier phases of reclamation are still visible on aerial photographs.185 Longshore drift progressively resulted in extension of Orford Ness southwards from the town of Orford, around 1530, towards its present 16 km extent. The effects were to create large areas of salt marsh landwards (later reclaimed) and to narrow and constrict the channels of the Alde and Blyth.186 With

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the extension of embanked marsh, co-ordinated flood defence became necessary, and in 1561 a Commission of Sewers was established at Orford. This was the first of several Commissions originating between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a strategic role related to maintaining the main drainage works. The rate of land claim in Suffolk was reduced by the late seventeenth century. Returns appear to have been diminishing, for the most easily inned land had already been reclaimed, and the agricultural economy was generally depressed. However, by about 1750, and still more so during the Napoleonic Wars, the combined effects of increasing population and high agricultural prices made reclamation of the northerly Suffolk marshes economic. Silt and clay land, rather than peatland, was preferred, since the resulting grazing marsh was of higher quality: for example at Benacre Level, where there were successive improvements to sluices, drains and banks throughout the early nineteenth century. The marshes were partly under arable from the seventeenth century, but rising grain prices during the Napoleonic Wars encouraged conversion of larger areas to the plough. By 1840, however, grazing predominated once more.187 Wind pumps were extensively used as part of drainage schemes, pumping water from minor dykes into main channels debouching to the sea. The surviving examples, now defining features of the East Anglian coastal landscape, are tower (brick-built) and smock (timber) mills, mainly of early nineteenth-century date. There were steam-powered drainage pumps by the 1820s, subsequently replaced by oil- and then electric-powered pumps.188 In the Humber estuary salt marsh formed behind Spurn Point from the sixteenth century onwards, especially in the area of Sunk Island, and was progressively reclaimed between 1762 and 1965.189 The reclamations of the 1960s there truly mark the end of an era. They were the last in England.

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Money, money, money . . . Joseph Conrad, reflecting on the Thames estuary in the first chapter of Heart of Darkness, concluded: What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.1

An exotic and exciting air still lingers around the venture of world trade but, in practice, the need to make a living – and preferably more than a living – has always dominated the lives of traders and other people engaged in maritime industries, fostering much more pragmatic attitudes. Coastal trade and industry are inextricably linked (as reflected in the name of the former government Department of Trade and Industry, now the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, or BERR), so consequently in this chapter I shall consider the two together. I begin with a discussion of the evidence for prehistoric and early historic seaborne trade and ports; then I consider the main commodities produced on coasts or traded overseas in historic times, outline the development of some of the main modern ports and their associated infrastructure and, finally, consider taxation, tax evasion, navigation and safety.

PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC TRADE The evidence for early seaborne trade and exchange comes from the distribution of ‘exotic’ artefacts, the remains of ships, and the locations of trading sites, which were known in later prehistory, by the Romans, as emporia. Since Britain was already an island at the time of the arrival of Neolithic farmers, from around 6,000 years ago, it is certain that all incoming people, livestock and seed corn must have been carried by sea. Neolithic traded, or exchanged, commodities included polished stone axes, and their sources can be established from the petrology of the stone of which they were made. The products of the Cumbrian axe factories are widespread in Britain, and are likely to have been distributed partly by sea: for example, axes of the Borrowdale Volcanic Series rocks are known from the Humber Wetlands. An epidiorite (greenstone) axe, of probable Cornish origin, was found on the Thames foreshore at Purfleet, Essex, while jadeite axes (including one dredged from the Solent) were certainly Continental imports, most probably from the area of the Alps.2 We do not know how Neolithic distribution networks functioned

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but, by analogy with trading networks recorded by nineteenth-century and later anthropologists studying peoples at a similar cultural level, it seems likely that most trading was ‘down the line’ – repeated exchanges of goods between neighbouring communities – which resulted, eventually, in long-distance transport of prestige items, such as axes. Still, at least some commodities were taken, for special purposes, directly from A to B: the massive Stonehenge Bluestones came from the Preseli Mountains of South Wales, probably via the Bristol Channel and the Somerset Avon.3 The use of bronze for tools and weapons developed in Britain and Ireland around 2200–2000 bc. Ores of the two essential metals, copper and tin, occur in South-West England, Wales and Ireland, and in Brittany and the western Iberian coast – ‘the metal-rich west’, as Cunliffe refers to this littoral zone, from which copper and tin were exported. Imports included amber from the Baltic, bronze artefacts from the Continent, and jet, faience and gold jewellery from various sources. Later in the Bronze Age, distinctive amber spacer plates for necklaces were produced in Wessex, and examples have been found at Mycenaean Greek sites dating from after 1400 bc, but not elsewhere in Europe, apparently indicating direct Mediterranean contacts of some kind at this period. European metalwork and Bronze Age ceramics from the west of England have been found at several sites around the Thames estuary and pots made on the coast of Finisterre are known from around the Solent, for example in a barrow on Gallibury Down, Isle of Wight.4 ‘Exotic’ Late Bronze Age metalwork finds, of the early first millennium bc, from Sussex include a North German-type axe and other finds of central European origin, as well as metalwork apparently from Ireland and North-East Scotland. There are two collections of Bronze Age metalwork from offshore contexts at Moor Sand, Salcombe, Devon and Langdon Bay, Kent, which include weapons, tools and other bronze and gold artefacts from the period around 1300–1150 bc. They were not associated with surviving ship remains, though they possibly came from wrecks of sewn-plank boats. A significant find from Salcombe was a bronze ploughshoe of Sicilian origin, though most of the bronzes appear to have originated in Britain or North-West France. Elsewhere, hoards of unworked bronze and scrap, assumed to represent the stock-in-trade of bronzesmiths, ready for recycling, are occasionally found at coastal sites: for example, in the Helford estuary a bronze axehead and lumps of bronze were found on a headland known as the Herra.5 Alongside prestige items, metalwork and pottery, bulk cargoes of lesser intrinsic value must also have been carried. Organic bulk materials, such as agricultural products, would not usually be detectable archaeologically, but as an example of other types of artefact traded, a fragment of a Bronze Age granite quern from Cornwall was found at Bestwall, on the Isle of Purbeck.6 The Humber Wetlands are well known for the large number of Bronze Age and later boats from the area. Two types have been reported: sewn-plank craft and logboats, or dugouts. The sewn-plank construction method seems, at present, to have been unique to Britain, with examples from the Humber and from Dover.7 The boats and fragments from Ferriby, Kilnsea and Brigg were constructed of planks,

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sewn together with withies made of yew, and reinforced with internal integral cleats and transverse components. It is possible that this construction method developed from earlier types of boats made of sewn animal hides, in order to meet the requirement for more robust timber craft capable of carrying increasing volumes of traded goods. They were substantial vessels: although it was not completely excavated, the Dover boat is estimated to have been around 12 m long. The examples from Ferriby and Kilnsea are of Early Bronze Age date, from around 2000–1600 cal bc. They were powered by paddles, examples of which are known from the Ferriby foreshore (1420–1260 cal bc) and from Canewdon, Essex (1295–998 cal bc).8 The Brigg vessel was of the same type of construction, but different in form – it was a flat-bottomed ‘raft’ which possibly functioned as a ferry. Logboats have been reported from many parts of the English coast, but are particularly frequent in the Humber Wetlands. Simply dug out from a single oak trunk, sometimes with transoms to close the open cut ends of the trunk, they vary between 8 and16 m in length. Occasionally they show additional features, such as the shelf at the bow of a logboat from Brigg, which could have been the station of a bow man, who could steer with a pole. The later logboat from Hasholme, 12.5 m long, made of a trunk felled between 322 and 277 bc, was more sophisticated, with one- and two-part transoms and carved decoration. Capable of carrying 8.9 tons of cargo, it could have had a crew of up to 20 paddlers. Robert Van de Noort argues that the sewn-plank boats were seagoing craft, and in fact all known remains of these vessels have come from coastal and estuarine contexts, including those from the Humber and at Dover.9 By contrast, the logboats, though capable of carrying bulk cargoes, could not have coped with conditions on the open sea. There might have been a process of transshipment between the two vessel types. At Brigg, an unusually robust track, or perhaps a jetty or bridge, of oak planks resting on brushwood has been dated to 950–350 cal bc. Unfortunately the imprecision of radiocarbon calibration around this time makes close dating impossible, but Van de Noort suggests that this structure could, with the ‘raft’ and logboat from the site, represent a Late Bronze Age trading point at which goods were loaded, landed and transshipped. The richness of grave goods in burials under Early to Middle Bronze Age barrows certainly indicates the existence of an elite, with overseas contacts (see also Chapter 5), and it seems probable that the drive to acquire imported prestige items was one factor underpinning trade at this time. Barry Cunliffe defines an Atlantic ‘maritime culture zone’, comprising the fringes of southern and South-West Britain, Brittany, Ireland, the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean, within which there were regular trade contacts.10 To the east there was trade around the North Sea and Channel coasts, and with the expanding Roman Empire. Conspicuous consumption by the Late Iron Age (and later, Romano-British) elite was supplied principally from the Mediterranean world, and was frequently associated with the drinking of wine, imported in amphorae. High-status Late Iron Age and Early Roman burials at Folly Lane, St Albans and Lexden near Colchester have produced Dressel 2–4 type amphorae of Italian origin. The majority of amphorae from central southern England around this period are

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of a type known as Dressel 1a, from North Italy, dated to around 150–50 bc. In the north-east, Gallo–Belgic amphorae indicate maritime and riverine trade up the Tees in the Late Iron Age. Imported Mediterranean high-quality ceramics and silver vessels, probably also related to wine drinking, have come from other highstatus burials in Hertfordshire. Of later date are the amphorae from Spain and the Marseilles area reported from Chester, and Late Roman eastern Mediterranean and North African amphorae from Lincoln.11 Barrel staves of silver fir from waterlogged Roman contexts at Silchester, and barrels of silver fir and larch from Droitwich, Hereford and Worcester were almost certainly Continental imports, since fir and larch are not native tree species – though the original contents of the barrels are unknown.12 It is possible that wine and other liquid commodities were imported in barrels in the pre-Roman Iron Age, but no barrel remains from this period have yet been found. Strabo, writing in the first century bc, provides a catalogue of British exports, primarily raw materials and commodities (including grain, cattle, gold, silver, iron, hides, slaves and hunting dogs), which the ‘third world’ economy of Britain used to support the import of luxury goods for the affluent.13 Locations of Later Iron Age trading sites are indicated by exceptional assemblages of imported artefacts and concentrations of coins, both native and Continental. In the south of England, trading sites have been defined at Hengistbury Head and at Mount Batten, near Plymouth.14 It is thought that metals were among the more significant exports from these sites – mainly tin and copper. At Mount Batten, longterm cross-Channel trade is indicated by Late Bronze Age Armorican axes, Early Iron Age artefacts (including an exotic arrowhead), a concentration of Celtic silver and gold coins (some Gallo–Belgic), and a rich mid-first-century ad cemetery. Cunliffe proposes that from around 100 bc, there may have been a shift in the focus of trade away from Mount Batten to the area of Hengistbury Head, although survey and excavation indicates that there were at least some Continental contacts there as early as 700 bc. The Hengistbury site is enclosed by a complex of defensive earthworks, within which there were four- and six-post rectangular structures (usually interpreted as granaries), internal ditches subdividing the space, and pits, ovens and hearths.15 From the late first century bc, the focus of trading activity seems to have shifted once more, to Poole harbour,16 where a timber and limestone rubble mole, in two sections (c. 160 and 55 m in length respectively, and c. 7.4 m in maximum height) has been recorded. It has an upper surface of limestone slabs. Due to the sloping sides of the structure, large vessels could not have berthed alongside, and it might have been designed to give access, across mud-flats, to deep-water channels. Alternatively the two sections may originally have been a continuous causeway and then have been separated by demolition to improve navigation at some later time. Poole harbour has also produced numerous perforated stone anchors claimed to be of Mediterranean type, but without petrological analysis their origin cannot be determined.17 The earliest historical evidence for exportation of tin from South-West England comes from the writings of Diodorus Siculus, who perhaps based his account on Pytheas of Massilia (c. 300 bc). Even before then, however, a Greek sailing manual

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of the sixth century bc, known as the Massaliote Periplus (surviving fragmentarily in a later source), refers to voyages by Carthaginians and Tartessians as far as Britain in pursuit of markets; and Herodotus in the mid-fifth century bc refers to Greek imports from islands in the west, known as the Cassiterides (tin islands). The tin-exporting port of Ictis, on a promontory, to which Diodorus refers, cannot be located with certainty but might have been St Michael’s Mount, or Mount Batten.18 Tin ingots have been recovered from Bigbury Bay, Devon, apparently from the site of a wreck. They are of an unusual form, shaped like cattle knuckle-bones (astragali), and Diodorus specifically describes British tin ingots as being of this shape. It has been suggested that major Iron Age fortifications, such as Castle Dore to the west of the Fowey estuary, and the associated promontory fort on St Catherine’s Point, were also involved in redistribution of high-status goods, traded for tin. Finds from Castle Dore include imported glass bracelets, lump glass for bead manufacture, and Roman amphorae.19 Selsey Bill has produced abundant high-value Iron Age coins, including British and Continental issues. Associated settlement evidence implies that this, too, may have been a trading site.20 Continental trade contacts were not confined to the south of England in the Iron Age, although sites in the south have been more extensively investigated. The site at Meols, on the tip of the Wirral (unfortunately largely destroyed by erosion during the nineteenth century), appears to have been a beach trading site.21 The earliest evidence for long-range trade contact from the site includes three Carthaginian coins of the late third century bc, but first-century bc to first-century ad Armorican and Roman coins and Continental metalwork were also found. A find of a Syrian tetradrachm from the site, and another from some 5 km to the east, are remarkable, but perhaps not reliable indicators of ancient losses. Iron Age trading sites are also suspected at North and South Ferriby and Winteringham, on the Humber, and a settlement at Redcliff on the Humber has produced abundant coins and pre-Claudian Gallo–Belgic pottery, implying a port site.22 Active Roman influence in Britain began in the reign of Gaius Caligula, or even earlier.23 Incorporation of the new province of Britannia into the ‘global economy’ of the Roman Empire resulted in massive expansion of existing trade networks, as shown by the widespread occurrence of factory-produced goods, from all round the empire, at Roman sites in Britain. Direct evidence for the cargoes of Roman ships comes from a few wreck sites. Intact second-century ad ‘Samian Ware’ bowls on Pudding Pan Sand, in the Thames estuary, suggest that a vessel carrying Gaulish pottery to Britain foundered there. A cargo of lead ingots, from a wreck off the north coast of Armorica, is likely to have been of British origin: some ingots were stamped Brigantes and Icenes, which are tribal names implying a source in the Pennines and a port in East Anglia. A sunken Roman barge from the Thames at Blackfriars had a cargo of Kentish Ragstone, a hard limestone widely used for construction at Londinium.24 The Roman ‘cultural package’ affected many aspects of the provincial lifestyle. Attention has often focused on prestige items of metal, glass and ceramics, but cultural change is nowhere so evident as in diet. The earliest evidence is from

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Colchester, where a military latrine pit dated to ad 44–c. 49 produced remains of opium poppy, grape and fig. Burnt destruction deposits, relating to the destruction of the town by Boudicca’s forces in ad 60/1, have produced charred remains of introduced Mediterranean foods, including dates, stone-pine, figs, and herbs such as coriander. At rural sites, imported and introduced crops are less frequently found, though a Late Roman well at Great Holts Farm, Boreham, Essex produced, among other crops, walnut, stone-pine, chestnut and olive.25 Excavations at Romano-British farms typically produce evidence for large-scale processing of cereals in so-called ‘corn driers’, and their storage in granaries. Almost everywhere in lowland England, charred remains of chaff from spelt wheat (Triticum spelta) are abundant, often to the virtual exclusion of other cereals. Exceptions to this are very uncommon, although at the Roman Morton Fen saltern, Lincolnshire, cereal processing waste of six-row hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare) formed part of the fuel used for brine evaporation. The predominance of barley at this site is probably a consequence of the crop’s salt tolerance, and at present the samples from this site provide the only evidence for expansion of Roman agriculture onto saline soils in eastern England (see Chapter 2). However, the overall impression is of a highly specialized, almost monocultural agricultural system geared to the demands of the empire, which made few concessions to local variability in soils or climate.26 It is perhaps not entirely fanciful to see an analogy with the modern agribusiness of the East Anglian ‘Barley Barons’. Much of the harvest would have been exported. From first to last, grain appears in the recorded lists of British exports – from the account of Strabo in the first century bc to that of Ammianus Marcellinus in the late fourth century ad, who refers to the building of ‘granaries in place of those which had been burnt, to store the corn regularly brought from Britain’. Much has been inferred by historians from Ammianus’ use of the word ‘regularly’, but the archaeological evidence for intensive cereal production in Later Roman Britain supports the idea that Britain was a relatively stable province at the time, and strategically important for its grain supplies to the western empire. With the collapse of the Imperial economic system during the fifth century, large-scale ‘regular’ trade in bulk commodities, such as grain, ceased. However, some trade contacts with the old Imperial core were maintained. In the south-west of England, two phases of external seaborne trade can be identified from the early post-Roman period.27 Pottery from the eastern Mediterranean, dated to around 475–550 (‘Tintagel A and B Wares’), comes from Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, mostly from Tintagel itself, with a few sherds from St Michael’s Mount and the coast of South Devon. ‘Tintagel E Ware’, thought to have come from France and dated to the sixth and seventh centuries, is more widespread. Finds of Mediterranean ceramics (tablewares and amphorae, which had contained oil and wine) and glass indicate a high-status settlement at Tintagel during the fifth and sixth centuries. The quantities of material – more than the combined total of imported pottery from all other known sites in Britain – imply that it may have been a centre of the elite, or royalty, of Dumnonia, the power that succeeded the Roman administration of the south-west. Certainly a major defensive earthwork

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– the ‘Great Ditch’ – was dug to isolate the headland at Tintagel at some point in the fifth to seventh centuries. However, although there was without doubt trade to the south-west of England at this time around the Bay of Biscay, bringing imports from the Mediterranean, the quantity of amphora sherds so far recovered represents far fewer amphorae than could have been carried on a single Byzantine vessel. The scale of international trade at this time is therefore uncertain.28 Meols on the Wirral also appears to have remained a trading settlement after the collapse of urban life in the fourth century. The latest Roman find from Meols is a silver coin of Magnus Maximus (383–8), but early post-Roman finds include Byzantine coins of the sixth or early seventh century, and a pottery flask (ampulla) from the shrine of St Menas at Abu Mina in Egypt.29 In the east of England, the part of the country which first came under the control of Germanic incomers, regular trading contacts with the Mediterranean world ended early in the post-Roman period, but high-status artefacts were reaching East Anglia by the early seventh century. The ship burial under Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, most likely of King Raedwald (ad c. 625) included a remarkable range of artefacts, many of them imported, including arms and armour, possibly from Sweden, Byzantine silverware, and Merovingian coins from the area of modern France. Mound 3, though less rich, produced a limestone plaque, possibly from Alexandria, and the bronze lid of a ewer, of Nubian type.30 Plainly, artefacts of these kinds need not represent large-scale trade. Acquisition of prestige objects by an elite does, however, indicate cultural contact and exchange. These goods must have been paid for somehow – most likely by making use of early taxation revenues. Trading and production sites, known as wics, were established all around the North Sea and Channel coasts from around the fifth century, though in England Ipswich (Gippeswic), Fordwich near Canterbury, and Southampton (Hamwic) do not appear to pre-date the sixth century. The underlying motivations for development of such sites were no doubt varied, but the development of kingship and state formation seem to have been significant, both in terms of stimulating trade and generating taxes. Middle Saxon wic sites, including Hamwic, have produced amphorae originating in the Rhineland and northern France, indicating a wine trade up to the ninth century ad, when commerce was disrupted by Viking incursions.31 Dendrochronological analysis of an oak barrel, reused as a well lining at Ipswich, produced a tree-ring sequence spanning the period 539–744, showing a good correlation with tree-ring chronologies from central southern Germany. This could well indicate a trade in Rhenish wine in the eighth century.32 The early seventh-century settlement of Ipswich covered some 6 hectares on the north bank of the Orwell, and Merovingian ceramics indicate a trading function right from its foundation. Excavations have revealed structures, rubbish pits and at least two cemeteries, whilst ‘Ipswich Ware’ ceramics were being produced on an industrial scale by the midseventh century, and were traded all over eastern England. A rectilinear pattern of streets was laid out in the ninth century.33 Minor trading ports of this period may also have included Canvey Island and Barking Abbey, where imported ceramics from Ipswich, northern France, Belgium and the Rhineland, and Eidel lava querns,

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have been found. There are several other early monastic sites on the coasts of Kent and Essex, which may have operated as small-scale wics.34 Other trading sites certainly remain to be discovered, and so-called ‘productive sites’, at which a wide variety of metal finds have been made by amateur metal detectorists, are strong candidates. Burnham Market, Norfolk, for example, has produced metal artefacts, imported pottery, and coinage, including a denier of St Louis the Pious and an Arabic dinar, dating from the fifth to tenth centuries ad. Although the site is now some 3 km inland, on the insignificant river Burn, stratigraphic studies demonstrate that Burnham could have functioned as a river port in the Middle Saxon period.35 Later historical evidence for English trade routes includes a reference from Bishop Aelfric to merchants carrying goods direct to Rome, and to merchants from Scandinavia, Germany and the Low Countries in London. In 991 King Aethelred made a treaty with the Norwegian king ensuring a degree of mutual royal protection of trading vessels.36 In the north, York (Jorvik) developed into a major Early Medieval Anglo–Scandinavian port and city: deposits there have produced a range of biological remains indicating long-distance trade. One of the commonest imported commodities was a club moss (Diphasium complanatum) from southern Scandinavia used as a dye plant, and it is possible that remains of two other dye plants – woad and madder – were also imports. Remains of figs and grapes, and the cornelian cherry (Cornus mas), from a fourteenth-century pit are also considered to be imports. Other exotic material included a cowrie shell (Cypraea pantherina) from the Red Sea area and a bear claw.37

SHIPBUILDING Before discussing the development of medieval and modern ports, an account is needed of the industries and traded commodities involved. Of course, the essential coastal industry, on which all others depend, is shipbuilding. Ships have been built in estuaries and on sheltered shores all around the English coast: indeed, as late as the nineteenth century, major wooden vessels were constructed on foreshores, with minimal infrastructure. During the Middle Ages shipbuilding was at ad hoc locations, sometimes associated with basic docks dug on the foreshore, storehouses and smithies. Other associated features at medieval and early modern shipyards included sawpits, ponds for timber seasoning, and ropewalks, all of which may be indicated on early maps, or detected during archaeological survey.38 During the earlier Middle Ages clinker-built shell-first construction was the main method of shipbuilding in northern Europe: a hull of overlapping planks was built first, and only later braced with internal timber components – basically similar to Viking longships.39 A common class of medieval English vessel, the cog, was of this type: clinker-built, with a single stepped mast and side rudder, adaptable for both trade and warfare. Later fifteenth- and sixteenth-century, and subsequent, timber vessels were constructed frame first, onto which a carvel-built hull was attached, made of

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planks set edge to edge. Carvel-built vessels were higher-sided and had a central stern rudder.40 The south of England does not today spring to mind as a major shipbuilding region, but once it was. At Buckler’s Hard, in Hampshire, there were yards from 1698 to 1827 which built merchant ships and supplemented construction at the Royal Naval Dockyards (see Chapter 4). Among other vessels, HMS Agamemnon and HMS Euryalus were constructed there from New Forest oaks, and excavations since 1993 along the riverbank have exposed a timber slipway.41 On the river Hamble, the slipways of the shipyard of George Parsons have also been surveyed archaeologically. Naval and merchant vessels built on the Hamble included HMS Elephant, which served in Nelson’s fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.42 Shipbuilding stocks are still visible on the shore at Fishbourne, Isle of Wight, where there was a significant industry from at least the early nineteenth century: a painting of the launch of the 36-gun Magicienne in 1812 is reproduced in Loader et al. (1997).43 There was also shipbuilding in Chichester harbour, at Itchenor, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the largest ship constructed being the Chichester, 902 tons, of 1785. Merchant vessels continued to be built at the Apps yard at Bosham until 1902, when the Good Hope, a sailing coaster of 76 tons, was launched.44 There was also shipbuilding on the Thames foreshore, east of the Tower, in the Middle Ages and there were shipyards in the seventeenth century at Rotherhithe and Bermondsey. The East India Company yards were at Deptford and Blackwall. The Blackwall yard was established in 1612, and shipbuilding continued there until 1907, when the distances from supplies of coal and steel finally ended the industry. Redevelopment of London’s Docklands has provided several opportunities to examine early dock sites archaeologically.45 Shipbreaking and reuse of materials was a specialized associated industry, for example on the Thames foreshore near the Royal Festival Hall, where large quantities of nails and other metal fittings, and some ships’ timbers, have been recorded.46 In East Anglia there were shipyards on the Orwell from Ipswich down to Pin Mill, which produced sailing barges and other craft designed for the coastal trade. There were also yards at Lowestoft which, by the twentieth century, were building frigates and other naval craft. From the late nineteenth century the coasting trade in the east was largely based on sailing barges, some of them remaining in use as late as 1949. These flat-bottomed craft were adaptable for a variety of bulk cargoes, were relatively cheaply built and lightly manned, and were ideal for use in shallow creeks and estuaries; but their lee boards also permitted near-shore coastal sailing. In 1910 there were around 2,000 of them, carrying bulk cargoes such as grain, malt, bricks, coal or sand, and making return journeys from the East Coast to London, carrying hay for the horse-powered capital in one direction, and horse manure for the fields in the other. The Thames barge-building industry peaked in the late nineteenth century.47 Traditional craft in the north-east included collier brigs, which were later adapted for whaling. By the mid-seventeenth century, yards on the Tyne and Wear were

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building large numbers of these vessels and by the 1830s were producing a third of the nation’s tonnage. Construction was at numerous small shipyards until the advent of iron ships, the first being the Star, built at South Shields in 1839.48 Ironhulled shipbuilding demanded ready access to raw materials, or to industrial areas where manufactured materials were produced – in particular coal, iron and steel. Consequently, the shipbuilding industry was progressively relocated to the north in the nineteenth century, particularly to Newcastle and Sunderland. Shipbuilding at Sunderland was at first relatively small-scale and sufficiently flexible to allow closure and reopening of yards to meet changing demand. More permanent shipyards were developed by the 1830s along the Tyne, with a well-developed infrastructure. Larger-scale, more ‘industrial’ shipbuilding followed, initiated by builders such as John Coutts in the 1840s and Charles Palmer of South Shields from the 1850s – the latter initially producing steam colliers to compete with coal transportation on the developing railway network. It is estimated that by the later nineteenth century, the north-east was producing 40 per cent of the world’s tonnage. The yards of Armstrongs were producing Dreadnoughts after 1905, besides passenger liners, including the Mauretania, in 1906. Little survived the twentieth-century decline of the industry: indeed, as with many northern industries, demolition followed closure with unseemly haste.49 However, there are some dry docks and office buildings, for example at Swan Hunter’s at Wallsend, which are now part of a museum. Shipbuilding at Barrow-in-Furness was a late development, from 1871, based from the first on iron and steel construction. The study of shipwrecks and hulks (vessels intentionally abandoned after salvaging reusable components) is a vast subject in itself and no attempt will be made to cover it here, apart from considering a few remains of boats and ships found on coasts.50 The former waterfront of the City of London, at Blackfriars, has produced several hulks or wrecks, dating from the second to seventeenth centuries ad, some with cargoes of building materials still on board,51 whilst excavations elsewhere in London have produced ship components reused for construction on land. Remains of vessels can still be examined at many places at low tide all around the country. The wreck of the nineteenth-century ice-carrier Vicuna on Holme Beach, Norfolk, and the hulks of early twentieth-century Lowestoft steam drifters in Oulton Broad, Suffolk, are East Anglian examples (see also Figure 9). The majority of visible wrecks and hulks are of workaday vernacular vessels of mid-nineteenth to twentieth-century date, although more prestigious and earlier ships can also be seen on the shore and in shallow water – most notably Henry V’s Grâce Dieu (1418) at Bursledon in the river Hamble, and the wreck of the Amsterdam (1749) on Bulverhythe beach near Hastings.52 Hulks were frequently abandoned in creeks and backwaters and in some cases used as part of sea defences, as at Hoo Fort on the Medway, and many of them have been recorded by avocational workers. Hulks in Whitewall Creek, subsequently destroyed during road construction and land claim, included sailing barges dated to 1863–1908, motor mine-sweepers and concrete lighters of the Second World War, besides smaller boats and skiffs.53 Apart from the bounty of their contents, shipwrecks provided free timber to isolated

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Figure 9. The hulk of the sailing barge Tuesday of Rochester, Deben estuary, Suffolk. Courtesy of Suffolk County Council.

coastal communities, and this was especially important in places such as the Isles of Scilly, where woodland was sparse. Many older buildings on the Isles of Scilly still include ship timbers, and ship components were found beneath the floorboards of the Methodist Chapel in Garrison Lane, St Mary’s during renovation work.54 Timber and spars for masts were the essential raw materials for wooden shipbuilding, and from at least the sixteenth century there were concerns about the adequacy of domestic supplies. There is documentary evidence for the importation of timber in the Middle Ages to supplement domestic supplies, for shipbuilding and other purposes. Straight-grown woodland oak was imported as quarter-sawn or riven boards, known as ‘wainscots’ or ‘clapboards’, from the Baltic and Scandinavia. Henry III imported Norwegian pine boards for Winchester Castle as early as 1252. Indeed, some English words for timber, such as ‘wainscot’ and ‘deal’, have Dutch or Baltic origins. Archaeological evidence for imported wood and timber is also provided by tree-ring analysis, for example oak from the Baltic with a tree-ring chronology of 1128–1293 from Bridge Street, Ipswich or the fifteenth-century Baltic oak from New Baxtergate, Grimsby.55 Timber and spars, besides other vital naval materials such as canvas, cable, rosin and pitch, came largely from the Baltic, carried in the medieval period by the merchants of the Hanseatic League from Danzig and other Baltic ports to King’s Lynn.56 The timber trade with the Baltic and Scandinavia, begun in the earlier Middle Ages, has continued up until present times. Sailing vessels, of course, required vast quantities of rope. Bridport was a major centre of rope-making from the thirteenth century, much of the hemp used coming from Brittany, which also supplied canvas for sails. The town is still involved in the

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production of netting, for fishing and industrial purposes.57 Ropewalks, where the cable was produced from the raw material, are very distinctive – exceptionally long, low buildings, mostly now subdivided and adapted for light industry, as at Barton-on-Humber. Some parts of the Medina Ropeworks at Cowes Harbour, Isle of Wight are still extant The first machine-made ropes were produced at Webster’s Ropery, Sunderland, opened in 1737, though old ropewalks continued in use well into the twentieth century.58 The use and construction of seaplanes has also left archaeological evidence.59 At Hamble Point in the estuary of the Hamble, Hampshire two slipways survive, the earlier of which was constructed by the Daily Mail in 1912. Together with an associated flying shed, it was used during the newspaper’s sponsoring of a roundBritain tour by a Farman seaplane.60 There was a short-lived phase of seaplane construction at the site by the yachtbuilders Luke and Co.61 From 1915 onwards Fairy Aviation used the site, first for assembling and test-flying the Shorts Type 827 Floatplane and later the Campania Seaplane, based on an aircraft carrier of the same name. Construction of seaplanes was replaced by small-boat building after the Second World War.

WOOL, TEXTILES AND DYES Medieval English exports consisted mainly of food and raw materials with some manufactured goods: grain and dairy produce, hides, leather goods, dried and salted fish, embroideries (for which England was famous), metalware, tin, coal and lead. But by far the most economically significant exported commodity was wool and later, textiles, which were traded at purpose-built cloth halls (see Figure 10). The European trade in wool and textiles may have originated as early as the late eighth century, but significant expansion occurred from the eleventh century, when the towns of Artois and Flanders improved both production methods and trade links.62 Early Medieval England was in some ways still a third world country in relation to the mercantile and manufacturing states of Flanders and northern Italy: agriculturally rich but underdeveloped. The economic and environmental significance of wool production in England was enormous. It provided the main income for many feudal and ecclesiastical estates, and the economic basis for many developing towns. Great flocks of sheep grazed the short-turfed grassland of the downs of southern England and other upland areas. These areas had largely been cleared of woodland long before, often during prehistory, but the persistence and survival of chalk grassland on the downs, with its great diversity of flowering plants, is the most extensive mark of the wool trade on the landscape. It is as much a cultural artefact as the East Anglian ‘wool churches’. At first, England supplied the raw material for processing at Bruges, Florence and other centres. It is estimated that around 8 million fleeces per year were exported to northern Italy and the cloth-manufacturing towns of Flanders, Artois, Brabant and Hainault in the fourteenth century,63 initially mainly in Genoese and Flemish

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Figure 10. The West Gate, and relocated fish market and cloth-hall at Southampton, Hampshire.

vessels. The Venetian state sent a fleet of merchant galleys each year from 1314 to 1552 to Flanders and England, principally to acquire wool, cloth and other commodities, at ports including London, Southampton and Sandwich.64 England was thus linked with an early capitalist system led by such men as Francesco di Marco Datini, known as ‘the Merchant of Prato’, whose company had offices as far apart as Italy, Spain, Majorca and Ibiza. With no apparent irony, the text ‘In the name of God and of Profit’ was inscribed on the first pages of his ledgers.65 Standing duties on wool exports (half a mark, or six shillings and eightpence, on every sack) were agreed at Edward I’s Westminster Parliament of 1275, representing the beginning of permanent customs revenue.66 The wool tax was levied at the socalled ‘Staple Ports’, the only permitted marketplaces for trade in the commodity. The Staple was moved from port to port to reflect changing trade patterns and royal control: it was at St-Omer in 1313, Antwerp in 1315 and Bruges in 1325, and came to English ports from 1327. In the 1470s there were three wool fleets from England per year; the fleet leaving London in July 1478 comprised 41 ships.67 Besides the enormous importance to the English crown of customs duties, which went to finance the court, the machinery of government and the interminable French wars, the dependence of cloth-producing states on England for the raw material gave her some Continental influence. Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidies of Wool, Skins and Tanned Hides in 1374, and the prestigious character of this post goes some way to explaining why he was entrusted with delicate negotiations about a potential marriage, never realized, between Richard II of England and Caterina Visconti of Milan.68

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The English cloth-producing industry of East Anglia and elsewhere was stimulated by a royal invitation of 1336 encouraging immigration from Flanders, and domestic cloth production expanded in the later fourteenth century; but it was not until 1420 that cloth exports exceeded those of raw wool. By the 1520s the trade in raw wool had declined, and the trade in finished cloth was largely through London, leading to a widespread decline of smaller regional ports unless they could find new functions.69 Production was initially decentralized, and on an almost domestic level, across much of Norfolk and Suffolk, but by the end of the fifteenth century had become more organized – the raw wool being purchased by ‘capitalist clothiers’ who engaged specialist spinners, carders, weavers, fullers and dyers. The peak of production and international export was in the mid-sixteenth century, but declined after that, largely due to Dutch competition.70 Medieval wool warehouses survive at Southampton and Poole, both now in use as museums. The Southampton warehouse was constructed after the French raid of 1338, by Cistercian monks. It is of stone with a fourteenth-century roof structure of Spanish chestnut, and is heavily buttressed. The wool warehouse at Poole, known as the Town Cellar, was constructed after the town became a Staple Port in 1433. Again, it is a stone structure, but only single storey. In their day, these buildings were as economically significant to England as the massive steel, concrete and glass structures of financial institutions in the City of London are now. Cotton textiles were imported, during the medieval period, from India, Syria and Egypt71 but the earliest English cotton-weaving factories developed in the eighteenth century, initially in South Lancashire, where water- and later, steampowered mills were constructed. Imports of raw cotton, mainly from America, increased from some 100,000 tons per annum in the late 1820s to nearly 350,000 by 1849, and cotton eventually made up almost a third of British trade.72 Besides the mills themselves, there still survive grand, almost palatial nineteenth-century warehouses built to store the raw material, principally at Manchester. Raw cotton was carried there from Liverpool by canal, railway and, later, along the Manchester Ship Canal. Silk textiles were imported to England at least as early as the medieval period: fourteenth-century documents from Sandwich, in Kent, refer to a dazzling array of luxury textiles voluptuously described, such as ‘shimmering bawdkin’, ‘rede sylke’ and ‘white damask powderid with gold of Venyse’, from China, India, Persia and Italy.73 From the seventeenth century, silk became one of the principal commodities traded by the East India Company. The English silk-weaving industry was established by Protestant Huguenots after 1685, many of whom were refugees from Lyons, and who settled in the Soho and Spitalfields areas of London. Before the development of artificial chemical dyes in the nineteenth century, natural dyes were produced from home-grown crops such as madder or woad, or indigo, imported from the East. Dyes had to be ‘fixed’ by means of a mordant, usually alum (aluminium sulphate, with alkalis of potassium or ammonium) or copperas (hydrated ferrous sulphate, also known as green vitriol). Mordants were commodities of international significance for all European textile-producing

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economies, and the proceeds from the trade had far-reaching and surprising effects. The fortunes of the Medici family, and the bank of Florence, were made in 1466, after the teenage Lorenzo negotiated a papal monopoly on the trade in alum (obtained from Tolfa, near Civitavecchia on the west coast of Italy, based on the raw mineral alunite) with the domestic, London and Bruges markets. The proceeds funded, inter alia, the commissioning of Italian artists to produce some of the great works of the Renaissance, which we now travel far to see. Mediterranean alum was the principal commodity on board four Genoese carracks which landed at Southampton in 1436, and there was a regular trade in alum with English ports in the Middle Ages. The risks of transportation by galley to North-West Europe were great, but the profits were enormous.74 Copperas and alum began to be produced in England after the papal monopoly led to continually rising prices, though at first the new process of extraction from shales was a closely guarded secret. Beginning at Parkstone, Poole about 1564, mordant production began under the direction of James Blount, the sixth Lord Mountjoy, initially producing copperas from shale, though production of alum was less successful. The industry there finally ceased in the early eighteenth century, after phases of abandonment and revival.75 The first fully successful alum works in England was founded in 1604, near Guisborough, North Yorkshire. Alum shales containing iron pyrites, a source of sulphuric acid, could be used to convert alumino-silicates to aluminium sulphate by a process of burning or ‘calcining’. The shales were quarried mainly from coastal exposures. After burning, the resultant product was transferred, by wheelbarrow, to tanks of water to allow the chemical reaction to continue, then concentrated by boiling in an ‘alum house’.76 The fuel, coal and alum were transported to, or from, the coastal works by ship. Rock-cut landing facilities are associated with the Yorkshire alum works, including ‘rutways’, on the shore, of 1.2 m gauge, to guide the wheels of wagons, for example at Runswick Bay and Ravenscar.77 Survey of the Kettleness alum production site has defined features and structures related to every phase of the process, from quarrying to export.78 Copperas works were also widely established around the Thames estuary in the late and post-medieval period, at Harwich, Ramsey, Brightlingsea, Deptford and Queenborough. At Kimmeridge a pier and harbour for exporting alum was developed by Sir William Clavel, and functioned until its destruction in a gale of 1745.79

GRAIN From at least the Late Iron Age, and on to the Middle Ages, England was a net exporter of grain, as noted above. As the country became increasingly urbanized, imports became more significant. In 1815, protectionist legislation was enacted as the Corn Law 1815, designed to prohibit foreign imports whilst corn was at a low price, thereby encouraging domestic production. This became a cause célèbre in early nineteenth-century England, for it maintained high corn prices, increasing

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the cost of living for the poor whilst protecting the incomes of landowners. In 1845 there had been a poor harvest, so that England was confronted with scarcity. Far worse, in Ireland, Phytophthera infection (potato blight) led to famine. It was partly this that shamed the government into repeal: Peel had earlier argued for repeal of the Corn Law, which was eventually achieved in 1846. Meanwhile, production on the North American prairies increased massively, and this came at a time when shipping grain by steamer in bulk became practicable. Grain prices fell dramatically from 1850 to 1886, leading to agricultural depression and another nail in the coffin of traditional English agrarian communities. The increasing reliance on imported grain from America and Canada resulted in construction of large new granaries at many ports.80 Malt, germinated barley used for beer production, continued to be traded around the coast from agricultural regions to breweries. The raw material – barley – was carried by barge to coastal maltings before processing and redistribution. Some nineteenth-century maltings are of vast proportions, as at Snape, Suffolk, later adapted by Benjamin Britten as a concert hall and arts venue, and Mistley, Essex, now less prestigiously converted for residential use.81

EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY STONE, LIME, AGGREGATES AND CLAY Cliffs and foreshore platforms have frequently provided exposures of rocks and other materials suitable for extractive industry. Stone for building and other purposes has been quarried from many coastal exposures, of which only a few can be mentioned here. Major construction projects at London during the Roman period (for the Forum, Basilica, other public buildings, and the city walls), and again after the Norman Conquest (for the Tower of London from 1070, and St Paul’s Cathedral and London Bridge from 1176), led to the development of large-scale quarrying for Kentish Ragstone. This hard limestone was the principal cargo of a sunken Roman barge found in the Thames at Blackfriars.82 Caen stone from Normandy was also shipped to London after the eleventh century.83 Coastal quarries between Ryde and Wootton, on the Isle of Wight, produced Bembridge Limestone. Large-scale extraction at the Bembridge quarries began in the Roman period, and the stone was used for construction at the Roman palace at Fishbourne and at Portchester Castle. The industry was at its peak in the Early Medieval period, supplying stone for Quarr Abbey, Carisbrooke Castle, Winchester Cathedral and Southampton’s town walls.84 From further west, Portland Stone was shipped to London and other cities, for use in prestigious buildings. It was used, for example, by Inigo Jones in the construction of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, and by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666, for rebuilding London churches. Igneous and metamorphic rocks, including granite, were the durable stones used for structures exposed to extreme conditions. Cornish Lamorna Cove granite, for example, was used for the Admiralty Pier at Dover, and for several lighthouses. Helford was a significant port in the nineteenth century for shipping granite from

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the Carnmellis quarries near Constantine.85 The Higher Quay at Port Navas was built around 1830 and is associated with a lime kiln, indicating that vessels carried incoming cargoes of limestone and return cargoes of granite. Today, large blocks of granite, and Scandinavian labradorite, are increasingly being used for coastal defence. Granite construction or (let us be realistic) cladding was also much favoured by banks for their offices and branches in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to suggest solidity and reliability at a subliminal level. Interestingly, the massive late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century steel-framed, concrete and glass buildings of banks and financial companies in the City of London still display a good deal of granite cladding at street level, in and around their entrances, perhaps not just because it looks nice. Imported stone could also imply quality more subtly: the Burton’s chain of tailors faced their shops in the 1930s with polished sheets of iridescent blue-grey labradorite, which some geologists still jokingly refer to as ‘Burtonite’. There is a language of stone, and most of it was conveyed by sea. Some types of rock and stone had specialized uses. Purbeck marble was transported for fine-grain uses such as Roman official inscriptions, for example at Chichester; and high-quality oolitic limestone from the south-west was used for the monument to Julius Classicianus, Procurator of Britain, at London in the first century ad.86 Flints from the river Rother, East Sussex went to the Staffordshire Potteries to be ground and added to clay.87 Abrasive stones were used for corn grinding, at first for hand querns, and later in windmills. Folkestone Beds sandstones, from East Wear Bay, were quarried for quern production from the first century ad; limestone mortars from Bembridge were traded at least as far as King’s Lynn in the medieval period; and at Corbyn Head, Devon, circular cuts for extraction of millstones still survive.88 The hard whinstone of Craster in the north-east was exported to London specifically for use as kerbstones.89 Cliffs at Kimmeridge, Dorset provided a durable form of shale used in the Romano-British period for production of bracelets.90 Jet (fossilized wood found in Jurassic marine rocks) has been used for making jewellery at least from the Roman period. However, it was nineteenth-century mourning practice that led to Whitby becoming an industrialscale producer of jet and jet artefacts. The elaborate Victorian codes for women’s correct behaviour, during a lengthy period of formal mourning included a phase of prohibition of all jewellery, apart from the appropriately black material of jet. Constructing buildings required, of course, not just stone, but also lime and sand for making lime mortar and later, lime and clay for producing cement. The production of lime (CaO) or hydrated lime (CaOH2) from chalk or limestone, which are composed mainly of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), was often linked with brickmaking. Both types of industry involved the use of kilns, and both required large amounts of fuel. There was brickmaking all around the Thames estuary, frequently with associated harbours, as at Sittingbourne, Kent, using the brickearth of the Thames terraces as a raw material.91 The ravaged landscapes left by chalk and brickearth quarries around London, at Thurrock, Dartford, Northfleet and on the lower Medway (partly now occupied by extensive retail developments, for

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example on the northern approach to the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge), relate to these industries.92 Coastal lime kilns are recorded as early as 1580 in the Helston estuary, where limestone imported by barge was burnt to produce agricultural lime. Thirty-five lime kilns are known to have existed around the Fal estuary, with others around the Fowey. In the eighteenth century the limestone came from quarries in the Plymouth area, and the fuel was Welsh coal. In the north, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century coastal lime kilns, producing lime for agricultural and constructional use, survive at several locations where supplies of limestone and coal existed, or could be shipped in – for example at Beadnell, Northumberland.93 Portland Cement was patented in 1824, and subsequently cement works were established at several locations, including Whitewall Creek on the Medway, from the 1830s, and at Swanscombe, Northfleet, Purfleet and Grays in the 1870s. Cement was produced from locally available clay and chalk, and shipped to consumers on sailing barges. Another source of lime consisted of coastal shell-banks. At the Gilberd School, Colchester, the fill of a medieval lime kiln produced shells, mostly of cockle, fused together in a ground-mass of amorphous calcite. The few intact shells were very small, abraded and perforated by boring organisms. From these characteristics, it seems likely that shell aggregate used for lime production had been dredged from estuarine shell-banks as ‘dead’ shell, rather than representing food waste.94 This might be the earliest example of an offshore aggregate contributing to the construction industry. Aggregates – mainly sand and gravel – have been useful at different times for different purposes. In 1594, the rights of ‘ballastage’ were granted to Trinity House, which enabled it to dredge ballast from the Thames and sell it to shipmasters to maintain an even trim on unloaded ships. At Great Yarmouth, the right of ballastage dates back to the thirteenth century, and in 1602 a ballast quay was constructed. At other ports, aggregates were won by digging on sandbanks close to the shore at low tide, for example to ballast the Humber sloops. Later in the eighteenth-century dredging by means of bag-and-spoon dredgers developed, partly employing convict labour, in the Thames estuary. This supplied ballast for colliers returning to the Tyne. This profitable business declined in significance in the nineteenth century, when sea water ballast came into use for steel ships.95 More recently, increasing demand for sand and gravel in concrete constructions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, especially in London and the south-east, has coincided with increasing constraints on extraction and transportation on land. Aggregates are also becoming important as a supply of material to replenish beaches by a technique known as ‘soft’ coastal defence (see Chapter 6). For these reasons, marine-dredged aggregates are becoming increasingly significant. The industry is now highly capital-intensive, comprising some 28 dredgers with a value of up to £1 billion, which operate around the clock. It employs about 650 staff on ships with some 600 at wharves, besides people employed in distributing and using the aggregate. The main offshore resources are around the South and East Coasts of England, with some in the Bristol Channel and Irish Sea, of which only relatively

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small areas are currently licensed for production.96 The archaeological significance of the offshore aggregate sources has been discussed in Chapter 2, and protocols for mitigating the effects on submerged archaeology are considered in Chapter 6. Poole was a major source of pipe clay, used for making tobacco pipes from the early seventeenth century onwards: there are records of substantial cargoes sent to London factories in 1632–3.97 China clay, transported by train from Lostwithiel and St Blazey, was exported from docks at Carn Point, in the Fowey estuary, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Charlestown harbour was constructed by Charles Rashleigh in the late eighteenth century, primarily for export of China clay from St Austell, and Fowey continues this trade today.98 Before the construction of rail links in the 1860s (originally intended for transport of iron ore), clay had to be carried in lighters from Charlestown: railway construction was a key factor in the growth of the trade at Fowey, which soon overtook the shallower harbours of St Austell Bay. The docks at Fowey were developed and extended in the 1970s.

ENERGY The first recorded export of coal from the north-east was in the twelfth century, under the control of the Prior of Tynemouth. Edward III directed that coal from the Durham coalfield should go to Newcastle for onward shipment, thereby benefiting the priory, but there were also coal staithes at Blyth, Amble and Seaham. Seaton Sluice is a surviving coal harbour of 1660.99 Coal, proverbially ‘from Newcastle’, was being carried to London by 1306, where tolls were levied at London Bridge, and in 1369 the City of London appointed four ‘coal meters’. However, it is estimated that the trade was small before the sixteenth century, seldom amounting to more than 15,000 tons per annum.100 Indeed, French, Flemish and English ships, trading into the Tyne, initially used coal principally as ballast for their homebound journeys. Coal was carried to collier brigs by smaller vessels known as keels, of which there were around 1,700 at Newcastle by the early seventeenth century. Many were originally Dutch-built, but by 1700 there was large-scale keel construction at Whitby and Scarborough. The mining centres were initially in the Lower Tyne and Middle Wear valleys, later expanding over much of lowland County Durham to Easington, Whitburn and Seaham, and southern Northumberland. Collieries along the coast were the last to be developed in the Durham coalfield, in the late nineteenth century. Shafts were sunk to exploit successively deeper seams, from west to east, and eventually mining extended out beneath the North Sea. Following the drastic decline of the English coal industry in the last quarter of the twentieth century (especially after 1984 when, under successive administrations, deep mining for coal in England virtually ended), there was widespread destruction and clearance of above-ground remains of the industry, even the obliteration or landscaping of its spoil tips. The coastal colliery at Easington, for example, is now marked by no more than a concrete cap for the pithead, a series of commemorative plaques, and two colliery buildings.101 Colliery waste was formerly dumped on beaches, particularly in the north-east. In places, it has partly been removed to restore a more natural

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foreshore, and natural erosion is also resulting in transportation of the waste along shore, with the consequence that pre-industrial, earlier nineteenth-century beaches and caves at the foot of cliffs are now being re-exposed. There may well be early wrecks on the pre-colliery beaches, and the coastal caves will probably prove to contain archaeological deposits. Both will require monitoring as a more natural coastline is re-established. In the north-west, Maryport was developed in the eighteenth century by Humphrey Senhouse for the coal trade, naming it after his wife. Coal was also a motivation in the earlier development, in the early seventeenth century, of Whitehaven, whence Cumbrian coal was shipped to Ireland.102 In the early nineteenth century, new dock construction was initiated by railway companies at Maryport, Workington and Whitehaven.103 The East Kent coalfield was a late development: coal was first discovered in 1890, during investigation works for a proposed Channel tunnel. Collieries were developed between 1905 and 1920 at Betteshanger and elsewhere. The developing spoil tip from Betteshanger (which was sited on soft, compressible sediments in the Lydden Valley), combined with pumping of water from the mines, had drastic effects on local drainage patterns. Despite an airy dismissal of potential difficulties by the colliery company in 1918, subsidence and flooding had become a problem by the 1930s, necessitating construction of a pumping station, which was later upgraded. Disputes between the village of Worth and the National Coal Board about flooding problems continued into the 1970s.104 In South-West England, the paucity of local coal supplies led to mining of hydrocarbon-rich shales from Somerset and Dorset cliff exposures, for the salt and glass industries, during the seventeenth century.105 New energy sources were developed in the twentieth century. The nuclear power industry will be considered in Chapter 6. Although natural gas and oil fields in the North Sea region were discovered as early as 1935, in the Groeningen province of the Netherlands, offshore prospecting had to await definition of ownership. Prior to the Convention which arose from the 1958 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea at Geneva, anything which was found outside national territorial waters belonged, in principle, to the finder. The Convention defined a median line on the Continental Shelf down to 200 m depth between the coasts of adjacent countries, thereby establishing national ownership. Production licences for seabed blocks began to be granted in the UK sector after Britain had ratified the Convention and the Continental Shelf Act 1964 had come into force. Oil and gas rigs began to be part of the English seascape, and the economies of some English East Coast towns underwent a boom from the 1960s onwards. In particular, the depressed economies of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, based on declining fisheries, benefited enormously, as the towns developed a new role as support bases for the offshore hydrocarbon industry. New coastal industrial sites, including the gas terminals at Easington and Bacton, have also transformed the appearance of what were once isolated coasts with largely agricultural economies.106 Output from the North Sea fields is now declining, and new marine pipelines carrying natural gas from Norway and less reliable sources to the east, in Russia, have been constructed over

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the last few years to make up the shortfall. On a smaller scale, Dorset’s hydrocarbon industry originated in the nineteenth century, when oil was extracted from shales at Kimmeridge. During the twentieth century the oil field at Wytch Farm, Arne came into production.107 Tidal flow was first used as an energy source for milling. The earliest recorded tide mill appears to have been that at Dover, recorded in Domesday. The mill at Woodbridge, Suffolk dates originally from 1170, though the present building is of 1790.108 The principle was that the incoming tidal waters were captured in a millpond, via sluice gates. On the falling tide the gates closed due to water pressure, and the captured water then powered the millwheel. Tide mills were most frequent in Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Sussex, Essex and Suffolk. The examples around the Solent were largely of eighteenth-century date, primarily for flour milling, but there was also bone milling to produce fertilizer there and elsewhere, for example at Penpol in the Fal estuary.109 Powder mills ground the components of gunpowder – charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur – which seems a worryingly hazardous activity. The dams and buildings of tide mills survive at many locations, for example in Bembridge harbour and Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight.110 and in Chichester harbour at Emsworth and Bosham. Two mills are recorded at Fishbourne in Domesday and 11 at Bosham, while ‘salt mylls or sea mylls’ are recorded in 1582 at the head of Chichester Channel.111 This energy source has been neglected more recently, though it looks set to become significant once more, though on a vastly larger scale, during this century (see Chapter 6).

METALS AND CHEMICALS Iron, later the second pillar of the English Industrial Revolution alongside coal, has been traded around the English coast for at least two millennia. In the south of England, the Weald of Kent was a major iron-producing area from the Roman period onwards. This was a wooded area, where both iron-rich sandstones, and charcoal for smelting, were readily available. The Weald remained a significant producer until new smelting technologies, involving the use of coal and coke, were developed in the north of England and Wales in the eighteenth century. A sixteenthcentury shipwreck, from the Prince’s Channel in the Thames, is directly related to iron production in the Weald. Dendrochronology indicates that some of the ship’s timbers were felled in 1574, and the vessel carried cannon marked ‘TG’, referring to Sir Thomas Gresham, a merchant and financier who had interests in Wealden ironworks between 1570 and 1579. He had licences to export cannon to Denmark. Besides the cannon themselves, the wreck produced folded iron bars.112 As early as the twelfth century, the Cistercians of Furness Abbey had their own commercial fleet trading in iron ore, and the coastal trade in ore permitted smallscale smelting almost anywhere around the coast, even in Norfolk, not generally thought of as an iron-producing county. Excavations at the site of a medieval stone building known as Blakeney Chapel, Norfolk, on an ‘eye’ (island) in the marshes, revealed a double-ditched enclosure which produced late thirteenth-century coins

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and iron slag.113 Iron workings in cliff exposures at Port Mulgrave, Yorkshire, constructed in 1857, were the basis for Charles Palmer’s smelting and shipbuilding industries at South Shields. Ore from between Staithes and Scarborough was also shipped to the Tyne and Tees. An iron and steel industry developed in the nineteenth century in the Durham coalfield and around Middlesbrough.114 Ore was exported from Barrow and Whitehaven, with local furnaces from the eighteenth century, and by 1870 Barrow’s steelworks were the largest in the world. A specialized commodity exported worldwide from Senhouse Dock at Maryport was iron rails for railways.115 Although Lincolnshire is predominantly an agricultural region, Scunthorpe became a significant steelmaking town from 1890, thanks to new rail and road communications to Sheffield, based on iron ore from Frodington.116 The igneous and metamorphic rocks of Cornwall and Devon contain a range of metal ores. There is no direct evidence for exploitation of tin and copper ores in Cornwall during the Bronze Age, although finds of hammerstones might imply it. Native copper is exposed in cliffs at the Lizard, implying that subsurface mining might not have been necessary.117 Alluvial tin sources in river sediments were probably exploited before mining began, by a process known as ‘streaming’, a gravity and flotation technique analogous to gold panning. Until 1700, tin was the most important metal in Cornwall, although silver was also mined in the Middle Ages, for this was the only ore field in England. In the Roman period the evidence for tin extraction is mainly of third- and fourth-century date, perhaps because tin was more readily available from Iberia in the first and second centuries ad.118 During the Middle Ages, the tin industry was regulated by legislation, first defined in a charter of King John in 1201, which gave privileges to the tinners and their industry in return for taxation. The trade was regulated by the Duchy of Cornwall from the late thirteenth-century Duchy Palace at Lostwithiel, where tin ingots were stored for sampling and assay, which took place twice yearly: a ‘coin’, or sample, was removed to determine purity and hence the level of tax to be levied by the Duchy.119 Since this was a marginal region for agriculture, tin production came to dominate the economies of parts of Cornwall and West Devon: millions of tons of overburden were removed, and vast quantities of finely crushed waste from ore processing were generated. Much of this waste material was discharged into rivers, increasing their sediment load.120 Estuaries in the region, including the Plym, Looe, Fowey, Fal and Hayle, became heavily silted, and they all now include mineral-waste sediments metres deep. The unanticipated environmental impact was that tidal limits migrated downstream as the rivers became silted, and ports lost access to the sea. Lostwithiel declined to the benefit of Fowey from the thirteenth century onwards, due to silting of its harbour by sediment from tin-streaming upstream, and this, combined with reduced production from the stannaries (tin works) themselves, led eventually to its becoming a ‘lost port’. There is a record of the imprisonment of Abraham le Tynnere in 1357 for discharging crushed waste into rivers from his stannary on Bodmin Moor.121 This must surely be one of the earliest examples of legal action against industrial pollution, though actuated by commercial, not environmental, considerations. Such measures were, however, ineffective in the

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long term. Fowey was the predominant tin-exporting port in the area in the later Middle Ages, providing vessels for royal foreign campaigns, and even on occasion challenging the rights of Rye and Winchelsea; but it in turn declined from the later sixteenth century, for Falmouth had a harbour better able to accommodate the new, larger vessels for the trade.122 Production intensified after about 1700, increasingly exploiting underground lodes rather than alluvial tin. There were improvements in smelting techniques, relying on imported coal, and from the eighteenth century steam pumping made deep mining possible. At the same time, copper mining increased in importance: during the period from 1750 to 1850, copper from Cornwall and West Devon dominated the international copper market. Morewellham, near Tavistock, was a major copper-exporting port in the nineteenth century.123 The twentieth-century history of the tin industry was a roller coaster. In the 1960s tin prices increased dramatically, the Wheal Jane mine was reopened from 1970 to 1991, and entirely new mines went into production. The economic intervention of the International Tin Council, combined with international demand, maintained high prices until 1985, when the Council suffered a financial collapse. In Cornwall, production ceased by 1998. Surviving structures and sites include 3,101 mines and 2,275 engine houses (which housed beam-engine pumps), and landscapes modified by the industry cover thousands of hectares. The area has now been given World Heritage Site status by UNESCO. Chemical industries developed around Teesside and in the north-west at Runcorn, Warrington and Widness in the late nineteenth century, due to the availability of rock salt and the proximity of coalfields.124 Initially alkali, needed for the glass and soap industries at Pilkington’s at St Helen’s, and Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight, was the main product. The factories are unlovely, but seen from afar, for example across the Tees from Seaton Crew at dawn or sunset, their lights and smoke have a bleak appeal. After the First World War, England’s dependency on export markets left it vulnerable to competition and change. This hit the industrial north-east especially hard: the coal industry suffered first but, after the reduction of naval contracts, combined with changing demand for vessels (for tankers were simpler to build and required fewer men to construct them), the shipbuilding industry soon followed. During the depression of the 1930s things became dire – unemployment was at 37 per cent by 1932. By the following year, 85 per cent of Jarrow’s workforce was out of work. The Jarrow men’s march to London was an epic event of the period, placing the government of the day in an inexcusable position. However, they did attempt to excuse themselves. Intervention, in the form of public works and subsequent new industrial development, mainly initiated by Sir John Jarvis, had some effect, despite government inertia. The situation was resolved only by another war, which demanded maximum production once more.125

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THE HIGH LIFE There has been trade in luxury commodities since prehistory: the archaeological evidence for the prehistoric, Roman and sixth- to seventh-century ad wine trade has been discussed above. Subsequently, the wine fleets of Bordeaux, Bayonne and La Rochelle traded from Southampton in the early fourteenth century. The Duchy of Aquitaine, including the port of Bordeaux, was an English possession from the twelfth century until 1453, so it is not surprising that in that period most wine imports to England came from there. Following the loss of Aquitaine to France, Spanish and Portuguese wines supplied consumers, and some wine came from as far as the Venetian island of Crete, which supplied the sweet wine known as malmsey.126 Imports of spices are recorded in medieval port records and other documents, for example at Sandwich, Kent, where they included saffron, pepper, liquorice and cumin,127 besides other luxury food items such as sugar, almonds and dried fruit. Spices were produced principally in India and the East Indies, reaching English ports by long-distance trade routes developed by Muslim and Italian traders. Unsurprisingly, having passed through the hands of so many middlemen, spices were exceptionally costly merchandise by the time they reached England, and were correspondingly highly prized. Direct trade between Asia and Europe developed after the first voyages of exploration, from the late fifteenth century onwards, by Portuguese and Spanish mariners, who were followed by North-West Europeans, initially the Dutch (from 1595) and then the English, during the early seventeenth century. The British ‘Honourable East India Company’ – colloquially known as the ‘John Company’ – received its royal charter from Elizabeth in 1600, which, in effect, gave it a monopoly on the trade with the East, besides a wide range of governmental, military and judicial rights in its foreign bases and territories. It became a significant commercial force, with its own shipyards along the Thames, and shore bases, or ‘factories’, in India and further east. Conflict between rival European nations to control the trade in spices and other commodities in Asia is beyond the scope of this book, though obviously the progressive acquisition of territory in India, and elsewhere, by the East India Company during the eighteenth century contributed to the developing British Empire, with far-reaching effects on the maritime trade of England. The company was nationalized, and its territories taken over by the Crown, in 1858. The East India Company was also involved in the importation of coffee, which may have been first drunk in England in the late sixteenth century, after first reaching Europe from North Africa via Venice. In the Islamic world it was by then widely consumed, after initial resistance from religious authorities. It was at first regarded with some suspicion in Europe, being seen as a Muslim drink. However, by the late seventeenth century, coffee houses – at first exclusively male preserves – had become an integral part of the social, political and intellectual life of England. Tea reached England rather later, in the mid-seventeenth century. Samuel Pepys’ diary entry for 25 September 1661, in which he records that ‘I sent for a cup of

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tea (a China drink) of which I had never drunk before’, is well known. Tea rapidly became popular among all social classes, and imports were subject to exceptionally high levels of duty, in turn leading to its being smuggled on a large scale into England, discussed further below. Sugar produced from fruit was a medieval import, but it was then beyond the reach of most people. During the seventeenth century, sugar produced from cane in the West Indies began to be imported, and by the eighteenth century it had become an essential accompaniment to coffee and tea, and for use in cooking. The ‘triangular trade’, which involved carrying ‘trade goods’ to West Africa, collecting slaves and carrying them to the Caribbean, and returning to Bristol, Liverpool and other ports with sugar, rum and other commodities, is discussed below and in Chapter 5. The surviving visible evidence today for the importation of all these, and other, commodities consists of warehouses at ports. The Number 1 warehouse at West India Dock in East London, built 1800–3, is one of the few to have survived the bombing there in 1940. This six-storey structure, now the Museum in Docklands, was used to store bulky and heavy commodities such as various forms of processed sugar, in its lower floors, with coffee, tea, cotton and pimento above. As late as the 1960s, the Victorian spice, tea and coffee warehouses at Queenhithe, in the City of London, were still in use by importing companies. The exotic scents from these buildings, combined with those of bad drains and Thames foreshore mud, were unique and unforgettable.128 John Aubrey records that ‘Sir Walter [Raleigh] was the first that brought Tobacco into England and into fashion . . . It was then sold for its wayte in silver. I have heard some of our old yeoman neighbours say that when they went to . . . market, they culled out their biggest shillings to lay out on the scales’.129 The tobacco trade with Virginia developed in the seventeenth century: Maryport, Bristol and Liverpool all participated.130 The company of W. D. and H. O. Wills originated at Bristol in 1786, and produced such famous brands as ‘Three Castles’, ‘Gold Flake’, ‘Woodbine’ and ‘Embassy’, names full of associations for those of us who have now, with sadness, said adieu to the pleasure of smoking. The Bonded Tobacco Warehouse of 1905 in the Cumberland Basin at Bristol Docks still survives. Another import now considered socially unacceptable is ivory. There are two sources – walrus ivory from the Arctic and elephant ivory from Africa – and the relative importance of the two has depended on changing trade links through time. A high-status cremation burial at Folly Lane, St Albans, dated to c. ad 55, produced burnt fragments of ivory from a stool or couch presumably of African origin.131 Post-Roman ivory artefacts appear to have been principally of walrus ivory, and there is an historical record of a gift of walrus tusks to King Alfred of Wessex by a Norwegian, Othere, in the late ninth century.132 As the British Empire expanded, African sources once more became predominant, and St Katharine’s Dock at London specialized in elephant ivory imports in the nineteenth century. African elephant tusks have been recovered by divers from West Bay, Weymouth and Chesil Cove. How they came to be on the seabed is uncertain, though they are plainly not Pleistocene fossil tusks. There is documentary evidence for an ivory trade between

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Lyme Regis and Guinea in the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, and it seems probable that these tusks were lost from a vessel of that time, either during a shipwreck or by losses overboard.133

FISHERIES AND FISHING PORTS Fishing is plainly possible almost anywhere around the coast, and there is evidence for sea fishing in this country since prehistory (see Chapter 2). At Brean Down, Somerset, for example, Bronze Age deposits produced shellfish and bones of ling. The Bronze Age site of Gwithian, Cornwall produced fishing-related artefacts, including bone points and needles, and waisted elongate flat pebble tools, interpreted as net winders. On the Isles of Scilly, fishing was a significant part of the economy from the Bronze Age onwards: midden deposits, largely composed of limpet shells, at Iron Age to Early Roman-period sites on Halangy Down, St Mary’s, and Bryher have produced bones of eel, conger eel, whiting, pollack, bass, red sea bream, ballan wrasse, mackerel and flatfish. Wrasse predominates, suggesting an emphasis on inshore fishing on rocky bottoms.134 On the East Coast, fishbones from Roman deposits at Culver Street, Colchester were mainly of cod, eel, herring, plaice, flounder and grey mullet; and a Roman deposit from the Lincoln waterfront, almost entirely composed of small sand-eel bones, is probably related to the production of a fish sauce known as garum, an essential ingredient in Roman cookery.135 More recently, some ports, estuaries and beach landings attained particular prominence either due to the size of their fleets and catches, or to their celebrated specialities. There are grounds for thinking that the significance of marine food resources increased through time to meet the protein needs of expanding urban populations. For example, Roman refuse deposits at Culver Street produced a mean density of 1.8 fishbones/litre of soil, compared to 5.5 bones/litre in medieval deposits. Locker suggests that a specialized medieval fishing industry developed, based on netting for herring and line fishing for cod. Indeed, fishbones are extremely common in Late Saxon and medieval urban archaeological deposits in East Anglia. There is a consistent predominance of herring, eel, cod and whiting.136 The development of the East Coast fishing ports is relatively well understood from both archaeological and historical sources. The history of Great Yarmouth was closely linked to long-term processes of coastal change. In the Later Roman period, the rivers Yare, Bure and Waveney combined to form a major estuary, with its mouth near the site of the present town. However, from around the fifth century the southwards longshore drift of sand resulted in the constriction of the estuary mouth by a sand spit, which stabilized and continued to extend south, eventually reaching Gunton.137 The town developed on this spit. Excavations on Fuller’s Hill in the 1970s indicated a deep and complex stratigraphy over the sand-spit deposits, with an early phase of occupation in the tenth century. More recent deposit modelling based on 140 boreholes indicates that medieval layers survive extensively. At first settlement was in a precarious location, little more than 1 m above mean sea

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level, but accumulation of refuse, building debris, and blown sand raised the level. Significantly, large quantities of fishbones have been recovered, indicating that from the first the raison d’être of Yarmouth was to exploit the North Sea herring fishery.138 Later coastal change caused problems for maintaining a navigable channel for the Yare, and no less than seven channels or ‘havens’ were cut across the sand spit and sandbanks between 1346 and 1560, but Yarmouth continued to prosper as a fishing and transshipment port for Norwich. The Yarmouth Herring Fair began before 1240.139 The town’s half-lion, half-herring crest reflects Edward III’s gratitude for Yarmouth ships sent to participate in the Battle of Sluys in 1340 – more than the ships sent by all of the Cinque Ports of the South Coast combined. In the Netherlands, fishing vessels known as herring busses, using drift nets, were developed during the seventeenth century: there was a fleet of some 2,000 vessels, which underpinned the developing Netherlands economy. Faced with this competition to the English fishing industry, the Commonwealth introduced protectionist legislation in 1651, in the form of the Navigation Acts, which prohibited any imports, including fish, in foreign ships.140 The herring fishery later suffered vicissitudes due to depletion of stocks and periods of war (especially the Napoleonic and twentieth-century World Wars), and there was diversification towards Icelandic cod fishing and whaling in the eighteenth century. The North Sea fisheries were revolutionized in the 1830s by the introduction of trawl gear deployed from fishing smacks, replacing gill nets and hook-and-line,141 although even in the middle of the twentieth century substantial catches were still landed from drift netting. The introduction of steam trawlers later that century depleted stocks still further, and there was increasing competition from Hull and Grimsby, which were better placed to obtain coal, besides being nearer to the fishing grounds than East Anglian ports. After 1945 the North Sea Fisheries were in terminal decline. The last surviving East Anglian herring drifter is the Lydia Eva, built in 1930, and originally based at Great Yarmouth. She is owned by the Maritime Trust, and is now laid up at Lowestoft, awaiting funding for major hull repairs to make her once more seaworthy. In her original home port of Great Yarmouth, the Time and Tide museum focuses on the local fishing industry. Also at Yarmouth, in the public library, Patricia Field’s mural of 1951 depicts the fish quay in a sort of English ‘Socialist Realism’ style, and captures the robust atmosphere of the port just before the industry’s final demise in the 1960s. As it happened, a new industry was nascent and during the 1960s, Yarmouth became the largest base for the offshore hydrocarbon industry. Lowestoft, by contrast, was a late starter. In 1086 it was no more than a hamlet in the manor of Lothingland, and the main harbour was to the south at Kirkley. However, following the silting of the entry to the river Waveney at Kirkley, Lowestoft developed as a fishing port in its own right, to the extent that in 1357 Great Yarmouth sought to restrict its economic growth through the Statute of Herring. Despite this, Lowestoft continued to expand, and the grant of Port status in 1679 freed the town from Yarmouth’s domination.142 By the beginning of the eighteenth century a quarter of the town’s men were fishers, and by the early twentieth

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century the Lowestoft fishing fleet rivalled that of Yarmouth. South along the Suffolk coast, at the time of the Domesday survey, Dunwich rendered 60,000 herring annually, Southwold 25,000, Kessingland 10,000 and Blythburgh 3,000. Manorial records from Walberswick chart the career of a certain Robin Dolfinby in the fifteenth century. Beginning as a fish seller at Hopton, he had acquired the offshore herring boat Andrew by 1475, becoming a man of some status. At his death, his will directed the use of the proceeds from the sale of his boat to place statues of saints in the church, besides leaving his widow and daughter well endowed. Aldeburgh has been a beach landing at least since the sixteenth century for herring and sprats143 whilst further south, in Essex and the Thames estuary, there were substantial fishing fleets. There was a trawling fleet based at Barking from Stuart times which, by the late nineteenth century, was one of the largest trawling stations in the UK. Pollution of the Thames, combined with the development of the railways, led eventually to the end of the Barking fishery.144 Even by the early 1500s, Grimsby boats were fishing for cod off Iceland. Later, smacks concentrated at Hull to supply the ‘quality’ holidaying at Scarborough with fresh fish. By 1845 there were 29 smacks there, and by 1887 some 900 smacks were based at Hull and Grimsby, with associated industries including blacksmiths, shipyards, ice makers and smokehouses. It was the development of the steam trawler in the nineteenth century that led to a massive expansion of the industry at Grimsby. The first steam trawler came into service in 1881, permitting expansion of the fishery to greater depths and further north. Fish were sent by rail, on ice, to consumers. Grimsby benefited from its proximity to coalfields, its rail connections (from 1848), and the relative ease of importing natural ice from Scandinavia via the Humber. In the 1870s, innovations included the introduction of well boats alongside the fishing vessels, in which live fish could be carried to port, enabling the fleet to stay at sea for up to ten weeks. In 1919, Grimsby had 514 steam trawlers and by the 1920s it was the world’s largest fishing port. The period 1946–70 was the high point of prosperity. However, in 1975 a dispute arose with Iceland after a unilateral expansion of her territorial waters, and this led to the so-called ‘Cod War’. Excluded from Icelandic waters, and faced with the long-term effects of overfishing and the expansion of trawlers from elsewhere in the EU, the industry at Grimsby went into decline.145 In the north-east medieval fishing was at first largely from beach-launched cobles.146 Fishbone assemblages from archaeological deposits at Hartlepool, Newcastle, Lindisfarne and Jarrow indicate a shift from freshwater fish to deep-water fishing for cod, haddock and ling by the later Middle Ages. Craster was one of many later fishing harbours, specializing in smoking the herring catch to produce kippers. Falmouth schooners voyaged to the Newfoundland Grand Banks in the nineteenth century to trade for cod. Fishing in Devon developed early into an industrial-scale enterprise: the beam trawler was an innovation of Brixham men, and it was from there that trawling was introduced to the East Coast. Dorset and Devon were more associated with deep-sea fisheries, principally from Brixham, but also Sutton Harbour at Plymouth, and Weymouth. However, in South Devon, coastal resources

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were exploited initially from inland settlements, and the coastal fishing villages of Devon and Cornwall are relatively recent developments.147 The fishing industry in Cornwall was based, into the twentieth century, on the vast shoals of pilchard that used to appear in summer. Watchers on clifftops, known as ‘huers’, gave warning when shoals appeared. Catching was by means of enormous seine nets set from luggers. The nets were in proportion to the size of the shoals, and required two or three carts to move them, even when empty and dry. The pilchards trapped within the seine were carried to the shore in batches, over a period of days or weeks, for salting and barrelling. Mackerel were as important, and were available more consistently. Cornish mackerel boats known as ‘drivers’ operated all along the Channel but, due to the poor keeping qualities of this oily fish, had to stay within a day’s sail of a port. The pilchard shoals were accompanied by hake – predatory fish – that could be taken with handlines. In the nineteenth-century fishing was by far the most important component of the county’s economy.148 The Cornish pilchard fishery is represented today by surviving vessels, numerous small harbours, and facilities for supporting the fleet and processing the catch. Cornish fish cellars date back to at least the sixteenth century, though most extant examples are of eighteenth- to nineteenth-century date. They consist of rectangular buildings with a central floored courtyard. Fish were cured for around five weeks by salting on the floor, which was constructed of beach cobbles, and provided with a gully to remove brine, oil and blood into barrels. The pilchards were then pressed and compacted into barrels, using stone weights. By the Later Medieval period there was a massive trade in barrels of preserved pilchards from Fowey to Italy and other Continental countries, and Fowey also supplied the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Royal Navy. Sailors called them ‘Mevagissy Duck’.149 Fleetwood was a very late development. The port was established in 1836–40, initially with the hope of competing with Liverpool. It proved unsuccessful as a trading port, but instead developed as a major fishing port, specializing in fishing for cod from Arctic waters, with a fleet of deep-water trawlers. The Cod Wars of the 1970s also caused the demise of this fishery.150 Not all fish consumed in England, however, was home-caught. In the Roman period, imported salted fish included the Spanish mackerel (Scomber japonicus), bones of which were found in a first-century amphora from London which has a painted inscription marking it as the property of Lucius Tettius Africanus of Antipolis, the modern town of Antibes. Spanish mackerel bones have also been found in a third-century well at Boreham, Essex.151 Fish later came also from the north. The traditional method of air-drying cod, in the freezing dry air of the winters of Iceland and Lofoten, reduced the fresh fish to about 20 per cent of its original weight. The brick-like, protein-rich product, which could be rehydrated by soaking, was ideal for long-distance trade, and in the Middle Ages this ‘stockfish’ was sent to southern markets, including those of England.152 In more recent times, it became possible to supply even inland consumers with wet fish by railway, initially relying on ice collected from natural sources. The Cumberland Market of 1830 in London had a subterranean ice store, capable of

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storing 1,500 tons. Bulk imports of natural ice came initially from America, in the 1840s, but by 1860 most came from Norway. At the luxury end of the market, Scottish salmon were carried to London and packed in ice by George Dempster, a London fishmonger, as early as 1820. Nineteenth-century intertidal wrecks of vessels carrying ice from Scandinavia can still be seen, including the Acorn on the beach at Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire and the Vicuna at Holme-next-the-Sea, Norfolk.153 The trade in natural ice ended with development of artificial ice production and refrigeration; and the widespread availability of ‘fresh’ wet fish led to the end of the universal popularity of pickled or salted herrings and dried cod in England.154 Rollmops (pickled herring) are not now an everyday food but an occasional delicious delicacy, though oak-smoked kippers, produced by traditional methods, are undergoing something of a revival. Inexplicably, dried cod is still liked in the Netherlands and Portugal. Whaling has also been important to English coastal communities. In prehistory, stranded cetaceans (whales, dolphin and porpoise) were an unexpected bounty of meat, oil and bone. Bones have been found in prehistoric archaeological deposits, for example at Hunstanton, Norfolk, where a thoracic vertebra of a dolphin (Turslops truncatus or Grampus griseus) was found in a Late Neolithic pit. It is not known when offshore whaling first began from English ports, but by the ninth century ad, whales were hunted off the coast of Flanders, and the Basques caught right whales in Biscay during the medieval period. A seventh- to tenth-century settlement at Flixborough, Humberside has produced cetacean bones,155 and Anglo-Saxon whalebone artefacts include the eighth-century Northumbrian ‘Frank’s Casket’ and tenth-century chessmen from Wimborne, Dorset. In the church of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol there still hangs the rib of a whale, brought back by John Cabot from Newfoundland in the late fifteenth century. Active English involvement in whaling developed as a consequence of the exploratory northern voyages between 1576 and the 1630s by Martin Frobisher and others.156 Following the establishment of the Muscovy Company, English whalers were active in the Arctic by 1611, focusing their predation on the Greenland right whale,157 but they came under increasing competition, frequently violent, from the French, Flemish and especially the Dutch, who established shore bases and came to dominate the industry for much of the seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries. Dutch preeminence was reduced as a consequence of war with England in the early 1780s, and finally ended due to the British blockade of the Netherlands ports, which were then under French control, in 1795–1813. In the north-east, collier brigs were adapted for whaling, sailing principally from Whitby and Hull; and by 1788 there were 76 whalers at Hull and 20 at Whitby. The whale blubber was originally boiled at northern shore bases to produce oil, but as early as the 1670s it was chopped, stored in barrels and carried to the home port for processing. A secondary, but still economically significant, product was ‘whalebone’ – actually the cartilaginous plates from the right whale’s mouth – which was used in the construction of ladies’ farthingales in the seventeenth century, and stays and corsets in the eighteenth and nineteenth. The industry lasted at Hull, on a reduced scale, as late as the 1850s, by

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which time iron-hulled steamers were in operation; but by then rapacious exploitation of the ‘fishery’ had depleted stocks to below economic levels.158 In the early twenty-first century many people will deplore what was done: still, it happened, and it is a part of our history.159 The surviving visible archaeological and structural evidence for this industry in home ports is now very slight, and it is almost forgotten. Arches constructed from whale jawbones survive in the area around Hull, and there is a memorial of 1866 to the Greenland whaler John Gavill in Hull General Cemetery.160 Hull Maritime Museum displays artefacts, including harpoons and models of whaling vessels. Some insight into the shore-based infrastructure has recently been supplied by the recent excavation of the eighteenthcentury Rainbow Quay whaling station at Greenland Dock, London.161

HISTORIC MERCANTILE PORTS Although some harbours were dedicated almost exclusively to specific industries or activities, such as fishing, many ports were always multi-functional, serving coastal or international trade, passenger traffic, fishing fleets, and the navy. Fishing ports have already been considered, and the Royal Naval dockyards will be discussed in Chapter 4. The key requisites for a successful port have always been: safe approach channels; sheltered natural, or artificially constructed, anchorages or berths; and good inland communications, by river or road. In some cases ports arose as entirely de novo constructions, but in others there was a longer-term process of growth, from simple mud-berths or beach landings to a more complex array of piers and breakwaters, quays, enclosed docks and loading and storage facilities. The establishment, expansion, contraction and even abandonment of mercantile ports are due to a complex interaction between national and local economic, political and military factors. Some simply lost their raison d’être, as markets declined or the focus of overseas trade shifted. River ports, such as Exeter, Chester, Boston and King’s Lynn, always had problems of access, exacerbated by the increasing size and total tonnage of vessels. Some improved their approaches by new cuts during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Elsewhere, on open coasts, havens were created artificially by the construction of piers, often around a cove or bay, ranging in size from the small Cornish harbours to major ports such as Dover. Some were developed to export specific commodities, but others, such as Ramsgate, had only a limited commercial role but specialized as ‘harbours of refuge’ where shipping could shelter from storms.162 In some places, purely natural processes of coastal change, especially longshore drift of sediment and consequent silting, were the overwhelming influence on their prosperity or demise. Some perished catastrophically in exceptional storms. Historically, London has been England’s greatest port: indeed in the early modern period all ports other than London were known generically as the ‘outports’.163 Continual redevelopment in the City of London, Southwark and Westminster since the Second World War has necessitated hundreds of archaeological excavations,

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some of which have provided detailed information on the prehistoric and early historic Thames. The prehistoric river channel at London was approximately three times as wide as that of today, but on the Southwark side there were several substantial ‘eyots’, stable sand islands which were inhabited in early prehistory. Diatom analysis of sediments, from sites along the course of the Underground Jubilee Line, indicates that by about 1200 bc, tidal waters had extended upstream of Westminster and the eyots had been abandoned. By the time of the Roman invasion, the tidal head had migrated downstream, and the eyots were once more habitable, besides being capable of being linked together to form a bridging point to the north bank. The Port of London originated in the first century ad, when wharves and warehouses were constructed along the waterfront of Londinium on the north bank of the Thames, apparently with a harbour basin at the mouth of the Walbrook, and probably with quays on the Southwark eyots and further downstream.164 No Late Roman port facilities are known, and in the immediate post-Roman period there may have been no significant trade, as the economic links with the empire were disrupted. Yet, by about the late seventh or early eighth century, a new trading settlement known as Lundenwic had developed to the west of the old walled city, under the present Covent Garden, with a river frontage in the area of the Strand. It was referred to by Bede as the capital city of the East Saxons, and the ‘mart for many nations’. Viking raids are thought to have been the chief factor causing a shift of population in the mid-ninth century back to the walled city, and its refortification as a burh. There was further development of the City waterfront in the medieval period, and expansion of new quays to Southwark and Westminster. During the thirteenth century the Hanseatic League, based at Lübeck and other German ports, developed to protect the carrying trade of the Baltic and North Sea, and established a monopoly. In England the Hanse were known as ‘Easterlings’, and their Guildhall or ‘factory’ in London, known as the Steelyard, was the centre of a trade in timber, furs, cloth, stockfish, wine and shipbuilding materials. There was a rigorous code of behaviour for the occupants of this enclave which prohibited, among other things, fancy clothes, picking fruit in the garden and bringing in prostitutes.165 The Hanse also had factories at other English East Coast ports, but the London Steelyard sought to exercise authority over the other factories. This confederacy linked English commerce to a wider network of Hanseatic ports across North-West Europe. Despite attempts to accommodate local sensitivities, the Hanseatic monopoly attracted royal disapproval, and the Steelyard was finally closed in 1598. This had significant effects on the prosperity of the outports, whose merchants, combined as the Eastland Company, established their own factories at Elbing and Emden, and eventually were allowed to trade at the Hanse ports. Their penetration of the Baltic trade revived the outport economies, on the East Coast at least, for the redistribution of bulk commodities of low value from London alone was just not practical.166 Nevertheless, by the sixteenth century London was England’s largest port and market centre. In 1582, the tonnage of London-owned shipping was 12,300,

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almost twice as much as the nearest contenders (Newcastle and Yarmouth, both at 6,800 tons), whilst other significant outports had less than 3,000 tons – the nascent port of Liverpool had only 400 tons.167 The development of new commercial docks followed the establishment of the East India Company in 1599 and the establishment of the East India Yards at Blackwall and Deptford. By the mid-1600s there were specialized quays for particular commodities – the ‘legal quays’, where customs were levied. The docks, quays and warehouses of the City were largely destroyed in the fire of 1666, but recovery was rapid: it is estimated that by 1700 London may have carried 77 per cent of British foreign trade. As commerce grew, there was increasing pressure on the Pool of London, and entirely new facilities were developed at Blackwall (1790), West India Dock (1802), London Docks (1805), East India Dock (1806), Surrey Docks (1807), St Katharine’s Dock (1828), Royal and Victoria Dock (1855), Millwall Dock (1866), Royal Albert Dock (1880) and Tilbury Docks (1886), reflecting London’s increasingly global trading status. The Victoria and Albert Docks (1900–14), including what was then the world’s largest frozen meat store, the Surrey and Commercial Docks, were the global centre of the timber trade, and St Katharine’s Dock specialized in wool and ivory.168 Tilbury is, at present, the main container port for London, developed on the site of the nineteenth-century docks there. In the 1960s London was still the leading UK port, but it fell into decline as larger vessels and container-based systems developed: new and expanded ports at Felixstowe, Dover and elsewhere led to decline and dereliction. The unprecedented redevelopment of London’s old Docklands as a financial, commercial and residential centre during the 1980s, including the massive Canary Wharf development beginning in 1985, with the Canary Wharf Tower of 1988–91, illustrates London’s endless capacity to reinvent itself.169 The apparently relentless migration of docks down the estuary is set to continue in the twentyfirst century with the development of the London Gateway Port at the former oil refinery site of Shellhaven. Comparable processes of expansion, though at different periods, can be seen elsewhere. A brief review of mercantile port development outside London is needed first, on a regional basis, before trying to tease out some general strands in the history of English ports. There is little archaeological evidence for ports during the Roman period in the north-east, although South Shields was a major military supply base on the Tyne, which was bridged at Newcastle, at Pons Aelius. Early Medieval trade is indicated by coins from coastal monastic sites, and exotic imports such as walrus ivory from Bamburgh. The main monastic sites were at river mouths and on Lindisfarne – and they may have had beach markets. The quays at Newcastle originated in the medieval period. There were progressive phases of reclamation, largely completed by the fourteenth century, and docks further downstream were constructed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the nineteenth century, the mouths of the Tweed, Tyne, Wear and Tees were dominated by docks, and there were also specialized coal staiths, for example the North Dock (1850) and South Dock (1837), at Sunderland. There were also many small coastal harbours. Alnmouth in Northumberland was

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an important grain port until 1806, when the river mouth was diverted by a storm. Imports there included guano – subfossil bird droppings mined on an industrial scale in South America, and used in England as agricultural fertilizer. There is a surviving guano shed at High Boston.170 Hartlepool and Whitby had their origins as villages developing around monastic communities (see Chapter 5) from the seventh century onwards, subsequently following different lines of development related to the economies of their hinterlands. During the medieval period Hartlepool became a small walled port, with a market, and its enlarged harbour served the County Palatine of Durham. In 1835, the port was linked by railway with the South Durham coalfields, and a second railway with new docks, also exporting coal, was constructed in competition at West Hartlepool. Later nineteenth-century industrialization included an ironworks and shipyards. There was also a fish quay at Hartlepool but at Whitby, fishing remained the mainstay of the town’s economy alongside whaling, later supplemented by the jet industry. Scarborough was probably a Scandinavian foundation: the defended settlement of the eponymous Thorgil Skarthi (harelip) may have been on the headland, which was previously the site of a Roman signal station and later of the castle, which was constructed from the twelfth century onwards. The port, and its new quays, developed during the thirteenth century, gaining rights to levy tolls and to hold a fair. Scarborough and Bridlington, also a small medieval port, had a specialized role from the seventeenth century onwards as refuges for coastal shipping in storms, which involved the construction of new piers. In return, the two ports were granted local duties on coal.171 Scarborough’s later role as a spa and holiday resort is outlined in Chapter 5. Filey originated as a small fishing village and remained so until it was ‘discovered’ by visitors from nearby Scarborough. Medieval ports on the open Lincolnshire coast and river ports included Skegness, Spalding, Wainfleet and Wrangle. Barton-upon-Humber was part of the estate of a monastery, and its Late Saxon church has produced ninth-century graves. By the Late Saxon period it was a market town and port, but was eventually eclipsed by the rise of Hull in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Grimsby seems to have been a ninth-century foundation, and had its first floruit as a trading port in the Middle Ages, before declining due to pressure from the Hanse and competition from both Hull and Boston. Kingston-upon-Hull itself is generally said to have been founded in the reign of Edward I near the former fishing village of Wyke to replace the former port of Ravenser Odd, which had been lost to erosion, though recent excavations have shown that, in fact, elements of a planned town already existed before Edward I purchased the site from Meaux Abbey. The course of the river Hull was diverted at its confluence with the Humber to enlarge the harbour. In the Middle Ages it was the premier port of the Humber, trading extensively in Europe – exporting wool, agricultural produce and manufactures, and importing commodities such as fish, wine, prestige foodstuffs and spices, and timber from the Baltic. Its growth led to a decline of many smaller ports around the Humber. There was further expansion in the 1770s, accompanied by capital dredging of the

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river, and new docks were constructed in 1882. There is a modern trade in timber, fertilizers, fruit, and potatoes, and a shellfish quay.172 Although the archaeological evidence is negligible, it is probable that Boston was engaged in overseas trade by the Late Saxon period. Imported Continental pottery of this date from Lincoln shows that the river Witham was already a trade route, though the first historical record of the town of Boston is from 1089. The prosperity of the port during the Middle Ages is indicated by the massive church of St Botolph, whose magnificent tower, 272 feet tall and constructed c. 1450–1520, is a seamark in the Wash,173 besides monastic foundations, guildhalls, merchants’ houses and waterfront infrastructure. The origin of the name ‘the Stump’ to describe St Botolph’s tower is not known, but might be a dismissive sneer by neighbours, for the town has not always been popular, as this eighteenth-century rhyme quoted by Spurrell shows: Boston, Boston, Boston, Thou hast nought to boast on But a grand sluice and a tall steeple, A proud, conceited, ignorant people, And a coast where souls are lost on.

Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries Boston was one of the premier ports of England, rivalling, at times, even London. A second period of prosperity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries followed the drainage of the Fens, when the town was embellished with fine Georgian public and private buildings. In the late 1760s the ‘Grand Sluice’ was constructed to deepen the bed of the Witham and scour the river, improving access, and this proved adequate until dock construction became necessary in the late nineteenth century.174 In archaeological terms, the location of Boston along a low-lying estuary in the Fens is especially significant, for the waterlogged anoxic sediments preserve timber and other organic structures. Compared to other medieval ports there has been comparatively little archaeological investigation, but exceptionally well-preserved buried waterfront structures probably survive. Maritime trade in Lincolnshire declined during the early modern period due to silting and changing economic circumstances, but in 1750 Boston was still the main port of the region. Decline after 1850 was arrested by construction of a wet dock in 1882–4. King’s Lynn in Norfolk was a port from the time of the Domesday survey, and was granted a charter by King John in 1204. Hanseatic merchants were granted trading rights at Lynn in 1310. The Hanse imported Baltic products including furs, beeswax, stockfish, pitch, hemp and timber. However, relations with the town population were not always easy, in part due to a long-running local resentment of the fact that Lynn merchants in Danzig did not receive equivalent reciprocal trading rights.175 The Hanseatic warehouse can still be seen at Lynn, between St Margaret’s Church and the Great Ouse. The Customs House of 1683, designed by Henry Bell, is a graceful feature of the waterfront (see Figure 11).

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Figure 11. The Customs House at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 1683.

Other ports formerly of greater significance than today in Norfolk include Burnham Overy, Wells-next-the-Sea, Blakeney, Cley and Sheringham. The principal medieval ports in Suffolk were Dunwich, Aldeburgh, Southwold, Orford, Woodbridge, Felixstowe and Ipswich. Coastal change during the Middle Ages and later had major impacts. Blythburgh, for example, had a deep-water channel and a significant medieval wool-exporting trade, but it declined in the sixteenth century due to the silting of the Blyth estuary. Orford was a new foundation of Henry II in the 1160s, provided with a castle and port, but the progressive development of Orford Ness, which narrowed and lengthened the channel of the Ore, and the associated expansion of mud-flat and salt marsh, isolated the town from the open sea. When Defoe was writing in the 1720s, the town was ‘decayed’. The long-drawn-out loss of Dunwich has been described by several authors. The town was on the site of St Felix’s seventh-century church, had a mint in the tenth century (probably indicating it was then defended), and by the thirteenth century it had at least eight churches, besides religious houses and marketplaces. All were lost due to coastal erosion in succeeding centuries, apart from part of the Franciscan friary precinct and the leper chapel of St James, which survive today. A terminal event was the choking of the harbour in 1328 with shingle during a storm.176 In the post-medieval period, the surviving Suffolk ports were the main outlet for agricultural produce from the county, whilst coal was the principal import.

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Aldeburgh thrived at the expense of Dunwich but by the early sixteenth century its harbour, Thorpe Haven, was also being blocked by shingle, resulting in relocation to Slaughden, south of the town, where a new quay was constructed in 1542–75. Severe erosion in the seventeenth century, however, led to a long-term decline. Inland shipment of goods on keels and wherries was a feature of post-medieval trade: smaller vessels of shallow draught were needed, for example, to reach the mid-nineteenth-century maltings at Snape. In the Blyth, progressive navigation schemes from 1757, eventually with piers at the mouth of the river and locks and a tidal staunch inland, maintained navigation up to Halesworth; but by the nineteenth-century natural silting, exacerbated by the effects of land reclamation, ended large-scale trade. During the nineteenth century, schemes for new port facilities were mooted at several locations, but only Felixstowe and Ipswich have persisted as major commercial ports to the present day. The early history of Ipswich has been discussed briefly above. It was a Staple Port in 1404, and benefited from a new rail link to Ipswich in 1877 and construction of new docks in 1881, at the instigation of Colonel George Tomline. The docks at Felixstowe were not returned to the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company until 1951, following military use in the Second World War. They were then semi-derelict, and suffered further damage in the 1953 floods. Since then, the port has undergone large-scale expansion. The shift in trade from the Atlantic towards Europe favoured development at a new East Coast site, with the added benefit that it had room for expansion. Moreover, developing a new port appealed to commercial developers, since the restrictive practices, labour disputes and strikes which characterized older ports in the twentieth century might be evaded. Felixstowe, from the first, focused on large-scale handling of containers, but there is also a Continental ferry terminal.177 Currently a new south extension is proposed. Orwell Haven is the best natural harbour in the east of England, which resulted in the early development of Harwich as a port. In 1340, it was an assembly point for Edward III’s fleet before the Battle of Sluys, and it later developed as a naval port in the reign of Henry VIII. There is a rare example of a surviving seventeenth-century treadmill crane, relocated from its original quayside site. A regular packet service ran from Harwich to the Netherlands from the mid-1600s, but this service was disrupted, at times, by the Dutch and French Wars. The mail was kept in a leadweighted bag for rapid jettisoning if necessary. Nowadays, the port is principally of significance for the Harwich–Hook ferry, and as a container port. There is a current proposal to reclaim Bathside Bay, adjacent to the old town, to create a new container terminal. Further south, in Essex, Brightlingsea was the only ‘limb’ (subsidiary port) of the Cinque Ports outside Kent and Sussex. Maldon was also a significant port in the Middle Ages, and the tomb of John Fenne, a merchant of Calais who died there in 1486, survives in the church. Later, it was a centre of sailing-barge building, producing a type called a ‘stackie’, very shallow and broad, capable of carrying hay and corn stacks.178 ‘Ship service’ was an innovation of the reign of Edward the Confessor, c. 1050,

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whereby five (hence the French word ‘Cinque’) South Coast seaports – Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich, and later Winchelsea and Rye – provided the king with ships for defence and military transportation, in return for a considerable degree of autonomy.179 The Domesday Book records of Dover that ‘The burgesses supplied the king once a year with 20 ships for fifteen days, and in each ship 21 men.’ The Cinque Ports reached the peak of their prosperity in the thirteenth century, following the loss of Normandy to the English crown, and went on to develop a network of ‘limbs’. The post of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports originated in 1216, with the aim of providing a unified command, the first incumbent being Hubert de Burgh, who had successfully held Dover Castle against a French siege in 1216. During the reign of Edward I, new ports with rectilinear street plans, markets and wharves were developed. The present town of Winchelsea was established by the king from 1280 to replace the port of Old Winchelsea, which had been destroyed by storms after 1250,180 and the layout of the town can be reconstructed in some detail. It is a good example of a medieval ‘new town’, with a planned street system based ultimately on ancient Roman models, a market square, churches, friaries and hospitals, private houses (many of which had vaulted stone undercrofts), a quay and harbour, and defences. Subsequently, from the later thirteenth century, coastal change led to sedimentation in the Cinque Port harbours and reduced their effectiveness. At Sandwich, barges towing rakes were used to mobilize sediment in an attempt to keep the channel of the river Stour navigable.181 Dover was always the premier Cinque Port. Its haven was originally at the estuary mouth of the river Dour, but this silted up during the Middle Ages, resulting in a shift of the harbour to the area of the modern Western Docks. A newly formed embayment was modified by bank construction, to define two harbour areas known as ‘Great Paradise’ and ‘Great Pent’. Subsequent developments during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included the construction of a wet and dry dock and, in the 1860s, the building of the Admiralty Pier to accommodate naval vessels. The Prince of Wales Pier, constructed between 1892 and 1902, provided facilities for passenger ferries. The Outer Harbour, completed in 1909, provided berths and anchorages for both naval and commercial ships. The successive phases of harbour development thus make Dover the most complex of pier ports, with a history of modification spanning almost two millennia: indeed, the find of the Bronze Age Dover boat (see above) shows that Dover was a port almost a millennium before that. The cross-Channel ferry business has persisted and, indeed, has spread to other ports, including Folkestone, Ramsgate and Sheerness. A second terminal at Dover is now being considered. Southampton Water has been a major seaway since at least the Roman period. As at London in the Thames estuary, the locations of the main port areas have shifted through time. The first port, which was also probably a naval base, was developed at Clausentum, on the site of the modern suburb of Bitterne. Both banks of the river Itchen were occupied and they were connected by a timber river crossing.182 During the Middle Saxon period, in the seventh and eighth centuries, a new port and trading centre was established on the west bank of the

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Itchen. Known as Hamwic, it covered some 33 hectares, and had a rectilinear street pattern, and probably a mint, by the eighth century. Ships appear to have been beached on the Itchen mud-flats. Its foundation, as in the case of other post-Roman trading emporia in England and the near Continent, may have been under royal direction.183 By the fourteenth century, the main port of Southampton Water had been relocated once more, to Southampton itself on the river Test. As noted above, Southampton was active in the wine trade with Gascony, and was significant for wool and cloth exports, carried largely by vessels of Genoa and Pisa, destined for the Arte della Lana at Florence. Excavations in the 1960s produced spectacular evidence for the construction of stone merchants’ houses along the contemporary shoreline from the Norman period to the thirteenth century, after which timber buildings became more common. Imported artefacts, including HispanoMoresque ceramics from the Malaga region, and polychrome pots from South-West France, indicate the widespread trade contacts of Southampton merchants. They included Richard of Southwick and Bernard of Vire, in Normandy, whose seal matrices were found at one site. Current archaeological work in the French Quarter of the town has redefined the thirteenth-century grid pattern of tenements and streets, which was wiped away during post-war redevelopment. Reinstatement of parts of the structure and grain of the medieval townscape, obliterated by ignorant (or at least unheeding) modernist planners in the 1960s, should be possible. The site of a significant thirteenth-century stone building, Polymond Hall, a house of the merchant Richard of Leicester, was excavated in this programme of works. It was occupied in the fifteenth century by an Italian merchant and the Venetian ambassador, and excavation of a latrine at the back of the plot produced imported ceramics.184 During the sixteenth century, improved shipping rigs and pilotage led to a transfer of trade towards London, and war with France, beginning in 1543, finally destroyed Southampton’s traditional French trade. After a long period of decline, a packet service was established. The Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, founded by Scottish partners, was awarded a contract to carry mail to Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar in 1837, and received a royal charter of incorporation in 1840. Subsequently, the company was awarded contracts to the Mediterranean and the East, changing its name accordingly to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, more familiarly known as P&O. Its business had expanded by 1851 to cover the Far East and Australia. Following the opening of new docks in 1843, Southampton became the base for the P&O line, and a passenger service was developed. The Prince of Wales Dry Dock of 1895 further increased facilities at the port, and the White Star and American lines moved their bases from Liverpool to Southampton. It was, of course, from Southampton that the ill-fated White Star liner Titanic sailed in 1912. By 1936 Southampton Docks handled 46 per cent of the UK’s maritime passenger traffic.185 The mainly hard-rock coastline of the south-west is characterized by numerous small coves and harbours, with larger ports on major estuaries. The principal ports today are Dartmouth, Plymouth and, to a lesser extent, Barnstaple.186 The early

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development of Plymouth as a naval port was impeded by its distance from London: Sir Walter Raleigh’s proposal for a naval port at the sheltered Hamoaze channel was not followed up, and the first naval docks were not constructed until 1693. Growth thereafter was rapid, leading ultimately to development of the Devonport dockyard (see Chapter 4). Plymouth came to prominence as a port in its own right after the port of Plympton became unusable, due to silting of the river Plym caused by tinworking further upstream. The town achieved borough status in 1439, and it was defended by a castle and, in the sixteenth century, blockhouses.187 The medieval port – the most important quayside up to the eighteenth century – was known as ‘the Barbican’. The Hawkins family owned property there in 1480, and the dynasty later became famous as mariners. John Hawkins was an associate of Drake in his New World ventures and raids, and his circumnavigation of 1577. Famously, it was on Plymouth Hoe that Drake received news of the Armada in 1588, whilst playing bowls.188 The city was also the final point of embarkation for the Pilgrim Fathers. Once the railway had reached Plymouth, in the mid-nineteenth century, transatlantic liners would dock there to disembark passengers onward bound for London. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Falmouth was a significant port, since inbound ships would anchor in the Falmouth Roads, waiting to receive orders from London by electric telegraph: hence the naval phrase ‘Falmouth for orders’. Cargoes were also offloaded there onto barges.189 Smaller commercial ports in the south-west include Poole and Weymouth (both with natural harbours), Lyme Regis (with its Cobb – a pier of medieval origin) and Bridport, now known as West Bay. In North and South Devon, Barnstaple, Bideford and Exeter had sheltered quays on estuaries. In Cornwall, a series of small to medium-sized planned urban market centres developed in the Middle Ages. Major ports included Fowey, Lostwithiel, Saltash, Padstow, Mousehole and St Michael’s Mount, but there are numerous other ‘porth’ place names.190 The medieval ports of Lostwithiel and Fowey, developed respectively by the Earls of Cornwall and Tywardreath Priory, traded principally in tin and fish, with supplementary involvement in piracy and privateering. Lostwithiel, shown by customs records of 1203–5 to have been the seventh or eighth port of 35 in England from which records survive, declined to the benefit of Fowey from the thirteenth century due to silting of its harbour by sediment from tin-streaming upstream.191 Industrialization, involving the export of metal ores and China clay, led to new port developments at Porthleven (1818–55) and Charlestown (1791–1801). Bristol was the principal port of the south-west from the Middle Ages onwards. It had pre-Conquest origins, but the planned development of the port area at Redcliffe, on the south bank of the river Avon, was later in date. The location of the earlier port is unknown. Coins minted at Bristol date from 1010, and there was a bridge there by the eleventh century. By the twelfth century, the port was substantial. A charter of Henry II mentions trade in wool, wine, hides and corn, and in 1171 the port supplied six ships for a royal expedition to Ireland. At first there were just mudberths but, in the 1240s, the river Frome was diverted to provide new

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quays at the confluence with the Avon. This was a massive infrastructure project for the time. A charter of Edward III of 1273 made the town semi-autonomous, and by 1467 the Society of Merchant Venturers was established. In the fifteenth century Bristol was second only to London as a port.192 As early as the 1480s, there are mentions of a westward voyage to seek the ‘Isle of Brazil’ and the Portuguese mariner John Cabot made his first voyage from Bristol to Maine and Newfoundland in 1497, in the Matthew.193 Most significantly, he returned to report the richness of the cod fishery off those coasts. By the sixteenth century, the Merchant Venturers had succeeded in closing the port’s trade to foreign interests, thereby establishing a virtual monopoly for themselves. Trade with Virginia, for tobacco, and with the West Indies, for sugar, originated in the seventeenth century, and the ‘triangular trade’ developed, carrying goods to West Africa, collecting slaves, carrying them to the Caribbean, and coming back to port with return cargoes. In 1725, Bristol ships carried some 17,000 slaves from Africa to the New World. Congestion at the port, and limited berthing, led to a decline later in the eighteenth century and the transfer of business to Liverpool. The Abolition Bill of 1807 removed one side of the triangular trade, and the West Indies sugar trade collapsed in 1809. The port’s fortunes revived in the 1830s, when Isambard Kingdom Brunel perceived that extending the London-to-Bristol railway much further westwards, to provide a sea link to New York, was a logical next step. This was realized by the construction of the SS Great Western (1837) and the vast SS Great Britain (1843). Further port expansion continued later in the nineteenth century, with the construction of the Avonmouth Docks (1877).194 These new docks were intended as the solution to problems of access to Bristol via the narrow tidal Avon, but at first were not an economic success. A new phase of enlargement began in 1902, when construction of the Royal Edward Dock, on Dunball Island, began.195 The ports of the north-west always had an Irish and Atlantic focus. When Norway and Denmark were significant trading nations in the Early Medieval period, the ports of the north-west coast were linked into a network which connected the Norse port of Dublin to Scandinavia, and on to Iceland and Greenland. The port of Meols on the Wirral (discussed above) might have been a Scandinavian trading site in its later phases. Meols remained in use into the late fifteenth/early sixteenth centuries, but was thereafter forgotten. Medieval finds from the site include pilgrim badges from shrines in England, Germany, southern France and Rome, showing that it retained wide contacts.196 However, by the early Middle Ages, Chester was becoming the predominant port of the north-west. Chester was still significant into the seventeenth century, thereafter declining due to silting of its harbour and the expansion of Liverpool and Whitehaven. However, trade with Ireland continued: clay tobacco pipes from Chester and Rainsford have been excavated from sites in Ireland. In the 1730s the building of the New Crane Wharf and canalization of the estuary were attempts to revive the port.197 In 1207, King John granted Liverpool the status of a Free Borough. By the early fourteenth century there was trade in corn, tallow, iron and wine, and by the 1500s it was the main port for trade with Ireland. A new quay was developed after 1561,

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the old market area was levelled in 1726, the ‘pool’ was partly infilled from 1710, and in 1715 the Old Dock at Canning Place was opened – the first commercial enclosed wet dock in the world. There was massive expansion of the Liverpool Docks from 1715 onwards, initially linked to the developing inland canal system. By 1836 there were docks along almost 4 km of the Mersey shore.198 Liverpool had profited from Bristol’s problems of congestion and limited berthing, becoming the new focus of the ‘triangular trade’. By the eighteenth century there were 13-storey warehouses, and nineteenth-century warehouses still survive extensively. The corn warehouses in Waterloo Road (1868) were the first in the world to have a central power source, driving elevators and conveyors. In 1807 Liverpool ships carried more than 50,000 slaves to the West Indies, just before abolition.199 Trade in tobacco with Virginia had originated in the mid-seventeenth century, and the Stanley Dock tobacco warehouse of 1901 is still one of the largest buildings in the city.200 Samuel Cunard’s Liverpool-based ‘British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’, formed in 1838, gained the government contract to carry mail to North America.201 Subsequently the company, renamed Cunard Steamships Ltd, became a transatlantic passenger carrier conveying, among others, hundreds of thousands of emigrants to America. Other competitors included the White Star Line, founded at Liverpool, which initially relied on sailing ships destined for the Australia trade. From 1863, it provided third-class accommodation in steam vessels for transatlantic emigrants. Cunard and White Star merged in 1934. The neo-Classical Cunard building, built in 1914–18, is one of the three magnificent structures along Liverpool’s waterfront. Along with the docks, including the splendid Albert Dock of 1846, warehousing and other buildings, these form the Liverpool World Heritage site,202 so designated in 2004 on the basis of Liverpool’s involvement in constructional and technological innovation, mercantile culture, mass population movements – slavery and emigration – and global trading. Whitehaven initially developed for the export of salt and coal from the seventeenth century, but developed an involvement in the tobacco and slave trade in the eighteenth century. As at Liverpool, the slave trade was indirect: goods taken to West Africa were exchanged for slaves, who were then shipped to the West Indies or the American colonies. Return cargoes were tobacco, sugar, cotton or coffee.203 Barrow-in-Furness was a coal- and iron-ore-exporting port, and a shipbuilding centre from 1871.204 What general trends can we tease out from the diverse, and highly varied, individual histories of ports? Location has always been fundamental. Prehistoric and early post-Roman ports were on trade routes connecting them to the Mediterranean. They were involved in exporting raw materials and importing luxury goods for the elite – besides generating tax revenues for the local or regional authority, at least from the seventh century ad. Traders from the Mediterranean at these times very likely regarded England as a primitive and backward region from which basic raw materials could be obtained. As Joseph Conrad expressed it concisely in Heart of Darkness: ‘And this also’, said Marlowe suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth’.

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Just as the British later named parts of the West African coast from their main export commodities, such as the Gold Coast and Ivory Coast, so too did fifth-century bc Greeks refer to parts of South-West England as the Cassiterides (tin islands). From their point of view, these barbarous regions had little else to offer them. The trade goods – principally wine and mass-produced metalwork – exchanged in return with the Iron Age and post-Roman British may have seemed of negligible value to Mediterranean merchants, though they were plainly prized in Britain, on the very edge of civilization. In later periods, regional and local initiatives – from those of Cistercian monks to nineteenth-century entrepreneurs – led to the development of havens, wharves and quays, frequently to transport a specific product of their estates to market – such as wool, ore, metals, coal and China clay. At times state intervention, notably under the Roman Empire and at the time of Edward I in the thirteenth century, resulted in new planned port towns. Generally, however, port development was not centrally planned, but market-driven. Ports have always been located in the best place to maximize profit, and the suitable places have shifted through time. Trading links have included those with: the civilized world of the Mediterranean in the first millennium bc; the Roman and post-Roman Byzantine empires; the early medieval Scandinavian trading network focused on the North and Irish Seas; the later medieval North Sea commercial confederacy of the Hanse; the territorial connection of England with France in the Middle Ages; the Mediterranean city states of Venice and Genoa in the later medieval period; and the markets of the developing British Empire, from the sixteenth century onwards. Some ports were just too remote from the main centres of commerce to flourish or, if they were originally well sited, later became isolated: as, for example, when the main centres of industry shifted to the north in the eighteenth century, leaving many South and East Coast ports behind. In the twentieth century, the shift of economic emphasis from the former Empire and USA towards Europe led to the decline of West Coast ports, such as Liverpool, in favour of Felixstowe and other container ports in the south and east. Most ports have developed as a consequence of myriad individual decisions, made in response to changing economic circumstances and the location of markets, and rarely related to strategic planning. Secondly, some ports always had physical geographical disadvantages. Some were inevitably on a trajectory towards destruction by silting, most notably in the cases of medieval Suffolk and the Cinque Ports, where long-term natural processes of erosion and sediment transportation ensured that they had limited futures. It was ultimately impossible, given the technology of the time, to maintain their harbours, for longshore sediment transport led to their silting up. Some were wiped out by catastrophic storms, which could not have been predicted. Lostwithiel was a casualty of early industry, for its harbour became silted with sediment generated from inland tin-streaming. Ports on rivers generally had limited berthing and were difficult to approach. Although they had the capacity to handle medieval shipping, they were unsuited to the new larger vessels of the early modern period and the increased traffic of the times, and so were less able to compete with seaports, unless finances could be raised for new cuts. At many places problems of

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approach channels and congestion at berths led to development of new berthing facilities further downstream, most notably at London, where there has been a near-continuous expansion of port facilities down the Thames estuary over the last 400 years, which will culminate in the construction of the new London Gateway Port at Shellhaven. Thirdly, so far as fishing and whaling ports are concerned, over-exploitation of the resource has been terminal in many cases. What seemed abundant and inexhaustible proved, ultimately, to have its limits. The whales went first. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, steam trawlers, and then factory fishing vessels, depleted fish stocks and this, combined with foreign competition, means that today the surviving stocks must be managed carefully, by means of quotas, to achieve a level of sustainable production. Regulation of inshore fishing to conserve stocks dates back to the Sea Fisheries Regulations Act 1888, which established twelve Sea Fisheries Committees in England and Wales. Their role today, beyond enforcing quotas, closed seasons, exclusion areas, and the sizes of vessels and types of gear, is increasingly involving wider aspects of marine nature conservation.205 However, fishing ports almost everywhere have declined and working vessels have become fewer. How can our understanding of the early history of ports and coastal trade be increased? Frequently, archaeological excavations of historic waterfronts have been undertaken in advance of new development at ports that are still economically active. This need will continue, but at ports where there has been continual redevelopment – in some cases since the Roman period – the earliest phases of waterfront construction have often been partially destroyed by later ones. However, there are many abandoned ports and havens. Some sites were abandoned following catastrophic events, such as several of the Cinque Ports, and Dunwich in Suffolk, where havens were filled rapidly with sediment during major storms in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Others simply fell into decay and dereliction due to economic factors. These sites have enormous archaeological potential, since there has been no later redevelopment; but they have received very little attention so far.206 Minor havens, staithes and jetties are very poorly recorded archaeologically, though there are thousands, of them. Many small landings could well have been in use since at least the Bronze Age. We really do not know. They have been almost ignored by archaeologists, although the coastal trade in agricultural and industrial products has always been considerable and, cumulatively, the goods transported to and from small landings were of enormous economic significance. Just a few sites have been examined in recent years. Excavation in advance of a habitat creation scheme by the Essex Wildlife Trust at Great Wigborough, Essex revealed two parallel lines of posts projecting into a former creek, which were radiocarbon-dated to around ad 920.207 Although there is no definite evidence for the function of this structure, interpretation as a jetty seems most probable. Quays at Grange Pill in the Severn have been recorded archaeologically, and are dated by dendrochronology to after 1100 and 1172 – the felling dates for the timbers used. Both probably were constructed after Tintern Abbey was granted the Manor of Woolaston in 1131.208

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On the Lincolnshire coast, small havens are indicated by minor embayments in the former sea bank, and some are directly associated with the earthworks of deserted medieval settlements, or scatters of surface finds of artefacts.209 These are just a few examples of what was once a network of small landings everywhere around the English coast, and of which we know almost nothing.

TAXATION AND EVASION As noted above, there are good reasons for thinking that the earliest newly established post-Roman ports in England – the wics, during the eighth century ad – were developed under royal or aristocratic direction, to control markets and to provide taxation revenues. Ports no longer served an Imperial economic function, but were established by local rulers for their own purposes. Historical records of taxes on traded commodities go back to at least the tenth century, when fees to be paid on specified cargoes were listed by King Ethelred. Following the Norman Conquest in 1066, customs were collected by prisage – exaction of a portion of the cargo. Duty on wool and hides was first imposed by Edward I, and expanded by Edward III to include cloth, besides duty of 3 shillings and 4 pence on each tun of wine imported, and one shilling in the pound (5 per cent) on other goods. Customs, in something like their present form, date from the reign of Henry VII, who initiated a system whereby customs were collected by private individuals after payment of an annual fee to the Crown – known as ‘farming’. Elizabeth I tightened the system in 1558 by restricting by statute the numbers of landing places to ‘legal quays’ (1 Elizabeth I, c. 11), where goods of certain types had to be loaded and landed and where customs could more readily be levied.210 At London, for example, the first legal quay, originally some 430 m in length, was just below London Bridge. Tackling the obvious opportunities for corruption led to the development of a complex bureaucracy over time, with numerous officials monitoring one another. To house the administrative staff, ports of any serious standing built customs houses, or adapted existing buildings for that function. They were often of considerable architectural pretension: the customs houses at King’s Lynn (1683) and Poole (1813) are fine surviving examples (see Figure 11). The consequent black economy is equally ancient. The earliest English smuggler known by name is Henry of Arderne, in the fifteenth century. The interception of a cargo of uncustomed wool, hidden in empty wine barrels aboard two vessels from Colchester and Italy, led to his rapid exit to the Netherlands, whence he was eventually brought back for trial.211 In the reign of Elizabeth I, export of grain and dairy products was prohibited at times of shortage, but illicit exports from King’s Lynn were on a large scale. The customs officers themselves were implicated. One junior official copied the seal of Lynn, from which he made, and sold, fake export documentation.212 Duty on exported manufactured goods, such as beer and candles, dates only from the seventeenth century. The export of wool was tightly controlled in an attempt to protect the domestic textile industry and, for several

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years after 1662, it was a capital offence to export wool except from designated ports, where duty was levied. The unsurprising result was a very large-scale illegal trade in wool to the Continent from the late seventeenth century onwards, principally from the Kent and Sussex coasts. This so-called ‘owling’ trade continued through the eighteenth century, but after about 1720 the emphasis shifted to smuggled imports of tea, spirits, tobacco and prestige goods. This was not economically trivial: it has been estimated that in 1743, half the tea consumed in Britain was smuggled.213 Around the North Sea coasts smuggling was on such a scale that there was a specialized industry at Rotterdam, Flushing and Dunkirk producing waterproof oilskin bags to contain the tea. The profitability of tea smuggling declined after 1745, when duty was lowered, and ended altogether in 1784, when Pitt removed most of the duty.214 Tobacco and spirits then became the chief smuggled commodities. The economic base of some entire coastal communities was smuggling, which was widespread all along the East and South Coasts, from the Scottish harbours near Montrose to West Cornwall. Cornish luggers, usually three-masted fast vessels, were developed for the pilchard fishery, but doubled as smuggling vessels. In some places, specialized craft were built for the trade: smugglers at Deal, in Kent, favoured slender fast galleys with rowing crews of up to 20. In the eighteenth century, the dimensions and proportions of hulls were controlled by statute, and those that did not comply were destroyed on the beach by customs authorities.215 Until the mid-nineteenth century, smuggling provided a useful additional source of income in Cornwall. Shore parties, who landed and distributed the contraband, would light fires to warn those on vessels when landing was impossible. In 1825, on the Helford estuary, a smuggler was arrested for the punishable offence of setting a fire.216 Enforcement of customs was the responsibility of the custom house officers. The collector was the senior official in each port, with a staff of officers empowered to search vessels and impound contraband. An entirely separate Agency of Excisemen existed in parallel. Both could call on forces of dragoons but their effectiveness was, on occasions, limited. The landlady of the Crown at Snape, Suffolk, had the duty of making sure that the dragoons quartered with her were always thoroughly drunk when a landing was expected.217 To patrol isolated coasts, riding officers were employed from 1698, and there were soon 300 of them in 19 counties. Revenue craft – principally cutters – patrolled the coast.218 In places, the situation became so lawless that the government determined that extreme measures were needed. At Deal, in 1784, all craft on the beach were burnt, in an attempt to stamp out smuggling there, irrespective of their potential suitability for involvement. The tombstone of Robert Trotman, who was ‘Barbarously Murdered on the Shore near Poole’ in 1765, is a reminder of the risks to smugglers, revenue officers, or the apparently innocent: A little tea, one leaf I did not steal. For Guiltless Blood shed I to God appeal. Put tea in one scale, human Blood in t’other, And think what ’tis to flay thy harmless Brother.

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Some smugglers attained the status of folk heroes. Joss Snelling was one. He was a participant in the so-called Battle of Botany Bay (1769) at Kingsgate, when excisemen killed ten smugglers and captured eight, and the local riding officer was fatally shot. In his extreme old age, Snelling had the distinction of being presented to the future Queen Victoria as the ‘famous Broadstairs smuggler’. By then, he was harmless and quaint. However, the romantic air that attached itself to smugglers conceals their frequently brutal character. Smuggling was an activity absolutely necessary, in terms of their economic circumstances, for many coastal communities. Nowadays we would describe it as ‘organized crime’, with the brutality often associated with that today. In 1747, the Hawkhurst gang of smugglers raided the customs house at Poole to recover smuggled tea which had been impounded by a Revenue vessel from the cutter Three Brothers. In the pursuit, and its aftermath, the gang murdered two investigators. Testimony presented at their trial suggests that one was thrown down a well and then stoned to death, and the other might have been buried alive in a fox-earth. At a Special Assize at Chichester, in 1749, the seven captured men on trial were condemned to be hanged and gibbeted, which they duly were. An officer had his nose cut off by smugglers at Snape, Suffolk in 1727. The concentration of military forces along the coast during the Napoleonic Wars posed problems for smugglers, plainly inhibiting their trade. Moreover, in 1809 the Preventive Waterguard was established, with a force of small patrolling vessels. This developed into the Coast Blockade from 1816, comprising 151 stations, and was eventually superseded by the national Coast Guard from 1821. Traditional forms of smuggling effectively ended after the 1830s in the south-east, following marked reductions in customs and excise duties, but persisted for longer in more remote areas of the north and west. Of course profitable items, such as illicit drugs and illegal immigrants, are still smuggled today into ports and isolated landings all around the South and East Coasts.219 As with any clandestine activity, the surviving material culture of smuggling is slight: it was meant not to be seen. On the Isles of Scilly, smuggling was a significant part of the economy in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and there are two recorded ‘smugglers’ caches’ dug into cliff faces. A smugglers’ cache at Ethy Wood, on the river Lerryn in Cornwall, consists of a chamber dug into a hillside, with remains of an above-ground structure in front. It was carefully sited within a creek meander, for concealment. Extensive tunnels used by smugglers at Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire can still be seen.220 In March 2008, during works to renovate sewers at Bridgwater, Somerset, an underground complex of medieval buildings, with a smugglers’ tunnel probably used to transfer contraband from the river Parrett to safe houses, was newly discovered.221 There is no doubt at all that other covert structures remain to be found. Many inns have real, or reputed, associations with smuggling, and these are more accessible. The medieval Mermaid Inn at Rye, for example, was certainly frequented by the Hawkhurst gang.222 Housing the Coastguard, in its new form, from 1822 posed problems of susceptibility to corruption and bribery, not to mention social exclusion. Given that many of the locals would have been involved in smuggling, they would not have

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welcomed the representatives of official authority into their villages. The solution was the development of Preventative Stations, providing separate accommodation. The Coastguard cottages at the edge of modern coastal villages, frequently very charming late Regency or early Victorian buildings, look very nice to us now. The motivation for their construction was less nice. The Coastguard Act 1856 placed control of the Coastguard under the Admiralty. In the twentieth century, the roles of the Coastguard diversified to include life-saving: an enquiry in 1921 showed that, in effect, it provided information and services to an increasingly wide range of organizations with coastal interests. The system was entirely reviewed and rationalized in 1922 to focus on life-saving, rather than duplicating other functions. New facilities were acquired and by the mid-1930s there were upwards of 250 stations, with 750 auxiliary stations. The Coastguard role is now largely related to the co-ordination of search and rescue.223

NAVIGATION, RESCUE AND ROUTES Early navigation was based on close observation of the sun and moon, astronomy, tides, the forms of coasts, cloud formations, drifting patterns of seaweed, the appearance of seabirds and the seabed itself. A sounding lead – a lead weight with a hollow at its base filled with mutton fat – was an essential tool which gave information both about depth and seabed sediments, which adhered to the fat. Navigators in early times had mental maps of the sea based on accumulated, and hard-won, lore and observation, which was all communicated by word of mouth. The first English reference to a magnetic compass is of 1187, although before then natural magnetic lodestones were available. There were also ‘directional dials’, which are referred to in written sources, though how these operated is not now understood. Later, there were ‘rutters’ – written accounts of sailing directions by experienced masters. Improved navigational instruments made accurate determination of latitude more exact from the sixteenth century onwards, but establishing longitude was much more problematic until the development of Harrison’s chronometers in the eighteenth century.224 Frequently, the most hazardous place to be was close to the shore, especially on a lee shore, or in fog. Pilots, and lights, were needed to bring vessels safe on port. There were medieval organizations concerned with navigation and pilotage, but the origins of Trinity House go back to 1512, when the Thames Guild of Lodesmen applied to Henry VIII for a charter. Trinity House itself was established originally at Deptford, in 1514, with responsibilities for lighting, marking and buoying.225 Their exclusive right to license pilots dates from 1604. Trinity Houses were also developed in Newcastle (originating from the medieval Guild of Masters and Mariners) and Kingston-upon-Hull, with comparable societies and companies at Bristol and Dover. As was the case with Customs and Excise, the dignity of office was marked by buildings of some architectural distinction, notably the imposing and pleasing structure at Hull.

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Lighthouses have attracted an extensive literature of their own, scarcely surprising given the ingenuity and fortitude involved in their construction, the sometimes very strange circumstances of their manning, and the frequently catastrophic and dramatic events of their losses. The earliest surviving structure is the Roman lighthouse at Dover (Dubris), originally one of two on either side of the harbour (see Figure 12). During the Middle Ages, establishing lights was frequently regarded either as an act of Christian charity or a penance: the lighthouse on Spurn Point was built in 1428 by a hermit, under licence from Henry VI, and the Pendeen light was also manned by a hermit. St Catherine’s Hill, near Cowes on the Isle of Wight, was the site of a lighthouse of 1323, remains of which survive. It was built by Walter de Godeston as a penance for receiving goods looted from a wrecked vessel.226 Lights were established early on especially hazardous shores: the North Foreland light dates from 1505, directing shipping past the Goodwin Sands, 11 km offshore. Private enterprise continued even after Trinity House built its first lighthouse, at Lowestoft in 1609. Construction was financed by a levy on vessels leaving the major ports – the precursor of the modern light-dues system. Private owners could make enormous profits after paying a fee to Trinity House or the Crown permitting construction, after which they were allowed to levy ‘light dues’ on all vessels. However, it will come as no surprise that private enterprise did not always ensure reliable lights, given that the prime motivation was profit rather than safety. Trinity House took responsibility for all lights and lighthouses in England and

Figure 12. The surviving Roman lighthouse at Dover Castle, Kent.

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Wales in 1836, following legislation enabling compulsory purchase of all private lights in England, Wales and the Channel Islands.227 Many lighthouses are famed for dramatic events. Some of these were real, others probably just colourful. Longstone, on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, was the place from which Grace Darling and her father undertook their admirably courageous rescue of survivors from the wreck of the steamer Forfarshire. Grace became a Victorian heroine, depicted in the ceramic memorabilia of the time, which adorned many a nineteenth-century mantelpiece, and rightly so. The Longships Lighthouse, near Carn Brea in Cornwall, was built in 1795. It was erected on a fissured rock, through which the wind howled eerily in storms. One keeper went stark mad and another was kidnapped, reputedly by ‘wreckers’. After his loss, the light was maintained by his small daughter, standing on the family Bible, for she was too tiny to reach the light otherwise. The first Eddystone lighthouse, near Plymouth, was built in 1696–9 by Henry Winstanley, who died in a storm of 1703 which destroyed the structure, and him. In places, for example at Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire, coastal change and land claim has left lighthouses high and dry: the two lighthouses built there about 1829, at the former mouth of the river Nene, are now about 1 km inland.228 Seamarks were also important on low, featureless coasts. In Suffolk, Orford Castle escaped demolition in 1809 by the Marquis of Hertford due to its value in this respect, and the towers of Reculver in North Kent similarly were maintained as seamarks, while the rest of the church fell into ruins. Other marks included chapels and hermitages, for example, the chapel of St Margaret, which was retained after the relocation of Leiston Abbey in Suffolk. The tower of the church at Alderton is explicitly stated as having escaped lowering due to its use as a seamark. At Polruan, overlooking the Fowey estuary, the tower of a thirteenth-century chapel acted as a daymark for shipping, and in the sixteenth century still had bells to warn of raiders.229 The earliest dedicated craft for life-saving was probably a converted coble at Bamburgh in the late eighteenth century, but development of the modern lifeboat service has its origins in the wreck of the Stanley on the Black Middens, off the river Tyne in 1864. Rescue attempts by the Coast Guard were hampered by the failure of the shore-to-ship ‘Life Saving Apparatus’ developed by John Bell in 1791. This was basically a mortar, firing a projectile with line attached. The severe loss of life led to a call for local mariners to be trained to assist the Coast Guard, and from this developed the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade. The idea was widely adopted. Regional provisions eventually coalesced into the formation of the entirely volunteer Royal National Lifeboat Association after 1854. Numerous splendid Victorian lifeboat houses survive.230 Every region has its own proud tradition but, as an East Anglian, I will mention Cromer, Norfolk, well known for the bravery of its lifeboat crews, especially in the Second World War. The coxswain was Henry Blogg, from 1909–47. At Caister-on-Sea, the justifiably proud motto ‘Caister men never turn back’ appears over the lifeboat house door. One of the many inexplicable things about England is that this selfless service is not funded by the state. By way of a coda to this chapter, which has been concerned primarily with

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seaways, the coastal land and ferry routes of England need a mention, for they, too, are concerned with the economic life of the country. The sites of ferries which no longer function are indicated by place name and early map evidence, and accounts of sixteenth-century and later topographers. Although there is remarkably little evidence for Roman settlement in the Lincolnshire coastal zone, the main Roman roads in North Lincolnshire converge on a point on the southern shore of the Humber estuary, opposite Brough-on-Humber, Humberside, probably indicating a ferry crossing.231 Ancient, but now defunct, ferry crossings in Dorset include Wick Ferry in Christchurch Harbour, two in the Fleet, and ferries at Weymouth. At Wareham, the south causeway connecting the town with Stoborough is the supposed site of an early ferry, and is now over 2 km from the coast: there is a report of 1897 of the find of a logboat near it.232 Other routeways were intended for foot, horse and wagon transport, and they were sometimes substantial. In Essex the remains of timber-lined gravel causeways, of unknown original date, cross the Crouch estuary at Hullbridge and Fambridge. Despite the ‘bridge’ suffix in the place names neither was a bridge in the true sense, more a substantially constructed ford. Some islands are accessible at low tide by causeways, for example the half-milelong timber structure, shown by dendrochronology to date from just after ad 702, linking Mersea Island, Essex with the mainland.233 A similar structure, known as the Wadeway, connected Hayling Island with the mainland of Hampshire. It is now incomplete, but originally consisted of a gravel-and-timber causeway, very probably kept going, over centuries or even millennia, to maintain a route.234 It is of unknown date, but is on the line of what must have been a route onto what was the Hayling peninsula before relative sea-level rise. Remarkably, even foreshore routes associated with early modern industry are surprisingly poorly understood. They involved considerable effort to construct, yet how this was done, and by whom, is often unknown. The ‘rutways’ associated with the Yorkshire alum works have already been mentioned. Similar ‘sanding ways’ have been recorded in the Fowey estuary in Cornwall, to ease the transport of calcareous sea sand, seaweed and pilchard waste across foreshore rock platforms by wagon.235 Some offshore routes across tidal flats, however, never had any kind of permanent structure. They relied for their safe use on local knowledge, with temporary waymarks at best. Off the coast of Foulness, in Essex, there are routes across the Maplin Sands, formerly known as the Shoobery, Blacktail and Whittaker Sands. They were marked by lines of broom plants driven into the sand, which gave their name to the main route – the Broomway. Place names associated with these routes (for example Whittaker, which might mean ‘wet carr’, i.e. wet woodland) suggested to Muir Evans236 that these sand-flat routes perpetuate the lines of terrestrial routes which existed before the massive coastal erosion of the fourteenth century. Routes of this type, perhaps maintained after the fourteenth-century storm surges, are fascinating, for they are archaeology without archaeology: there are no structural remains at all, and so no means of dating them, but they are certainly old. Routes and destinations are perceptual and may persist for millennia, existing only in the human mind. Geography is much more shifting.

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England defended Shakespeare was wrong in the much-quoted patriotic declaration in Richard II, as George Morey first pointed out:1 This precious stone set in the silver sea Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands

The sea provides routes, not defence. Our seas have only been a ‘moat’ when we have had the political will and sufficient forces to patrol and control them. Often they have been a seaway for invaders, raiders, pirates, smugglers and illegal immigrants – from Roman Catholic priests voyaging to post-Reformation England in the sixteenth century, to economic migrants in the twenty-first. England has not been invaded in the strict sense of the term since the eleventh century, although foreign monarchs and their forces came to this country in 1216 and 1688. However, our coasts have often been assaulted, and sometimes overrun. Despite this we tend to see past invasion scares as unrealistic: after all, nothing came of most of them. Sometimes, though, the worst happened. The entry for 793 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the first significant Viking raid on the English coast: ‘On June 8th, the ravages of the heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne with plunder and slaughter’. It is impossible now to appreciate fully the outrage implicit in the chronicler’s account. Lindisfarne was the centre of scholarship and spirituality in the Anglo-Saxon north. Its destruction by barbarians was just simply appalling. In November 1337, Southampton was burnt and pillaged by French and allied Genoese and Spanish forces, landing from 50 vessels: ‘They came on a Sunday on the forenoon while the people were at Mass and . . . robbed and pilled the town and slew diverse and defouled maidens and enforced wives and charged their vessels with the pillage’.2 The people of medieval Southampton were a civilized community headed by wealthy merchants, whose daughters petted monkeys imported from Africa, and whose wives wore furs and silks from Scandinavia and the Near East. For them, too, assault was outrageous. In June 1667, England suffered her worst ever naval defeat when the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter sailed up the Medway, destroyed the fort at Sheerness, bravely overrode the Medway chain, seized and towed off the Royal Charles, and burnt ships including the Royal James, casually revictualling at Queenborough as they withdrew.3 Samuel Pepys, as Secretary to the Navy Board,

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confided glumly to his diary on 13 June that: ‘in almost any other country I would probably have had my throat cut by now.’4 Pepys need not have worried, for the Master Shipwright of Chatham, Peter Pett, carried the can for this disaster, unjustly. Despite Pett’s notorious financial corruption, the real cause was chronic underinvestment in the Navy. The concise statement by Bone and Dawson on English responses to external threat since around 1500 cannot be bettered: ‘There were spasms of (sometimes frenzied) activity during or immediately after wars or invasion scares . . . interspersed with periods of peace – characterised on the whole by relative neglect . . . “rationalisation” and “downsizing” ’.5 What survives from all this effort over millennia – sometimes purposive, sometimes muddled – is the remarkable array of military structures of all ages which can still be seen around the English coast. After England became isolated from the Continent as part of the British archipelago, due to rising relative sea levels in the Mesolithic, incomers had to travel by sea. By examining and dating excavated artefacts, archaeologists can demonstrate changes in material culture through time; and, given the historical evidence for invasions in more recent times, it was not unreasonable for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archaeologists to interpret these changes as representing changes in population. By further inference these could be seen as repeated prehistoric invasions. By the 1960s these assumptions were questioned and the cultural transmission of ideas and technology was given greater emphasis. More recently, results from DNA studies on modern populations and stable isotopes in skeletal material have demonstrated that there were indeed long-distance movements of people and individuals in prehistory, though the evidence for purposive invasion is still questionable.6

PREHISTORY Later prehistoric earthworks, coastal forts and enclosed settlements can be seen all around the English coast. In the north-east there are unexcavated Iron Age promontory forts and defended coastal enclosures at Howick, Beadnell and Craster Heugh, while Iron Age artefacts and structures have been reported from excavations at later coastal sites including South Shields Roman fort and Tynemouth Priory, where roundhouses were excavated.7 The large coastal fort at Dunstanburgh has produced Late Iron Age metalwork and recent survey has defined ramparts, probably part of the Iron Age defences, on the site of the fourteenth-century castle.8 One of the largest English coastal earthworks is the Danes’ Dyke, a linear north–south bank and ditch which encloses an area of some five square miles at Flamborough Head, thereby creating a vast promontory ‘fort’. It is not well dated, but in its original form, perhaps in the Late Bronze Age, it might not have been primarily defensive, but rather a proprietorial statement of land division. This attribution of major coastal earthworks to the Danes occurs all round the country. In the Thames estuary the ‘Danish Camp’ at Shoeburyness was, in fact, a large enclosed Middle Iron Age

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settlement, with evidence for roundhouses, pits and post-built structures and for domestic activities such as spinning, weaving, salt production, grain processing and butchery. Of course, the pre-existence of earthwork ramparts might well have encouraged later military reuse of such sites. Although some occupation in the Roman period was demonstrated at Shoeburyness, there is no direct archaeological evidence for a Scandinavian presence around the ninth century, although there is a historical record of the Viking leader Haesten occupying a fort near Shoebury. There are some dramatic coastal sites in the south-west: characteristically Cornish Iron Age sites include ‘cliff castles’ (see also Chapter 5). Trevelgue Head has produced the largest Iron Age ceramic assemblage from Cornwall, of the fourth to first century bc, and there are other cliff castles at, for example, the Rumps and Maen Castle. On the Isles of Scilly, there are cliff castles at Shipman Head, Bryher, and Giant’s Castle, St Mary’s. Overall, however, Iron Age cliff castles in Cornwall and Scilly are now seen as economic or ritual centres rather than defensive sites.9 In completely different terrain, there are substantial Iron Age forts at sites below the 5 m contour, and originally surrounded by tidal creeks and coastal marsh, in the east of England, notably at Holkham, Norfolk and Stonea, Cambridgeshire. On the coastal lowlands of Essex, Late Iron Age enclosures may have been in part constructed for defence during internecine strife: indeed Paul Sealey suggests that this may have been so intense as to cause depopulation.10 However, prehistoric coastal enclosures may not all have been intended primarily for military defence and certainly none of them seems designed to counter external seaborne assault. Banks and ditches define a territory, or delineate a potentially defensible area, just as those of inland linear earthworks and hill forts do, but they were not coastal defences in the later sense of the term.

THE ROMAN PERIOD The armed reconnaissances of Julius Caesar in 55–54 bc and the Claudian invasion in ad 43 mark, conventionally, the transition from prehistory to history. Caesar’s War Commentaries remain the earliest indisputably eyewitness descriptions of the coast of South-East England.11 We can discount some of what he reports from intelligence sources, which may be of dubious reliability, and a large part of his account should be seen as political spin. However, he had nothing to gain from falsifying straightforward topographic descriptions and tactical accounts of combat. It is notable that he makes no reference to coastal fortifications, although he does describe inland forts. Caesar unsurprisingly rejected a cliff coastline, from which missiles were being hurled, as a landing site, and the first combat in 55 bc involved an opposed beach landing against mobile forces. He emphasizes the dangerous flexibility of British chariotry: ‘They combine the mobility of cavalry with the staying power of infantry’. The British war chariots were plainly a worry, besides the logistical problems of operating warships and transports, with their vital supplies, in unfamiliar tidal waters. Much has been written in an attempt

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to locate the exact point of Caesar’s initial landing. A rather tawdry moulded concrete plaque, based in its design on a Roman coin, can be seen on the seafront at Walmer, marking the reputed landing place. It is certainly the right kind of beach for a seaborne assault, and in roughly the right place, but it cannot possibly be the exact landing beach, for any similar beach that existed around there in the first century bc could not have survived till now. Other landing beaches which have been proposed are near Sandwich and Richborough. Caesar does refer to construction of a beachhead fortification and base camp in 54 bc, which would potentially be archaeologically detectable, unless it has been lost due to coastal erosion or built over by twentieth-century coastal sprawl. Its location is not known. Much ink has also been spilt about the precise landfall of the invasion of the Emperor Claudius in ad 43, but in this case there is very strong archaeological evidence for concluding that there was a major landing at Richborough in Kent.12 Defensive earthworks of Claudian date have been defined there and very recent excavations by Tony Wilmott, not yet published, suggest that the later settlement and fort were situated on a bluff directly above the beach of the first century ad. Some writers have proposed an alternative landing place in Hampshire, perhaps in the area of Chichester harbour, but these suggestions do not have to be mutually exclusive. Where British kingdoms allied to Rome permitted establishment of unopposed beachheads, it is quite believable that Roman forces (scarcely by then venturing into terra incognita, given the earlier trading contacts: see Chapter 3) would have used them in addition to the main landing at Richborough. There would have been several sound reasons for another landing in the Sussex/ Hampshire area: an opportunity for the Romans to restore the exiled allied King Verica to his kingdom of the Atrebates, the numerous safe harbours along this coast, and the advantage of having a base in allied territory.13 Richborough was then on an island in the Wantsum Channel, which connected Sandwich Haven with the Thames estuary at Reculver, providing a sheltered seaway from the Continent to London that avoided the hazardous Goodwin Sands and North Foreland. Its strategic importance as a military base is obvious, underlined by the later construction of a major Roman road to Canterbury, Rochester and London, and the development of a port, fort and associated civil town.14 In the later first century a marble-faced triumphal monument was built there. A second fort was built at Reculver at the northern mouth of the Wantsum. Approximately half of the Reculver fort has been eroded away, and extramural pits and wells of second- to fourth-century date have been recorded in cliff and foreshore exposures.15 The Roman channel fleet – the Classis Britannica – had its two main bases at Gesoriacum (Boulogne) and Dubris (Dover), with forts to accommodate marines, and lighthouses above the havens.16 The surviving one of two lighthouses at Dover is amongst the best-preserved Roman buildings in Britain. However, after the initial conquest period, much of southern Britain was a civilian zone for most of the first three centuries ad and there is little evidence for the construction of new coastal fortifications.

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From around ad 250, Roman authority in central and eastern Europe was increasingly challenged by large-scale westwards population movements of tribes, including the Goths, displaced from their lands further east by Huns, while around the North Sea and Channel coasts there were raids by Germanic tribes, including the Franks and Saxons. Internal dissension led to the founding of a separate Gallic empire in the west by Postumus in 260, and the establishment by Carausius of a maritime empire including Britain and North-West Gaul in around 286, which lasted under his successor Allectus until 297, when Constantius Chlorus reconquered the region for Rome. Despite this strife, renewed political and military security may have permitted an Indian summer for Britannia over much of the fourth century. Archaeological field surveys imply population levels in the countryside as high as those in the early Middle Ages, although the large second-century city houses of affluent Roman Britons at Colchester and elsewhere were no longer in use. However, even in the vulnerable areas near the East Coast, country landowners appear to have enjoyed a comfortable and affluent lifestyle: biological remains from a villa at Boreham, Essex indicate consumption of imported Mediterranean foods and rural recreations, including hawking,17 funded from exports of agricultural produce, especially grain, as discussed in Chapter 3. Nevertheless, the upper classes in the east seem to have been cautious. They seem to have invested their incomes in portable, and potentially concealable, high-status items, such as the hoard of fourth-century silver tableware found at Scole, Norfolk, rather than the vulnerable fixed assets of prestigious country houses and mosaics that characterize the period in western Britain. The Late Roman villa building at Boreham, by contrast, was distinctly provincial, of timber-framed construction, and apparently lacking decorative refinement – albeit embellished with a bathhouse complex, which was an indispensable component of Romanized life. The shock came in 367 when a concerted attack on Britannia by a coalition of tribes led to Hadrian’s Wall being overrun. The military commander of the province was captured and the officer in charge of naval defence on the east and south coasts was killed. Control was re-established in 369 under Count Theodosius and defences reorganized, but this was short-lived. Besides conflict related to external threat, Britain, a province at the Empire’s periphery, was repeatedly prone to revolt from the time of Carausius in the third century onwards. Forces were removed from Britain by Magnus Maximus to support his Imperial ambitions in 383, and in 407 a mutiny of the British garrison enthroned the usurpers Marcus and subsequently Gratian (both of whom met sticky ends after a few months), then Constantine, who proved to be a survivor. Constantine III, as he became known, established a power base in Britain and Gaul, extending as far as the Alps, gaining support probably because he could provide protection against barbarian incursions, as the central Roman state no longer could. Indeed, the diversion of military resources to counter, and ultimately defeat and execute, Constantine III in 411, besides other internal usurpers, reduced the effectiveness of the Imperial armies opposing Germanic and Hunnic raids and incursions.18 The garrison of the province had been depleted by Stilicho in 401, when troops were withdrawn to protect Italy itself from the

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Visigoths. The emperor Honorius formally told the British to defend themselves unaided in 410. The ‘post-’ or ‘sub-Roman period’, when new Germanic peoples arrived in Britain, is now more realistically named ‘Late Antiquity’ – a term which avoids using words and phrases laden with a centuries-old accretion of misleading associations (e.g. Roman, Saxon, Dark Ages). An historical account of the end of Roman Britain comes from On the Ruin of Britain by the sixth-century monk Gildas, who, in an information-poor age and writing a century later, was remote from the events of which he writes.19 In Gildas’s account, the late Romano-British ruler Vortigern and a ‘council’ decided to hire Saxon mercenaries to defend themselves against new incomers. The Saxons, dissatisfied with their payment, threatened to revolt unless they had a pay rise, and duly did so, plundering ‘all the major towns’. This might have been around the year 440. The latest recorded contact between the RomanoBritish authorities and the Empire was in 446, when they sent a letter to the consul Aetius requesting military assistance. Aetius was preoccupied with threats of invasion by the Huns along the Danube frontier at the time, and we know of no reply to the British appeal. It is by no means clear how accurate Gildas’s history is, though the events described seem believable by analogy with what was happening elsewhere in the late Empire. The transition from Romanized southern Britain to England is a subject of much debate. Interpretations at present range from total collapse of the Imperial system and reversion to a subsistence economy, to a survival of late Roman administration isolated from the centre of the Empire and its gradual transition to meet changing circumstances. In East Anglia, Germanic brooches of a type worn by females, found in cemeteries, imply that whole communities, including women, were settling there in the fourth century.20 Elsewhere finds of Germanic-style military fittings could suggest the arrival of federate soldiers (laeti), with or without women, hired to support the crumbling defences of late Roman Britain. However, artefacts are not people: the adoption of new Germanic styles of brooches and buckles by the indigenous population is perfectly possible. In Cambridgeshire there are linear defences, extending for many kilometres, facing west. The Devil’s Dyke has been dated to the fifth or sixth centuries ad, Brent Ditch is second century ad or later, and the last phase of Bran Ditch was of Anglo-Saxon date. Radiocarbon dates on bone from the Fleam Dyke show that this monument was first constructed between cal ad 330 and 510.21 At least some of the dykes seem to have been related to defence of the East Anglian heartland of Germanic settlement against British counter-attacks in the fifth and sixth centuries. Anglo-Saxon expansion westwards was certainly not inevitable, and indeed Gildas records a battle at Mons Badonicus (perhaps Badbury hillfort in Dorset) around 500 that halted it for decades. The significance of this is that the culture of Late Antiquity persisted in western Britain on into the sixth and seventh centuries, trade contacts were maintained with the Mediterranean, and a ‘Celtic’ culture survived (see Chapter 3). As late as 710 Geraint (Gerontius) of Dumnonia went on the offensive against the Saxons of Wessex, and it was not until 838 that Ecgberg of Wessex finally subdued Devon and Cornwall.

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What is there to show for all this on the coast? Between Brancaster, Norfolk and Portchester, Hampshire – the coast known to the Romans as the Saxon Shore (Litus Saxonicum) – an irregularly spaced chain of at least ten coastal forts was constructed in the Late Roman period. They differ considerably in form, and may have been built over a long period, perhaps from around ad 260–330. On the coasts of North-West France and Brittany similar forts were constructed in the same period. The forts were, in part, naval bases, at which patrols of fast-oared vessels known as pictae – camouflaged by being painted sea-green – were based.22 Whether the British forts were constructed initially for defence against barbarian coastal raiders or whether at least some were built or enhanced under Carausius and Allectus to oppose invasion by Imperial forces has been much debated: but, eventually, all were involved in defence against seaborne raiders. Pevensey (Anderita) was probably one of the latest to be built, and it differs fundamentally from the earlier rectilinear forts of classic Roman type. It is oval in plan, covering almost 4 hectares, with external semi-circular solid bastions, thought to have been artillery platforms. It appears to have been abandoned by the military in the late fourth century, although in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle there is an account of a massacre of Britons there by Saxons in ad 491. Due to coastal change, both accretion and erosion, the Saxon Shore forts have lost the geographical contexts that originally determined their locations. For example, the fort of Othona, at Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, is now half-eroded, and is isolated from the sea by a broad salt marsh. Originally, it was situated near the tip of a peninsula, with a sheltered anchorage to the south.23 At least one fort, Walton Castle near Felixstowe, was lost altogether due to cliff erosion in the eighteenth century. During the Roman period and later the Wantsum Channel, flowing from Sandwich to Reculver, isolated Thanet as a true island, but it became infilled in the later Middle Ages. The original siting of the forts at Richborough and Reculver, at the two ends of this channel, is now far from obvious – Richborough is now well inland, and Reculver stands on an eroding cliff. The forts at Brancaster and Burgh Castle, Norfolk are surrounded by extensive crop marks of extramural settlements or vici, so they were certainly not the isolated fortified structures that they now appear to be.24 Along the coast of Yorkshire there is a string of small Late Roman forts, generally around 60–70 m square including their outer defensive ditches, enclosing central towers and curtain walls with bastions (at Huntcliff, Goldsborough, Ravenscar, Scarborough and Filey), usually described as ‘signal stations’. The bastions are thought to have provided firing platforms for catapults or other artillery. There may have been more of them: several are directly on modern cliff edges and have been partly eroded away, and some may have gone completely. Indeed, given the massive coastal erosion that has occurred since the Late Roman period along the North-East, Holderness, Lincolnshire and East Anglian coasts (see Chapter 2), it is perfectly possible that the whole system originally extended much further south and north but has been partly lost. Pete Wilson reinterprets the ‘signal stations’, pointing out that there is no strong evidence for any force to which they could

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have signalled, and which could have responded promptly and effectively. He sees them instead as small forts (burgi), manned by regular troops, in which the isolated coastal civilian population could take refuge when coastal raiders threatened.25 On the Cumbrian coast a system of forts (including Bowness, Beckfoot, Maryport, Burrow Walls and Moresby) with mile fortlets, apparently intended to protect the fertile Solway Plain from incursions from the north, was constructed in the latter part of the first century ad. Archaeological material from excavated sites indicates that there was continued occupation into the third and fourth centuries and probably beyond, with fourth- to early fifth-century timber buildings at both Ravenglass and Maryport. Evidence of burning at Ravenglass in the early fourth century could relate to coastal raids. Currently, a cremation cemetery associated with the fort at Beckfoot is being evaluated in response to rapid coastal erosion. The cemetery lies in a coastal dune system and some of the cremation burials, within plots delineated by semi-circular ditches, were covered by blown sand in the Roman period.26 It is probable that excavation will prove necessary before the cemetery is eroded away.

THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Rose remarks that there is scarcely a surviving Anglo-Saxon poem that does not include sea images27: there were no less than 24 synonymous words for ‘sea’ and numerous poetic compound phrases. Of all the archaeological evidence from the Anglo-Saxon period, the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo, overlooking the Deben estuary in Suffolk, including ship burials, are the most strongly linked with the sea. The lavish grave goods from the site, including gold and enamelled jewellery, armour and weapons, a musical instrument and metalwork imported from the Mediterranean, obviously indicate a very high status for some of those buried there. The ship burial under Mound 1 is thought to be that of King Raedwald, who died around ad 625. Martin Carver interprets the burials as an expression of the development of royal power and an expression of identity, linked to the definition of territory that could be taxed. However, he considers that they also reflect a reaction to the extension of Continental influence from Rome (through the mission of St Augustine in 597) and France (through increased economic contacts with the Merovingian Empire). In his view, the cemetery was ‘a short-lived and extravagant ceremonial centre of the late sixth and early seventh century ad, the purpose of which was to provide a focus for a policy of pagan independence’.28 Nevertheless, the English kingdoms were successively converted to Christianity. Conventionally, in the east of England, the period after about 650 is known as the Middle Saxon period, characterized by the establishment of bishoprics and minster churches, new Continental contacts, sustained economic development, and early phases of urbanization (see Chapters 2 and 3). The prosperity of the country was plainly a temptation for external raiders. Viking attacks on the English coast, beginning in 793 at Lindisfarne, continued into the eleventh century, and

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the campaigns of 1066 are in one sense their culmination. The phases of attacks changed fundamentally in character through time, and were not incessant: the initial plundering raids, by small groups, were succeeded by wars of conquest, as political authority in Scandinavia became centralized and kingdoms were established. The causes of the Viking expansion have been much debated: increasing population pressure on resources at home, concentration of royal power after the mid-ninth century by Harald Fairhair, and the destruction of Frisian sea power by Charlemagne have all been implicated, none entirely satisfactorily. However, in the ninth century, Vikings were raiding from Ireland to North Africa, attacking the main North Sea trading ports including Dorestadt and Antwerp.29 At London, from the mid-ninth century, there was a shift of population from the trading settlement of Lundenwic, which seems to have had no defences, to the old Roman walled city as Viking raids intensified.30 From 866 onwards a Danish army overwintered in East Anglia; Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia were overrun; and the area north-east of Watling Street (roughly the line from London to Chester) came under Scandinavian authority, becoming known as the Danelaw. The kingdom of Wessex, under Alfred, narrowly avoided defeat. ln the later years of his reign, English power in the south and south-west was consolidated, partly by establishment of a system of fortified settlements known as burhs. Settlement in the Danelaw was predominantly agricultural, though towns were established or expanded and fortified in East Anglia and the Midlands, and the major trading settlement of Jorvik, at York, developed. The foundation of at least some East Anglian towns in the last decades of the ninth century seems to have occurred under Danish influence. At Norwich the earliest defences were D-shaped, with the straight side of the ‘D’ along a river – a typical Scandinavian town plan.31 In the Danelaw, a hybrid Anglo–Danish culture developed, the population defending themselves against new Scandinavian raids and largely assenting to the reconquest of the Danelaw by Edward the Elder and his successors. By the mid-tenth-century Anglo-Saxon authority was re-established. However, raids began once more in the late 980s under the Norwegian Olaf Tryggvason and Sven Forkbeard of Denmark. In August 991, a Scandinavian fleet of 93 ships plundered Folkestone and Sandwich, sacked Ipswich, and defeated Ealdorman Bryhtnoth at the Battle of Maldon, which became the subject of the earliest surviving English battle poem. Bryhtnoth had the invaders at a disadvantage for, as the poem recounts, they were on an island from which they could only reach the mainland at low tide, by a narrow causeway. This was held for an hour by three Essex defenders against all assault. However, following a request conveyed by a Danish herald, the Ealdorman permitted the Vikings to cross to dry-land and deploy their force fully before engagement. His motives for this decision are not made explicit in the poem, but may be surmised. Given the tactical impasse, it must have seemed probable to him that once the Scandinavians had depleted their supplies, they would simply move on to raid further along the coast. While they were concentrated he had a chance of eliminating them. We have no direct information on the relative strengths of the opposing forces, nor their effectiveness. However, we may infer that Bryhtnoth

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commanded a force composed mainly of local levies – the fyrd – alongside the small band of his well-armed household retainers, whereas the many of the Scandinavians would have been trained veteran combatants. To oppose them on open terrain was a courageous calculated gamble, which he lost. In the final surviving lines of the poem, after Bryhtnoth’s death, his old retainer, Byrhtwold, asserts: ‘Our hearts must grow resolute, our courage more valiant, our spirits must be greater, though our strength grows less . . . I do not wish to be taken away, but by my Lord, by that best of men, I intend to lie.’ There is no lineal literary connection between this poem and Wolfe’s ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna’ or Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, but it was the first in English to celebrate an heroic defeat gloriously. The site of the battle is not certainly known, but probably was at Northey Island in the Blackwater estuary, which, despite coastal change over the last millennium, fits best the poem’s account. The causeway is still there. London was the scene for combat more than once.32 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records fighting there first in 841, and this continued periodically through to the tenth century. The Chronicle is supplemented by the Saga of St Olaf, recording events after 1004, when Olaf and Aethelred sailed up the Thames to find London Bridge heavily defended by Sven Forkbeard’s forces. Victory was achieved by demolition of the bridge itself, the invading ships dragging up its piles as they withdrew. Over the next decades there were vast payments of money known as ‘Danegeld’ by the English, under Aethelred and his successors, in response to repeated devastating raids or threats. This was essentially a bribe to persuade them to go elsewhere. Resistance was sporadic and often ineffective, except for a time by East Anglians under the formidable Ulfkell Snilling. The campaign of conquest in 1014–17 led to Cnut, Sven’s son, finally being proclaimed King of England in addition to his existing authority over Denmark, Norway and part of Sweden. However, this phase of Scandinavian sovereignty does not seem to have been associated with large-scale immigration. After a phase of internecine dynastic strife, Edward the Confessor succeeded in 1042. The politics leading to the events of 1066 are described by Hill.33 The well-known military outcomes were the defeat of Harald Siggurdsson’s and Tostig’s forces at Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire by Harold Godwinson, the heroic march south to meet William of Normandy’s landing on the South Coast, and Harold’s defeat north of Hastings. This long period of intermittent strife has left remarkably little on the English coast, in terms of visible archaeological structures and sites, until its latest phases, although individual artefacts, mainly weapons which can be associated more or less certainly with specific events, can be seen in several museums. Viking-period weapons dredged from close to the site of the old London Bridge in the nineteenth century, and now in the Museum of London, probably relate to one or other of the battles there.34 The numerous hoards of English silver coinage found in Scandinavian countries are perhaps the most telling archaeological remains from this period: they are the Danegeld. As noted above, earthworks traditionally linked with Scandinavians (e.g. the Danes’ Dyke; Danbury, Essex) are in fact prehistoric fortifications or even just land divisions, though they may have been reused during

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the eighth to eleventh centuries. The coastal burhs frequently developed later into towns with their own defences, which have obliterated earlier earthworks. At Wareham there are extensive surviving earthworks, and much of the large interior space was not occupied until the medieval period.35 Pre-existing fortifications were also adapted as burhs: the derelict Late Roman fort at Portchester, Hampshire, for example, was given to Edward, King of the West Saxons, by the bishop of Winchester in 904. Its defences were at least partly refurbished (which involved reconstruction of the Watergate arch, reusing Roman building materials), and a hall and stone tower were constructed for the thegn’s residence. The geographical context of the Hastings campaign of 1066 is relatively well understood. William’s landing was close to the former Roman shore fort at Pevensey, Sussex, which he proceeded to occupy. In the Roman period the fort stood on a headland projecting into a tidal estuarine embayment which, by the eleventh century, had been partly colonized by salt marsh behind a shingle bar.36 Today it is well inland. Having established fortifications at Pevensey, he sailed to the Bulverhythe estuary at Hastings, and subsequently marched north along the London road to Senlac, where the decisive battle was fought. The Norman earthworks at Pevensey are amongst the earliest of that period to be constructed in England, though the archaeological evidence is insufficiently precise to establish whether the extant features, originally comprising a timber palisade surrounded by a bank and ditch up to 9 m wide, represent William’s works or later enlargement and remodelling.

MEDIEVAL COASTAL DEFENCE The archetypal medieval defensive structure is, of course, the castle; and coastal castles are apt to have especially impressive locations, as at Hadleigh in Essex (see Figure 13). The motivations for castle construction were extremely varied, albeit always related to expressing power, prestige and sometimes personal vanity. Some of the earliest stone-built castles were constructed in the post-conquest period for obvious strategic reasons – to control major river crossings and estuaries (e.g. at Rochester, at the crossing of the Medway), or to subdue major centres of population (e.g. the Tower of London). Hadleigh Castle was originally built by Hubert de Burgh in the early thirteenth century, but was seized by the Crown in 1239 and remained a royal castle until 1378, after renovation and improvement by Edward III in the 1360s. Its strategic situation, overlooking the north shore of the Thames estuary, explains the royal interest in it. Others controlled strategically important ports. Dover Castle, on the site of an earlier Iron Age hill fort and burh, was extensively fortified in stone by Henry II before 1189 to control the main port of entry to England. In 1216 disaffected barons invited Prince Louis, the son of Philip Augustus of France, to depose King John and assume the English crown. Louis landed unopposed, since the English fleet had been scattered or destroyed by storm, and whilst he moved inland, Dover Castle, held by the ubiquitous Hubert de Burgh, was besieged. The

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Figure 13. Hadleigh Castle, Essex, constructed from around 1230 by Hubert de Burgh.

French ‘invasion’ was repelled in the following year. Orford Castle, Suffolk was built in the twelfth century by Henry II to protect the port of Orford, but also as a reassertion of royal power in a region of excessively independent lords. Later, the development of Orford Ness cut the old port off from the sea, which obscures its former economic importance.37 Not all castles, however, had a strategic function. Tintagel Castle, Cornwall was constructed on a precipitous headland, and archaeological evidence establishes that the site had been a significant elite centre from the fifth to seventh century ad (see Chapter 3).38 The association of Tintagel with the legendary King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain, or with King Mark in the Tristan and Iseult cycle, was not, therefore, entirely fanciful: these legends had some basis of fact. The castle itself was built, beginning in the years before 1233, by Richard Earl of Cornwall, primarily to establish his authority and prestige in the region, with reference to the mythic past.39 Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland originated in 1313, when Thomas Earl of Lancaster began construction. Despite its location on a defensible headland, and the impressive scale of its defences, it was in a position that was ‘almost pointless in strategic terms’, but it served to emphasize the Earl’s status and political aspirations.40 Besides the impressive masonry structure of the castle, the control of water in three meres to surround it, and the retention of natural rock features to enhance its height, served to emphasize its dramatic location. In short, it was more a statement than a military structure, though it would have been perfectly defensible had there been the need.

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More significant for the majority of the population was defence against invasion and terror. The Anglo–French Hundred Years’ War of 1337–1453 had harsh consequences for the South Coast of England in particular. The war in part had its origins in French treaty commitments to Scotland, which had been invaded by Edward III, and partly in the long-running territorial disputes between England, Normandy and France. From the 1320s Norman pirates had attacked English shipping and, in 1336, the French royal fleet had joined them in attacks on the Suffolk coast and the Isle of Wight.41 Edward III established a coastal patrol for the Kent coast, involving men-at-arms, local coastal vessels and a system of beacons.42 Nevertheless, English shipping was repeatedly attacked in the Channel, for example in 1350 when Castilian ships carrying merino wool to Flanders plundered several ships before being defeated by a royal fleet. Despite its role in attacks on France, Winchelsea escaped the earlier French raids on the South Coast in 1339, when Rye and Hastings were burnt, but suffered a devastating raid in 1360, which resulted in the abandonment of 385 tenements. A new town wall protecting a smaller area was subsequently planned in 1414, though not completed.43 The attack of 1360 was a particularly barbarous assault: at least two women were raped and murdered in the full sight of a frightened crowd of townsfolk, and corpses were later piled in a track still known as ‘Dead Man’s Lane’ while awaiting burial.44 In 1377 the Isle of Wight was occupied by a French army and Fowey, Plymouth, Melcombe Regis, Poole, Portsmouth, Hastings, Rye and Gravesend were sacked and burnt. Southampton was plundered by a force from 50 French galleys with Genoese and Spanish allies. The Yarmouth herring fleet was attacked, new fortifications in London hastily prepared, and the Prior of Lewes captured. Over this period there were raids by French, Scots and Flemings as far north as Scarborough, leading to a request for official help in 1383.45 Despite their frontline position, some South Coast towns started the war with very inadequate defences. At Sandwich it was not until 1384 that the existing ditched defence with isolated strongpoints was replaced, and the town gradually fully fortified. However, even this proved inadequate against the French assault of 1457, when the town was sacked. Rather little of the medieval town walls and towers survive there, but at Southampton the city walls, including the northern Bargate, are comparatively well preserved, and city gates or towers can also be seen at Portsmouth, Broadstairs and Rye on the South Coast. The fortified precinct wall of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight is claimed to show the earliest gunports in England, dated to around 1366. Its construction was a direct response to the occupation of the island by French forces.46 The town of Fowey was sacked by French forces in 1457, who also attacked the fortified seat of the Treffry family. Blockhouses were constructed at Fowey and at Polruan in the fifteenth century, partly financed by the Treffrys, with a chain across the mouth of the Fowey estuary. These fortifications were later removed by a commission of Edward IV, in an attempt to limit the activities of pirates. Dartmouth Castle (1481) is another early example of a coastal fort designed for artillery.47 On the East Coast, substantial lengths of the town defences of Great Yarmouth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and

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Hartlepool survive, and a gun battery was constructed at Dunwich in 1479, since destroyed by cliff erosion.48 The embarkation point for what later became the Crécy campaign, in the spring of 1346, was Portchester Castle in Hampshire, and the royal forces camped there and on Portsea Island. Amongst the forces assembling for the initial invasion (and for subsequent expeditions to France and Flanders) were vessels, crews and contingents from the Cinque Ports and other South Coast ports, who would have had personal grudges against ‘oure auncient enymies’. The Cinque Ports – actually seven chartered ports: Winchelsea, Romney, Hythe, Dover, Sandwich, Hastings, Rye49 – were required to supply the king with vessels for policing operations against pirates and, in wartime, transportation for the army, in return for trading privileges. For large expeditionary forces all vessels above a minimum size were impressed from ‘all ports from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Sandwich’. The English fleet in the fourteenth century comprised a few royal cogs and galleys especially built for fighting, berthed at Winchelsea and Portsmouth, but most of the fleet comprised impressed one-masted single-decked vessels, mainly under 100 tons, adapted by the addition of fighting tops on the masts and ‘forecastles’ and ‘after-castles’ for deployment of archers and slingers. The two largest vessels in the early fourteenth century were the cog Thomas and a 240-ton ship, the Michel, from Rye.50

THE SIXTEENTH AND EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES Increasingly, when considering the Early Modern period onwards, coastal defences cannot be studied in isolation. Strategic coastal defence was based on naval patrols and blockades of enemy ports, defences intended to prevent landings, and defence in depth to impede inland advances should the beach defences be overwhelmed.51 The coast, however, is the subject of this book, so the focus will be on extant remains of coastal military structures, with brief reference to their wider strategic role so as to place them in context. The system of coastal forts developed in the reign of Henry VIII, constructed to counter an invasion threat from France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, comprised dedicated artillery forts – basically variations on a theme of a central round tower with lower bays housing artillery integrally in the walls, in chambers known as casemates, with supplementary ordnance on the casemate roofs and tower. The initial group was built in 1539–43, covering Kent and Hampshire, and included forts at Deal, Walmer, Sandown, Southsea, Calshot and East and West Cowes. They controlled havens and estuaries, preventing seaborne bombardment or invasion, while their capacity for all-round fire deterred flanking and rear attacks by landing parties. The system eventually extended from the north-east to Cornwall.52 However, the system was not initially fully effective: in 1545 French forces sailed into the Solent, avoiding the land-based batteries, to land at three points on the Isle of Wight, from which they were only repelled by the local militia under Richard Worsley. Henry, who was at Portsmouth during the incursion, ordered additional

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defences, including completion of the castle at Sandown and construction of Yarmouth Castle (1547), which was an advance over the earlier Henrician roundbastioned coastal forts, having pointed or ‘arrow’-headed bastions, giving a wider field of fire.53 Harwich Haven, being the finest deep-water harbour in the east of England, was considered especially vulnerable, and ‘bulwarkes of earth and stone’ were constructed at Landguard Point in the 1540s, following a visit by Henry himself in 1543. Though demolished in 1552, they were refurbished in the Armada period, when new batteries were also emplaced at Aldeburgh and Southwold. A new fort was constructed at Landguard from 1625–8, following the designs of Simon de Cranfelt, which was later held for Parliament in the Civil War.54 There was a Henrician fort at Beblowe, now Lindisfarne Castle, and extensive early artillery defences around Berwick-upon-Tweed were begun under Mary Tudor in 1555 to counter the Scottish threat. They are of elaborate Italian design with earth-banked walls and bastions. Upnor Castle on the Medway, built under the orders of Elizabeth to protect the developing Royal Dockyard at Chatham from 1559–67, seems, by contrast, quite medieval in appearance when seen from the river. It has a low artillery bastion flanked by two round stone towers. In the south-west some batteries were constructed by local initiatives, but in the period of insecurity after Henry VIII’s break with Rome there was state direction here too. Major defences with conjoined rounded bastions were built at Portland, St Mawes and Pendennis, and there were smaller coastal defences, some only earthworks. Following the Armada crisis, further defences were constructed in the 1590s, including a fort at Plymouth, now beneath the later Citadel. Coastal defences were strengthened in the Fowey estuary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to counter raids by the French and Dutch, and by Barbary pirates. An artillery fort, St Catherine’s Castle, was constructed around 1540 and there were other batteries around the estuary.55 The Isles of Scilly are strategically situated in the western approaches and thus potentially vulnerable to raiders. Blockhouses and forts were constructed in 1548–54 to counter the potential threat of French and Spanish invasion. A further fort, Harry’s Walls, was left incomplete, but in the reign of Elizabeth a massive granite fort – Star Castle – was built on the headland known as the Hugh, overlooking Hugh Town on St Mary’s. St Mary’s Garrison was significant in the defence of the western approaches, being the first landfall from the west, besides defending a small naval haven.56 The earliest fortification was established in 1594 and the site remained in operation until the Second World War. It is now suffering from coastal erosion and archaeological evaluation trenching is designed to inform its future management. The more familiar Tudor coastal forts are stone-and-brick structures. They have survived partly because of their massive durability, but also because in many cases they have been repeatedly modernized: some remained in military use well into the twentieth century. However, there were also smaller earth-and-timber structures, which today survive only as earthworks. For example, at Cudmore Grove, East Mersea, Essex a small triangular blockhouse of 1543 is defined by low earthwork banks, currently suffering marine erosion at their seaward side. It was refurbished

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in 1588 as part of the Armada defences, and was again in use by the Parliamentary army during the siege of Colchester in 1648. Excavations on the eroding foreshore have revealed wooden structures, including a timber quay and probable beacon.57 On the North Norfolk coast at Cley-Next-the-Sea a raised area on the salt marsh surrounded by a bank and ditch has been provisionally interpreted as the remains of Black Joy Forte, an Armada-period fort recorded on a map of 1588.58 This might be an unusual example of a fort built specifically for defence against the feared Armada landings, for in general existing forts were refurbished, with little entirely new construction. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century maps show an earthwork fortification at this site, but it had been thought that all trace was destroyed in the 1953 floods, until the site’s recent rediscovery. The only actual landing by the Spanish was later, at Mousehole, Cornwall, in 1595. The buildings of this small fishing village were largely destroyed, apart from the stone-built house of Jenkin Keigwin, who was killed in the fight.59 The Spanish force advanced as far as Penzance, where Mass was said in an open field to avoid the local churches, newly used for Protestant worship, before it withdrew.

THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES During the Civil War of 1642–51 some existing defences were adapted and upgraded, and some new fortifications constructed: Charles I, for example, refortified Newcastle’s town walls, incorporating artillery bastions, and new defences were built at North Shields to defend the river mouth.60 Plymouth was besieged by Royalist forces from 1642–6, and earthwork forts were constructed on the headland of Mount Batten. The ditches of one still survive, east of the present Stamford Fort.61 Dennis Fort in the Helford estuary was a Royalist fort, built 1643–4: it surrendered to Parliamentary forces in 1646 after a siege of several weeks.62 The Isles of Scilly were a Royalist stronghold. The surviving new defences from this period comprise batteries and earthen breastworks at a number of vulnerable locations on St Mary’s and other islands. The Royalist defences at Star Castle and Oliver’s Battery on Tresco, constructed by Parliamentarian troops in 1651, survive.63 The Royal Citadel at Plymouth, built by Charles II in 1665–71, was perhaps constructed as much to overawe the former Parliamentary stronghold as for external defence.64 The expansion of Dutch economic and naval power from the late sixteenth century has been attributed to a number of factors: the infertility of the country, which led to an emphasis on maritime trade and fisheries; the development of vessels capable of navigating shallow and confined waterways, thereby avoiding tolls and encouraging trade; the influx of talented refugees, including Jews, from the Spanish Netherlands and southern Europe; and the establishment of overseas colonies – largely at the expense of the Portuguese.65 Conflict with the developing economic and military power of England for control of the North Sea and Channel was inevitable, but it is rather ironic that the two republican powers of Western Europe should have found themselves at war.

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The First Dutch War, generally seen as a conflict related to commerce and control of the North Sea in the context of the Commonwealth’s Navigation Acts, began in September 1652 with a battle off the Kentish Knock. It was precipitated by an apparently trivial incident over a Dutch refusal to salute the English flag. Following an indecisive war generally favourable to the English, the Dutch agreed to concessions and paid compensation, whilst in return the English agreed to recognize the freedom of the North Sea fisheries.66 One consequence of the war was a substantial expansion of the English merchant fleet: somewhere between 1,000 and 1,700 vessels are estimated to have been captured.67 The Second Dutch War began in 1665/6, General Monck declaring: ‘What matters this or that reason? What we want is more of the trade the Dutch now have.’ The expansion of the Dutch into the Baltic was of special concern to the English, for this was the region from which vital naval supplies – timber, rope, pitch and tallow – were imported to England.68 An apparently conclusive action was fought off Lowestoft on 1 June 1665; but the Dutch withdrew and rebuilt their fleet. Pepys was very well aware of the deficiencies of the English navy, and the Dutch recovered from combat losses more rapidly than the English. In 1667 they took the half-completed fort at Sheerness, raided the Medway and severely damaged the English fleet: the destruction of Chatham dockyard was only narrowly avoided, in part due to effective fire from Upnor Castle. The fort at Landguard Point in Suffolk, which had been built in 1625, withstood an assault by a Dutch force of some 2,000.69 They landed near Felixstowe but were unable to take Landguard, due to hastily erected new outer defences by Sir Bernard de Gomme, combined with the inability of the Dutch fleet to sail close enough inshore to give artillery support.70 The Dutch fleet remained at the mouth of the Thames estuary until peace was concluded later that year. These events were enormous humiliations for the English. The Third Dutch War is generally thought to have been more politically motivated. The best-remembered action was fought at Sole Bay, off Southwold, on 28 May 1672, still commemorated by the Adnam’s Sole Bay Brewery ‘Broadside Ale’. Though it is claimed as an English victory, and the Dutch certainly withdrew, they probably succeeded in their strategic aim of impeding an Anglo–French invasion. Amongst other casualties, Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, Pepys’ cousin and employer, was killed.71 Following the end of the Dutch Wars and on into the nineteenth century, repeated wars with France were the main factor leading to Plymouth (Devonport) replacing Chatham as the second naval base after Portsmouth, with development of a royal dockyard there from the 1690s. Landguard Fort was successively rebuilt and extended in 1717, in 1744 during the War of Austrian Succession, and again during the American War of Independence,72 while also in the 1740s new batteries were emplaced at Aldeburgh and Gun Hill, Southwold in Suffolk.73 On Scilly, the principal eighteenth-century fortification surrounded the headland known as the Hugh on St Mary’s, which became known as the Garrison. Much of the perimeter of the headland was defended by granite walls and batteries constructed between 1715 and 1740 during the Spanish Wars, whilst earlier Elizabethan structures were

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refortified.74 The defensive circuit, however, was never fully completed and never saw action. Most naval and land engagements of the American War of Independence took place, of course, on the other side of the Atlantic, but England was not immune to assault. On 7 December 1776, fire broke out in Portsmouth dockyard at the rope house, which was eventually destroyed. A major catastrophe was narrowly averted, for the docks were full of inflammable stores, haphazardly deployed. Suspicion fell on James Aitken, or ‘Jack the Painter’, an American sympathizer, who had devised an ingenious incendiary device. He was captured, tried and executed, but not before setting a disastrous warehouse fire in Bristol.75 Whitehaven, a major port by 1730, was attacked by the American commander John Paul Jones in 1778, but his attempt to burn the merchant fleet there was unsuccessful. His ship, the Bonhomme Richard, was eventually abandoned in flames during the Battle of Flamborough Head in 1779. A wreck found in 1974 is thought probably to be Jones’s ship, but confirmation must await detailed survey.76

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS Throughout this period of conflict (1793–1815), Britain’s main defence was the fleet, which stayed permanently at sea, maintaining a blockade of the Channel, North Sea, and Mediterranean ports controlled by the French, and denying control of the Channel. Destruction of any French force at sea was the initial objective. The Channel fleet, under Admiral Cornwallis, confined the French warships to their home ports of Brest and Rochefort, whilst Admiral Lord Keith commanded naval forces from Selsey Bill to the North Sea. Lord St Vincent’s assertion embodies this effective blockade: ‘I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I only say that they will not come by sea.’ Nevertheless, precautions had to be taken against that eventuality, and coastal defences were constructed to oppose a landing. The system of Martello towers was inspired by the effectiveness of a fort in Corsica called Torre di Mortella, which mounted a strong resistance to the British navy in 1794, and was advocated by Captain William Ford. The coastal forts in England were modelled on this structure, typically comprising a 9 m-high oval brick tower, externally rendered and limed to resemble ashlar masonry, of 3.9 m internal diameter, housing a 24 lb-gun. Some were surrounded by wet or dry moats. Construction began with the building of 24 towers in Kent and East Sussex in 1805–12, some of which, including no. 24 at Dymchurch, can be visited.77 The entire system, completed by 1829, comprised 103 towers, principally on the coast between East Anglia and Sussex, 47 of which survive.78 Ten of the original 17 towers on the Suffolk coast are still extant and, being on a largely undeveloped coastline, still partly preserve the intervisibility of forts, which was integral to the system. The most northerly example, at Slaughden, Aldeburgh, is unusual in being quatrefoil in plan with four guns – essentially four normal towers conjoint: a redoubt was originally planned at this terminal position,

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but the idea was rejected as being too expensive.79 Typically, there are groups of towers around estuaries or potential invasion beaches, for example the six towers on the Suffolk coast between Shingle Street and Bawdsey in Suffolk, protecting the beaches of Hollesley Bay, or the three Martello towers on open grassland at East Cliff Sands, Folkestone.80 Gaps in the system occur along cliffed coasts. The Royal Military Canal was constructed in 1804–6 between Hythe and Rye, both as a linear defence and for military transportation.81 The withering comments made at the time about a narrow canal intended to oppose an army that had successfully crossed the principal rivers of Europe seem apt. Communications inland between the Admiralty in London and Sheerness, Chatham, Portsmouth and, eventually, Plymouth were ensured by a system of hilltop semaphore telegraphs, built from 1796, each under the command of a naval lieutenant.82 The Peace of Amiens (1802) brought a short-lived hiatus in the war, but it was resumed in 1803 when Britain found herself faced with plain evidence of Napoleon’s expansionist intentions and his occupation of Holland.83 It is sometimes asserted that Napoleon had no serious intention of attempting invasion, but this was not so. The French invasion fleet was intended to comprise 1,500 barges sailing from Boulogne, Wissant, Ambleteuse and Etaples, 300 from Dunkirk, Calais and Gravelines, 300 from Nieuwpoort and Ostend, and 300 with a Dutch army from Flushing. The invasion craft included pranes (more than100 ft in length, armed with 24-pounders, with 150 men each); escorts (chaloupes cannonières), gunboats, and 660-ft pinnaces armed with small howitzers. The total force ready for the invasion comprised (depending on the sources one reads) 120–150,000 men. The strategy was to cross the Channel in fog or after a storm, when the British fleet would have abandoned the Channel, or to draw off blockading forces by feints.84 However, the construction of troop transports was much delayed and on a smaller scale than Napoleon intended and, in the event, propitious conditions for invasion never occurred. A naval militia known as ‘Sea Fencibles’ was raised in 1803 to protect the coast from the North Foreland to Sandown, by Jane Austen’s brother, Captain Francis Austen.85 The British strategy was to oppose landings at likely points by means of floating batteries off vulnerable beaches, with Martello towers to hamper landing of troops and unloading of materiel; and in the event of a successful landing, withdraw to fortified positions inland at Chatham, Chelmsford and forts on the Surrey heights. Sir John Moore’s Light Brigade, based at Shorncliffe camp, combined with Volunteers, was intended to fight a delaying action. There were invasion scares intermittently throughout 1803, but the French were never able to achieve naval control of the Channel. The economic aspect of the war and in particular the Napoleonic Continental System, intended to close all European ports to British shipping and commerce, and the related commerce warfare – guerre de course 86 – were in many ways far more serious threats, but of course have left no physical remains on the English mainland. One outcome, however, was the British capture in 1807 of the island of Heligoland in the German Bight, to be used as a naval base for blockading or intercepting enemy merchant shipping, and as a depot for English

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goods to be carried clandestinely on to the Baltic and rivers of North Germany. British companies established onshore infrastructure including warehousing and workshops producing forged documents. It also served as an intelligence conduit, with a packet service to Harwich.87 There were also covert activities. During the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars there was a two-way cross-Channel traffic in fee-paying passengers: first, aristocratic refugees from the Terror, and later, French prisoners of war escaping from England. Following the collapse of the French currency, and the pressing need to pay the French army, guineas (21 shillings) were smuggled to France, where they would sell for the equivalent of 30 shillings, an enterprise in which City financiers participated. There was also clandestine export of funds to support William Wickham’s and, later, J. M. Johnson’s network of British secret agents supplying intelligence, and to promote insurrection in French-occupied Europe, as well as export of secret agents themselves.88 Subsequently, Britain moved to the offensive. There was a military camp for the Walcheren Expedition in July 1809 at Deal. An army of 40,000 was ferried out to a fleet of 100 transports and 37 ships of the line, some temporarily fitted out as horse transports, from Portsmouth.89 It seems to have been this event that inspired Thomas Hardy’s short story ‘The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion’.

THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES William Holman Hunt’s painting of 1852, Our English Coast, depicting sheep grazing perilously close to the unstable cliffs of Fairlight, Sussex, seems at first sight an intensely observed and vividly presented composition of light, colour and form in the Pre-Raphaelite mode. It is that, of course, but a friend of Hunt reported that it was also meant as an allegory of the obliviousness of Victorian society to renewed mid-nineteenth-century French militarism.90 This complacency was not remedied until the construction of the Royal Commission forts, though an invasion scare of 1858–9 led to some new works. The building of an entirely new, modern system of forts was a chief recommendation of the Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Consider the Defences of the United Kingdom, published in 1860.91 These Royal Commission forts of the 1860s were originally constructed of granite, and armour-plated. Large casemated fortifications were built at Coalhouse and Landguard Forts, and elsewhere, in the 1860s and 1870s. Later in the nineteenth century there was an arms race between warships and terrestrial artillery, resulting in the Royal Commission forts becoming obsolescent. Low-profile earth and concrete batteries for the new longer-range breech-loading guns were built at many locations, including Coalhouse Fort, East Tilbury and Beacon Hill at Harwich.92 Later nineteenth-century defences in Suffolk include a heptagonal fort with 14 guns at Shotley Point (1862) and phases of rebuilding and alteration to Landguard Fort in the early 1870s, 1888 and 1898.93 Offshore sea forts were constructed at several locations, for example at Spithead off Portsmouth harbour, where Horse Sand

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Fort was constructed on the shoal. It is a massive structure on a rubble, sand shingle, and concrete foundation, on which was built a 100-ft-diameter wall of Portland stone and concrete, finished with armour plating supported on a framework of girders.94 These Victorian defences were never tested in combat. Still, there were English casualties in home waters during the early twentieth century. In 1905, the Russian Imperial fleet, en route to relieve the garrison of Port Arthur, east of Beijing, from Japanese attack, opened fire on Hull trawlers in the North Sea, sinking one vessel, damaging five others and inflicting casualties, in an event now known as the Dogger Bank Incident. This seems attributable to faulty intelligence, nervousness, and inexperience.95 Amazingly, the Russians claimed to have believed they were being attacked by Japanese torpedo boats, an error that could potentially have led to a war between Russia and Britain. In the confusion, Russian ships fired on one another. Apologies and reparations were made, and the Russian fleet was followed down to Biscay by British cruisers and early Holland Class submarines.

THE WORLD WARS At the beginning of the First World War, the nineteenth-century land defences of the naval bases of Chatham, Plymouth, Dover and elsewhere were still operational, but the Royal Navy again provided the principal defence against invasion. The Grand Fleet was based to the far north, at Scapa Flow, with supporting cruisers at Cromarty and battle cruisers at Rosyth. The vulnerability of capital ships to submarines, torpedoes and mines led Jellicoe to adopt a strategy of confining fleet action to the north, where such threats could be minimized, though this was very far from the Portsmouth–Le Havre route, along which the British Expeditionary Force was carried. Due to the navy’s worldwide commitments ‘the British Empire could not survive naval defeat, or even loss of supremacy through individual ship losses’.96 On the south and east coasts smaller warships capable of protecting coastal trade and raiding the enemy coast were based: for example, at Harwich with its destroyer base, and the submarine flotillas at Harwich, Gosport and other South Coast ports. Besides the main naval ports, the remains of smaller naval installations can be seen in some places, for example the Motor Torpedo Boat station on Osea Island, Essex. To the south and west was based a second fleet of pre-Dreadnought vessels and a reserve fleet of obsolete ships, with one division at Sheerness.97 German naval strategists, faced with the numerical inferiority of their High Seas Fleet, mounted assaults on English coastal towns, judging that it would be unacceptable in terms of public opinion for the British to allow such attacks to continue unopposed.98 The intention was that British naval detachments sent to deal with the situation might then be destroyed by deployment of overwhelmingly superior forces, and thereby the disparity between the two fleets diminished by attrition. Jellicoe refused to be drawn, but this meant that English East Coast towns (Great Yarmouth in 1914; Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough later the same year; and Lowestoft in 1915)

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were bombarded by naval guns almost unopposed. A plaque at Hartlepool’s Heugh Battery records the place where the first shell struck at 8.10 a.m. on 16 December 1914, and where the first British soldier was killed by enemy action on English soil. These events, combined with the rapid advance of the German army to the Belgian coast, led to the construction of new defence lines in the east and south-east of England to impede inland advance from any successful landings. They consisted of earthwork defences, barbed wire, and intermittent strongpoints with pillboxes and artillery batteries, inland and along coasts. Little remains of these structures today outside the main naval bases, although the distinctive circular East Anglian pillboxes can be seen in places (for example near Sea Palling, Norfolk, dating from 1916–18), as can their hexagonal equivalents on the Isles of Sheppey and Grain.99 Recent aerial photographic studies have defined now-infilled characteristically crenellated or stepped First World War trench systems on Levington Heath, Suffolk and elsewhere, dug during training exercises for the Western Front.100 Extensive and massive defences were constructed on, and adjacent to, Spurn Head to guard the mouth of the Humber, including two sea forts, one of them the Bull Sand Fort (1915–19), two land-based gun emplacements – Green Battery and the Godwin Battery, built before 1915 – and other defensive and navigational structures. To facilitate construction and supply, a new jetty and light railway running the length of the spit were built. Due to the dynamic character of this coast, much of the Godwin Battery has either collapsed onto the beach, or has been demolished for safety reasons. The complex of fortifications including the Green Battery and other light batteries were known as Spurn Fort, and they were modified in the Second World War to provide anti-aircraft cover.101 The south-west was not seen as a part of the country under threat of invasion in the First World War, and relatively few new defences were constructed. The main offensive operations related to the navy, in the Atlantic, although some German seafloor communication cables were intercepted and diverted to Porthcurno.102 The U-boat threat to shipping in the First World War led to the Isles of Scilly once more assuming strategic importance, and there was a seaplane base at Porth Mellon on St Mary’s, subsequently relocated to Tresco.103 There were also attacks on the English mainland by Zeppelins and Gotha bombers on land targets, military and civilian. The majority of the buildings on airfields of the Royal Flying Corps, some 400 of them, were demolished soon after the war, although First World War hangars survive at some bases which passed into later military and civilian use. Similarly some hangars built to house seaplanes and flying boats at the Royal Naval Air Service base at Calshot can still be seen, and at Felixstowe one of the hangars of the Royal Naval Air Service Seaplane Base of 1913 still survives.104 In retrospect an invasion seems unrealistic – and the Germans certainly had no intention of mounting such an operation. With the benefit of hindsight, we also now know that fleet actions, in principle not different from those of the time of Trafalgar, were less significant than the much more serious attacks by German U-boats on British merchant vessels from 1917, and the British blockading restrictions on German imports.

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A short-lived defensive development of the inter-war years was detection of hostile aircraft by means of concrete acoustic sound mirrors, which reflected and amplified sound towards a microphone. An experienced operator could determine the direction from which aircraft were coming. Several examples still survive, notably at Denge, Kent, where three reflectors were constructed in 1928–39. The technology was superseded by the development of radar before the Second World War.105 The vulnerability of English coastal merchant shipping in the North Sea, and the bias in infrastructure between East and West Coast ports, rapidly became apparent early in the Second World War (1939–45). By 1940, mines and attacks by E-boats and aircraft made the North Sea coastal shipping lanes so hazardous that ships larger than coasters were prohibited from ports south of the Humber. The Port of London was almost shut down to large vessels. However, diversion of shipments to West Coast ports posed enormous logistical problems, for many were just too small to cope with the increased volume of shipping and size of vessels, storage facilities (especially for perishable cargoes) were inadequate, and road and rail infrastructure could not cope. Inevitably, the risks involved in North Sea trade simply had to be accepted, and air cover provided; but losses were enormous.106 Coastal defensive structures, built mainly in the earlier part of the war, when invasion seemed imminent, were designed to combat new types of attack – largescale aerial bombing, beach and paratroop landings, and rapid thrusts across land by mechanized armour. General Günter Blumentritt expressed the view that in the immediate aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation, whilst Britain’s forces were in disarray, an invasion might have been possible: but, in fact, the rapidity of the German advance across Western Europe seems to have taken almost everyone by surprise, and certainly no cross-Channel invasion plan was in place at first. Hitler only reluctantly, and belatedly, developed the plan for ‘Operation Sea Lion’ once it had become plain that British capitulation, or some form of accommodation, would not happen. Once initiated, Sea Lion was a serious military plan, but it could not be implemented until air superiority had been achieved, which did not happen.107 Almost all around the English coast a vast array of defences designed to oppose air and sea landings on the ‘coastal crust’, and inland movement by tanks and infantry, was constructed. These included linear earthwork bank-and-ditch defences, anti-glider ditches, lines of anti-tank concrete blocks (‘dragons’ teeth’), minefields (in places associated with builder’s scaffolding) on beaches, pillboxes, strongpoints, and batteries. Pillboxes on Minehead promenade were disguised with pitched roofs to resemble seaside kiosks and shelters.108 The remarkable thing is that so little of this construction survived demolition in the post-war period, although anti-tank blocks, pillboxes and fire control posts, being so massive and durable, can be seen at many coastal locations, perhaps most strikingly on the Norfolk coast, where pillboxes have fallen upside-down from eroding clifftops onto beaches at Weybourne and Happisburgh, Norfolk. They serve now only as markers of coastal erosion over the last 60 years. The Second World War defences of Suffolk have received extensive recent attention as part of the National Mapping

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Programme, and hitherto unrecorded structures are being reported during current coastal surveys.109 Besides the array of structures found elsewhere on the South and East Coasts, Bawdsey Manor was particularly well defended, for it was here from 1937 that Watson-Watt and his team developed radar. The four transmitter towers plainly attracted hostile attention, and the establishment was bombed 12 times. Bunkers, the transmitter block, and pillboxes and gun emplacements built into artificial cliffs still survive.110 At the Anglo-Saxon barrow cemetery of Sutton Hoo anti-glider ditches comprise the last phase of earthwork construction. The south-west was of significance principally in the Battle of the Atlantic and in the preparations for D-Day (1943–5): there were Royal Navy command centres at Plymouth, Dartmouth and Portland.111 Entirely new types of coastal military structures were also built, including radar towers, control towers for river defence minefields, and anti-aircraft batteries.112 At Dover, the eighteenth-century casemate tunnels cut in the chalk cliffs were reused by Vice-Admiral Ramsay, in command of the Dover Straits, as a bombproof underground naval headquarters. Decoy sites on isolated coastal areas, designed to mislead enemy reconnaissance and draw air raids away from military installations and towns, were constructed widely: Liverpool had 14 dummy fire sites around it. At West Wittering, Sussex there were ‘K’ and ‘Q’ sites, housing a dummy airfield with fake aircraft, to simulate RAF Thorney Island. There was a ‘QL’ site, where lights and fires were used to mimic a town, at Itchenor. In the Helford estuary at Nare Point a decoy site was in operation from 1940 to 1944, to deceive bombers heading for Falmouth Docks. It included a decoy railway system, false buildings and the capacity to imitate the effects of either high-explosive or incendiary bombs, controlled from a bunker in nearby cliffs. Construction was by staff from the Ealing Film Studios.113 Many installations were demolished or removed from the latter part of the Second World War onwards, but contemporary RAF air photography permits reconstruction of their locations and layout. Airfields, military camps, anti-aircraft artillery sites, radar sites, decoy sites, barrage balloon deployment sites, air raid shelters, and the ‘coastal crust’ defences of emergency coastal batteries, beach scaffolding, minefields, anti-glider and anti-tank obstructions, practice and training areas and, from the latter stages of the war, ‘Diver’ batteries to counter the V1 rocket, have all been recorded. Offshore in the Thames and Medway estuaries sea forts were constructed in 1943 to oppose mine-laying aircraft, and for more general air defence. Known as Maunsell forts, they comprised gun towers, a searchlight tower, and a control tower, all on piles. Remarkably, several still survive, including the Red Sands Towers off Minster in Kent. Other ‘offshore’ sites include hollow sections of temporary concrete harbours, known as Mulberry harbours, designed for use on the beaches on Normandy during the invasion of 1944. Some proved surplus to requirements, or were abandoned for other reasons, and half-sunken examples can be seen from Henry VIII’s Portland Castle, and from the Hayling Island ferry.114 The most lasting impact on the English urban landscape, however, was the

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terrible destruction by bombing of ports and coastal cities, mainly in 1940/1.115 In Southampton 30 per cent of the housing stock was destroyed. The historic cores of many of our major ports were directly adjacent to modern port and dockyard facilities, and suffered accordingly. The fragmented character of many port cities, where isolated historic buildings survive amongst more recent development, for example at Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Portsmouth and Southampton, relates largely to the bombing. In the nineteenth-century suburbs of Portsmouth, streets of Victorian terraces are interrupted by newer infilled terrace houses occupying bomb sites – sometimes on both sides of the street, indicating that the bomb fell in the middle. On top of this, the post-war Modernist ethos, in which large-scale urban planning to produce cities better suited to the age of the car dominated, cut swathes through historic cores.116 Clearance of the bomb damage left its own archaeological footprint: at Darenth in Kent the foreshore is littered with columns, capitals and other stonework representing the cargo of a barge carrying bomb debris from the City of London.117 In archaeological terms, however, the redevelopment of bomb sites in the post-war period permitted, at first, small-scale ‘watching brief ’ recording and limited excavation, largely by museum staff, in the 1950s and ’60s, and then the ‘Rescue’ excavations of the ’70s and ’80s. After the publication of Planning Policy Guidance Note 16 (PPG 16: Archaeology and Planning) by the Department of the Environment in 1992 there were large-scale developer-funded excavations at many coastal cities and ports. There would, of course, have been city centre redevelopment without the bombing; but it is possible that larger areas of historic cities would have survived the depredations of Modernist urban planners had the destruction by bombing not occurred. Indeed, it is intensely depressing to read that at least one planner expressed the view that the destruction of the medieval core of Coventry was a ‘blessing in disguise’. That is an inland example, but at Plymouth, bomb-damaged but reparable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century terraces stood derelict into the 1960s, and only then were cleared to create the desolation that is now the city centre.118 Paradoxically, without that loss of historic buildings, and the archaeological excavations that preceded redevelopment, our knowledge of the earliest phases of urban development in ports such as Southampton and Ipswich would be much poorer.

THE COLD WAR The latest conflict to have left its mark on the coast was the Cold War, from 1945 onwards. The more significant foci of activity were mainly inland – the regional seats of government, and the updated and refurbished bomber bases. At Dover, however, the tunnels cut in the chalk cliffs which had used by Ramsay in the Second World War were extended and adapted as one of the ten regional seats of government. A strangely numinous group of structures survives on Orford Ness, now under the care of the National Trust. This remote site was developed for use by

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the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and the Royal Aircraft Establishment. These unique earth-and-concrete structures, known as ‘the pagodas’, were used to test the conventional charges that were to trigger nuclear bombs, and were designed to withstand blast.119 Radar coverage, downgraded after 1945, was improved and extended in the early 1950s in the ‘Rotor’ programme. Royal Observer Corps posts supplemented the radar detection systems, primarily to report low-flying aircraft, and numerous bunkers have been recorded. A massive ‘over-the-horizon’ radar array – the antennae forming a giant fan covering over 0.5 km2 – was built on Orford Ness in 1964, but decommissioned in 1972. Its groundworks are still discernible in aerial photographs, looking like some vast landscape-scale twenty-first-century artwork. Novel defence systems include sites for Bloodhound surface-to-air missiles, for example at RAF Bawdsey, where the distinctive concrete hard-standings for the launchers still survive.120 The New Needles Battery on the Isle of Wight, still extant, was used as a test site for Black Knight and Black Arrow rockets.121

THE THAMES ESTUARY AND THE SOLENT Although historic military defences can be seen almost everywhere around the English coast, two regions have a particularly dense array of surviving structures: the Thames and the Solent. The strategic and economic significance of the Thames estuary since at least Roman times led to the development of successive coastal military defences, beginning with the town walls of London and Rochester, and the later Roman Saxon Shore forts at Bradwell-on-Sea and Reculver.122 The Norman keeps at Rochester and the Tower of London itself were constructed soon after the invasion of 1066, and later medieval castles include those at Hadleigh, Cooling and the site of Queenborough. In 1539–40 rounded artillery blockhouses were built at Gravesend, Tilbury, East Tilbury and Higham, with earthwork forts of the 1540s at the mouth of the Colne. The foundations of the Gravesend blockhouse have been partly excavated and remain visible. The large camp at West Tilbury was the main base for the army during the invasion scare at the time of the Armada in 1588 and the location of the military review of Queen Elizabeth I in August 1588, at which she gave her famous battle speech. Tilbury Fort (1671) designed by Sir Bernard de Gomme, is an angular bastioned artillery fort, one of the bestpreserved examples of its type. de Gomme also designed forts at Sheerness and Cockham Wood, on the Medway. During the eighteenth century there was a move towards linear bastioned defences to protect the dockyards, including the Chatham Lines of 1756, and the land front of Sheerness, whilst pre-existing forts such as Tilbury were updated. New construction during the Napoleonic Wars included Forts Clarence, Amherst and Pitt in the Medway, with the Martello towers of the outer estuary providing a frontline delaying defence. The defences of the estuary were strengthened still further in the 1860s, with the construction of massive granite forts at Shornemead, Cliffe, East Tilbury and elsewhere, and these were then modified in the later nineteenth century to provide low-profile emplacements

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for the new breech-loading artillery. Defence construction in the First World War involved, again, modification of existing defences, with construction of pillboxes and anti-aircraft batteries. In the Second World War Chatham was provided with successive lines of defences, and London itself by outer defence lines, now largely obliterated. The war necessitated building of new types of structures, including radar towers (at East Tilbury), control towers for minefields (e.g. at Sheerness), the Maunsell forts such as Red Sands, and anti-aircraft batteries at many places. Despite its excellent deep-water harbour Portsmouth, unlike its near-neighbour Southampton, did not develop into a mercantile port of national significance, most probably because it is not sited on an estuary providing inland communications by river: it is isolated from its economic hinterland in Hampshire by the chalk ridge of Portsdown. Instead it became, principally, a naval base and Royal Naval dockyard. Portsmouth harbour was heavily defended, again beginning with a Roman shore fort, at Portchester.123 Following the establishment of the Royal dockyard at Portsmouth the seawards defences of the medieval town were strengthened by construction of the Round and Square Towers (1418–26 and 1494), and later by sixteenth-century defences, including Henry VIII’s Southsea Castle of 1544. The western approach to the Solent was controlled by Calshot and Hurst Castles, on spits from the northern shore, constructed 1538–43, with towers at the mouth of the Medina river, and supplemented by Yarmouth Castle, Isle of Wight by 1547.124 During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries further construction included the massive Forts Cumberland and Monckton. The whole system was reinforced yet again in the nineteenth century by forts along the crest of Portsdown (Fort Wallington to the Farlington Redoubt), with a second line protecting Gosport (Forts Elson to Gomer). The line of forts along Portsdown was intended primarily to counter attack from the mainland to the north had there been successful landings elsewhere.125 Supplementary installations include sea batteries, the offshore Spit Sand Fort and the Hilsea Lines at the northern edge of Portsea Island. Portsmouth seemed by the later nineteenth century to be virtually impregnable to attack either from the sea, or from a landwards direction, presupposing an enemy landing somewhere further north.

ROYAL DOCKYARDS The royal dockyards at Portsmouth, Chatham, Plymouth (Devonport) and, at times, other places in England and overseas were the principal naval bases for shipbuilding, repair and maintenance.126 The relative importance of the dockyards varied through time, depending largely on their strategic positions in relation to the main theatres of naval operations – the North Sea, the Channel, the Atlantic or further overseas – but was also influenced by the necessities of equipping and provisioning ships and by very specific problems, such as the infestation of the Medway in the eighteenth century by the shipworm (Teredo navalis), which could rapidly destroy the hulls of wooden vessels.127

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Despite King Alfred’s reputation as ‘the father of the English navy’ in the ninth century, King John’s permanent naval fleet of some 50 galleys can be seen as the lineal ancestor of the modern navy. In 1212 he ordered construction of an enclosed dock at Portsmouth with associated storehouses. It was, however, in 1495 that the first purpose-built dry dock was constructed at Portsmouth for Henry VII, following strengthening of the defences by construction of the Square Tower (1494) and a blockhouse at Gosport. The dry dock was constructed of timber, but its entrance was simply sealed by dumping clay.128 Portsmouth further expanded in the reign of Henry VIII, when there was an ambitious shipbuilding programme including construction of the Peter Pomegranate and the Mary Rose. However, ships had to be sailed to the Thames in order to receive their ordnance at the Tower of London, and it was this inconvenience, combined with the distance of Portsmouth from the capital, that led to the development of two new dockyards, at Woolwich and Deptford. Nevertheless, the position of Portsmouth close to France meant that it remained significant: it was there in 1545 that the fleet concentrated to oppose the French fleet: successfully, but with the loss of the Mary Rose.129 From 1550, the fleet’s main base was transferred to the Medway, which offered deep-water channels and mud-banks for berthing and hull repairs, besides being close to London. The earliest direct evidence for royal naval activity is from 1547, when a storehouse was rented130 and Chatham was further developed to include more storehouses, a mast pond (1570) and dry dock (1581). The shift of emphasis in naval warfare towards the Spanish Netherlands increased Chatham’s importance, and it was from the Medway that the main fleet sailed against the Armada in April 1588. During the Commonwealth, to augment the fleet during a time of continuing trade disputes and hostilities with the Dutch, there was a renewed shipbuilding programme, and in the years 1649–59, 207 new vessels joined the fleet, although some were captured ships. War was again declared on the Netherlands in 1665 and at this time Harwich dockyard was reopened and Sheerness established as the site of a new royal dockyard. The fort at Sheerness, however, was incomplete at the time of the Dutch raid of 1667. The Third Dutch War of 1672–4 was followed by a massive shipbuilding campaign from 1677, under the influence of Pepys, but following the accession of William III the naval focus shifted once more, to war with France, with a concurrent shift of dockyard activity towards Portsmouth. New westerly yards were also established, initially at Kinsale, and construction work for new docks at Plymouth (later, from 1843, known as Devonport) began in 1691. During the Napoleonic Wars of 1793–1815 the established naval yards were unable to cope with the demand for new construction and navy vessels were built under contract at private yards at Topsham, Harwich, Bristol and Buckler’s Hard, and a new yard was established at Milford, besides a worldwide network of foreign bases.131 Portland first became of strategic significance in the mid-nineteenth century due to its location in relation to the developing French port of Cherbourg. Successive phases of breakwater construction from 1872 to 1894 assured its utility as a naval anchorage. The Grand Fleet and Reserve Fleet were concentrated at Portland in 1914 before the timely order from Churchill to disperse to war stations, but the

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vulnerability of Portland to air raids in the Second World War limited its usefulness as a harbour in that conflict.132 The pace of innovation in technology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries meant that entirely new types of facilities were required, although in peacetime there was, as usual, ‘downsizing’ of the dockyard workforce. Steam power had been introduced for dockyard machinery from the late eighteenth century, alongside iron-framed buildings; and steam-powered paddle sloops were launched in 1832. The Woolwich Steam Factory for manufacture and repair of engines opened in 1843. HMS Achilles, launched at Chatham in 1863, was the first iron-hulled battleship, though iron-cased timber-hulled ships had existed before that. HMS Dreadnought was launched at Portsmouth on 12 February 1906. Armed with 10 × 12" guns, with a turbine engine capable of 21 knots and armoured with 11" plate, she made all other battleships obsolete overnight. From 1907–14, 26 Dreadnoughts were constructed at Portsmouth and Devonport, and there were major alterations involving, inter alia, extensions to dry docks and building slips. Chatham specialized from 1908 in submarine construction. Further north, on the Firth of Forth, construction of a new yard at Rosyth began in 1909, but was incomplete at the start of the First World War.133 Declaration of war in August 1914, and again in 1939, immediately demanded rapid refitting of vessels out of commission, an expanded building programme, and preparation for accepting battle-damaged vessels. Dockyard populations once more expanded. However, the first new additions to the British fleet were acquired by other means. Two Turkish first-class capital ships under construction on the Tyne, and partly paid for – Sultan Osman and Reshadieh – were requisitioned without compensation by Britain in 1914. This almost led to combat between Turkish and British forces on English soil, for the Turkish commander and his ships’ companies, waiting to accept delivery, threatened (not unreasonably) to board the ships and raise the Turkish flag – an action prevented by Admiralty instructions to oppose this ‘by armed force if necessary.’ Sir Edward Grey’s communiqué to Turkey was a masterpiece of oleaginous emollience, expressing his ‘sure belief ’ that Turkey would understand the necessity for England’s action ‘in this crisis’, and noting that the financial loss to Turkey was a matter of ‘sincere regret’ to His Majesty’s Government.134 In the First World War, enemy air raids on the docks were scarcely significant, though there was one major industrial accident at Sheerness in 1915 when an inexpertly primed mine exploded, killing more than 170. New construction virtually ceased at the dockyards, which focused on maintenance and repair, except at Rosyth. There were, of course, numerous severe air raids on Chatham, Portsmouth and Devonport in 1940.135 In the post-war period, there was retrenchment. The dockyard at Pembroke closed in 1947 and in 1960 Sheerness was transferred to commercial use. Chatham dockyard finally closed in 1984. Portsmouth, although the busiest of the royal dockyards in the twentieth century, and the port from which the Naval Task Force sailed for the South Atlantic during the Falklands War of 1982, faced an uncertain future in the early twenty-first. At one point the majority of vessels berthed there

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were decommissioned. The recent announcement that the new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales will be based at, and partly constructed in, Portsmouth ensures the dockyard’s future role. Devonport at Plymouth is now being wound down. Its recently acquired expertise in servicing nuclear submarines is no longer needed since the new ‘Astute’ class of vessels have reactor cores that will last for the life of the submarine. Five of the remaining frigates based there will be transferred to Portsmouth.136 Chatham is now a World Heritage Site, and a bid for the Historic Dockyard at Portsmouth to achieve similar status is being developed. Portsmouth has the advantage of housing Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, HMS Victory, and HMS Warrior and the remains of Henry VIII’s Mary Rose and her contents can also be seen there. In January 2008, the Heritage Lottery Fund announced a grant of £21 million to the Mary Rose Trust. This will permit completion of conservation work and construction of a new permanent ship hall and museum. In addition to historic vessels, there is a remarkable survival of naval infrastructure at both Chatham and Portsmouth. The dockyards provided a range of working and storage facilities, including building slips, dry docks for hull maintenance and repair, timber pounds, sawhouses, forges and blacksmiths’ shops, storehouses, rope walks and roperies, mast ponds, cranes, rigging houses, wharves, and sail, colour and mould lofts (for storage of sails and flags and for laying out full-size patterns of vessel components); and, in the nineteenth century, rolling mills, sawmills, paint shops and engine factories. Within the dockyard there was usually terraced housing for the officers, whilst around each dockyard developed lower-status housing for the rest of the workforce and their families – shipwrights, mastmakers, caulkers, joiners, sailmakers and unskilled men (scavelmen and labourers).137 Facilities for the dockyard and garrison at Sheerness include some grand eighteenth-century buildings. Some of these were successfully adapted for commercial uses after 1960; others are derelict. The fine neo-Classical Garrison Church of 1826–8 at Sheerness is now, sadly, in the last stages of dilapidation compared to its pleasing appearance in the 1950s.138 However, it is hoped that proposals for expansion of the port at Sheerness will include a ‘heritage gain’ – regeneration and adaptation of historic buildings on the site as part of the redevelopment. Production of ordnance was a separate activity. In 1671, an ordnance storage depot was established at Woolwich, and this later developed to become the Royal Arsenal, which continued its operations until the mid-twentieth century. Large areas of Plumstead Marshes were used as testing ranges from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. In the First World War, ordnance factories were established across southern England, such as the Royal Naval Cordite Factory at Holton Heath. Munitions and other supplies were sent to the Western Front from a railway marshalling yard and transshipment depot at ‘Richborough Port’ near the Roman fort of Richborough itself.139

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PIRATES, PRIVATEERS AND CRIMINALS Besides the more or less ‘proper’ wars of nations there has been a good deal of violent private enterprise around the English coast. Piracy in the past was, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder. In part it was often more than just a matter of simple illegality, but a sort of semi-official maritime guerrilla warfare directed at the commerce of other nations or ports, without formal declaration of war – a guerre de course.140 Besides this there were domestic English trade disputes in the Middle Ages, such as that which involved seamen of the Cinque Ports engaging fishermen of Great Yarmouth ‘on lond and strond’ in battle. Trade rivalry was also the root of a raid of 1321 by the ships and forces of Winchelsea on Southampton, when 15 ships drawn up on the strand were burnt, with two more as an afterthought the next day.141 George Morey quotes from a letter of Margaret Paston to her husband in London, of about 1440, in which she refers briefly to a raid on the Norfolk coast by Flemish pirates almost as an aside, before going on to more important and pressing domestic matters.142 The implication is that such raids were commonplace and hardly worth mentioning. Breton pirates, and those from Dieppe and Honfleur, operated in the Channel around the same time, including the widely feared Petit Jehan de Honfleur. Poole, the home port of Harry Page, who is said to have captured 120 ships off Brittany and became known as ‘Aripago’ on the Biscay coasts, was attacked by the French in 1406 as a reprisal. Whether one should view Jehan and Harry, and others whose names have not been recorded, as criminals, or unofficial patriots, is debatable. Perhaps they would have rejected both descriptions. English official defence measures in the medieval period were largely on a local level, relying on the local levy nominally supervised by the county sheriff and lesser officials, so opposition was sporadic and frequently ineffective. The distinction between trade disputes, piracy and outright warfare was certainly not clearly defined in the medieval period. In 1449 Robert Winnington, who had been commissioned to keep the seas, ‘happened’ across the Bay Fleet, composed of ships from Hanseatic, Dutch and Flemish ports voyaging from Biscay to the Baltic with a cargo of salt, the essential commodity which underpinned the massive trade in salted and cured fish around the North Sea and Channel. Winnington boarded the leading vessel, demanding surrender. In his own words, ‘I bade them strike in the name of the King of England and they bade me shit in the name of the King of England’. After some combat, the Bay Fleet surrendered and was taken to Southampton. This might, or might not, have been a clandestine official put-up job from which the king could easily have distanced himself if it went wrong. There was, at the time, a dispute focused around the preferential privileges given to the Hanse in English ports and the lack of reciprocal arrangements for English traders in the Baltic. At any rate, Hanseatic merchants at London later claimed that the salt seized in this action ended up in English royal warehouses. Understandably, this did not enhance relations between the English and the Hanse, and led eventually to open warfare in 1470–4.143

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In the seventeenth century, and surprisingly until the nineteenth, Barbary pirates144 occupied a significant place in the English consciousness. The conflict between Spain and the North African Arabs did not end with the reconquista of the late fifteenth century. Privateers known as corsairs, from regencies of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa (Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Sallee – part of the independent kingdom of Fez), habitually raided shipping in the Mediterranean and beyond. Their xebecs occasionally sailed as far north as Iceland and captured slaves there, and they operated all around English coasts in the 1600s.145 They took 466 British ships in the period 1609–16 and, as late as 1677–80, 160 were captured. The crews and passengers were sold into slavery. Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for 8 February 1661, records a night spent at the Fleece tavern until ‘4 a-clock telling stories of Algier and the manner of life of the Slaves there’ with a Captain Mootham and Mr Dawes, who had escaped. Slaves were also taken during raids on coastal villages in Cornwall and Devon, and Penzance was raided by Barbary corsairs as late as the mid-eighteenth century. The notion of Christian captives in Muslim countries aroused a frisson of horror in England. In principle the Crown’s ‘Algerian Duty’ could be used for ransoms, but in practice this was rarely done, for the funds were diverted elsewhere. In 1661 the Earl of Sandwich bombarded Algiers, to little effect: Lord Exmouth mounted a similar action in 1816, but still did not entirely eliminate the problem.146 We are accustomed to thinking of North African states before their twentieth-century independence as European colonies; but before nineteenth-century colonization they were formidable opponents. The maritime powers of Islamic North Africa and the West were much more finely balanced in some earlier periods. It is remarkable that, of only 62 UK historic wrecks designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, two have associations with Barbary pirates. They are the Danish warship Wrangels Palais, wrecked on rocks in fog whilst pursuing Barbary pirates off Shetland in 1687, and the Scheidam, a Dutch fluyt of 400 tons which sank in 1684 near Land’s End, after having been recaptured from corsairs by an English ship.147 The possible genetic legacy is also interesting. In 2007 an English child, Madeleine McCann, was abducted from an Iberian holiday resort and, despite extensive police searches and enquiries, has still not been found. At one point in the police investigation a child looking very like her was seen by a witness in Algeria. This was mistaken, but it served to highlight the fact that fair-haired European-looking children are not unusual in North Africa. It should be recalled, however, that European privateers in the sixteenth century often undertook similar freelance attacks against vessels and shore bases of unfriendly states, from which governments could distance themselves. The distinction between formally declared warfare, privateering, and individual piracy was still blurred in the absence of an international court to determine what action was legal and what was not, although the granting of a commission, or ‘letters of marque’, by state authorities conferred a quasi-legitimacy. These often defined the geographical area of operations and the nation whose shipping could be attacked. For the seamen involved, the distinction between privateering and piracy meant the difference in principle, and if captured, between treatment as a prisoner of war or hanging.

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English ports were the home bases for the Watergeuzen, or ‘sea beggars’, companies of seamen from many nations led by Dutch aristocrats, who were commissioned by William I of Orange in 1569 to harry the coasts of the Netherlands, then occupied by the Catholic Spanish forces of Philip II. Elizabeth I denied them the use of English havens in 1572, and they were then obliged to capture new bases – the ports of Brielle and Flushing. The subsequent popular revolt in the Netherlands marks the origin of the free Protestant Dutch nation – as it turned out, England’s opponent in the following century. Sir Francis Drake sailed to the New World in vessels fully armed for war and attacked Spanish colonies, even though war had not been formally declared and he had no Royal Commission. He interpreted the situation loosely, and to his own advantage: ‘the general Licence of the Times would be his justification’.148 An English naval commander could then alternate between official action and more dubious activities. South Devon ports, and especially Dartmouth, were notorious bases for piracy from the medieval period onwards. The Italian bankers of Edward II were robbed and murdered by Dartmouth pirates. In the early fifteenth century, the Hawleys of Dartmouth somehow contrived to be not only officials investigating cases of piracy (John Hawley Senior being a mayor and MP, and John Junior a JP for Cornwall), but also to be under investigation themselves for piracy against Spanish and Scottish vessels.149 In the reign of Elizabeth I the Mayor of Dartmouth, John Plomleigh, was fined £100 for piracy. A group of Dutch pirates was based at Torquay around the same time. On the principle of turning a threat into an opportunity, however, Devon captains whose previous careers may not have borne close examination were commissioned as privateers or fleet captains.150 All this vivid history is frustrating for an archaeologist, for there is so little left to see of it. In Cornwall, a blockhouse at Polruan was related to a defensive chain across the Fowey, reputedly later used by pirates to protect them from official interference, though this seems unsubstantiated. The archaeology of piracy, though – its material culture – is proverbially treasure. Indeed, some remarkably valuable lost pirate treasures are sometimes found. As I write, there is a proposal to raise the pirate treasure from the Wyndah, captained by the Devon-born ‘Black Sam’ Bellamy, which sank off Massachusetts in 1717, laden with the loot of 54 prize ships and estimated to have a value of £200 million.151 There is more subtle material cultural evidence for pirates at home. A seventeenth-century site at Limehouse, London produced, from its rubbish pits, an exceptional assemblage of ceramics, glass and other artefacts from the North-West European and Mediterranean coasts, Turkey, Iran and China. There was even the partial shell of a terrapin. This material was interpreted as booty and the imports from global mercantile trade: as we have seen, the two were still somewhat indistinct in the Early Modern period. Subsequent historical research revealed that the area around the site was populated by seafarers, some of whom were indeed convicted of piracy, or were linked to those who had been.152

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Bodies and souls One of the most striking finds from the Lower Palaeolithic site on the raised beach at Boxgrove, Sussex was a V-shaped scatter of flint-knapping waste which appears to define the seated position of an individual, the debris accumulating between his or her legs as a hand axe was made.1 It is the trace of an activity lasting less than an hour, but preserved intact over some 500,000 years. Subfossil Mesolithic human footprints on intertidal mud at Goldcliff, on the Welsh Severn shore, also allow us to see small fragments of the life and behaviour of individuals: their ages (from around 3 years to adult), the direction of their journey, where they slid in the mud, and where they paused and hesitated.2 To experience that kind of empathetic halfcontact with the long dead is essential if we are to avoid an analytical, distanced and cold view of the past. Historical objectivity is essential, but it should not be at the expense of failing to see ourselves as being part of the same process in which they participated, and which we irretrievably continue. In this chapter I shall attempt to step aside from the grand sweep of environmental and historical processes to address the physical experience and spiritual aspirations of individuals and coastal communities.

BODIES IMMIGRANTS, EMIGRANTS AND PILGRIMS When the landmass that was later to become the British Isles still had a connection to Europe, to speak of immigration or emigration would have been in one sense meaningless. However, rapid relative sea-level rise in the early to mid- Holocene resulted in the territories of Mesolithic communities in the North Sea basin being progressively submerged. This must have led to migration of people into the territories of neighbouring groups on higher ground. How the territorial pressures that would have arisen were resolved is unknowable; but it might not be accidental that the only permanent buildings known from the Mesolithic – stoutly made conical wood-framed huts – seem, at present, to have been constructed, occupied and renewed over a relatively short period in the first half of the eighth millennium bc, at a time of rapid coastal change. Permanent structures, clearly visible in the landscape, may only have been built at a time when there was a need to claim ownership of land against incomers.3 Later, of course, immigration necessitated a sea voyage. We have already considered invaders (Chapter 4) but of course there were also immigrants arriving

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peacefully. In the archaeological record, immigration can be suggested by burials representing rites, and including artefacts, derived from the Continent, but these could just represent the adoption of foreign customs by natives. Isotopic analysis of teeth from ancient burials provides one means of demonstrating long-distance movement of people, as opposed to the spread of artefacts, ideas and practices (see Appendix). For example, the grave of an Early Bronze Age man of 35–50 years, buried with gold earrings, ceramics, an archer’s wrist guard, 15 flint arrowheads, copper knives and other artefacts, was excavated near Amesbury, Wiltshire in 2002 – an exceptionally high-status burial from this period.4 Oxygen isotope analysis indicates that he came from a region of colder climate than that of Britain today – possibly from Central Europe. As techniques are refined, isotopic analysis of other skeletal remains is likely to provide further evidence for prehistoric immigrants. The Roman Empire was the first ‘global’ power present in England and has provided the first written evidence for immigration. The first-century ad Roman army was, as a matter of policy, cosmopolitan and administrators came from all over the Empire. Tombstones and more elaborate monuments range in status from that of C. Julius Alpinus Classicianus (procurator of Britain from ad 61) from the country around Trier, who died at London and was buried there, to the Thracian cavalryman Longinus, buried at Colchester before about ad 49.5 Military and civilian tombstones from the north wall of Chester commemorate people from Gaul, Greece, Dalmatia, Italy, Mesopotamia, Noricum, North Africa, Pannonia, Spain, Syria, Thrace and perhaps other places.6 Many other tombstones of foreigners, by no means all soldiers and officials, but rather permanent residents, have been found at Romano-British sites. As noted in Chapter 4, the first Germanic incomers may have been raiders and mercenaries, but some East Anglian Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have produced women’s brooches of Germanic style, implying that entire communities were settling in the east of England in the fourth century.7 At one of the earliest post-Roman trading ports, the wic at Ipswich, established in the early seventh century, two cemeteries have been excavated.8 Of the 70 burials at the Ipswich Buttermarket cemetery, three individuals had Frankish grave goods originating from the area of modern northern Germany, France and Belgium. Whether these people were Franks, or locals using Frankish metalwork, is at present unknown: but trade from the seventh century around the North Sea and Channel coasts would inevitably have resulted in some immigration. Certainly, by the fourteenth century the trading ports of England included a significant resident alien population. The Dutch, Flemings and French predominated, though there were also Germans at the Hanseatic factories at Boston, King’s Lynn and Ipswich, and Italian merchants at Southampton. Immigration of skilled foreign labour was encouraged by a royal proclamation of 1338, but there was discrimination: aliens could not in principle participate in local government, and were subject to dues and taxes – for example a particular tax on foreign householders of 16 pence per annum at King’s Lynn. London was, of course, the most polyglot city with the largest number of foreigners and so, perhaps, the most inclined towards xenophobia: there were conspicuous attacks on Flemings in 1381

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and on Italians in 1451.9 The traditional xenophobia of the English manifested itself in swindling and extortion by port officials and periodic violence.10 Morey notes the especial dislike of the Flemings, quoting a medieval opinion: ‘they are hoggishe, and drunken wele ataunte. Farewel Flemmynges, hay haro, hay avaunt!’ In other words: foreigners go home. This is, of course, a timeless message, taking various forms and referring to other ways of outlandish behaviour in later centuries. Other immigrant communities disliked have been Jews, Huguenots, my paternal ancestors the Irish, and more recently people from the West Indies, the Indian subcontinent, Africa, Poland and Eastern Europe. Surprisingly, though (from the perspective of the early twenty-first century), before the Second World War about 95 per cent of the British population consisted of white natives, and this did not change significantly in the immediate aftermath of war, though there had been an influx of Jewish refugees, and Poles, Czechs and others who had served in the Allied forces. The impact of the British Nationality Act 1948, which granted British citizenship to the entire population of the Empire, took decades to have any significant effect, though eventually it resulted in large-scale immigration with widespread political and social consequences. More recently, the opening of European borders to encourage a free flow of labour has likewise aroused controversy.11 Occasionally exotic immigrants have been regarded more benignly, although some did not live long. Pocahontas, the Native American ‘princess’, who saved the life of the early Virginian colonist Captain John Smith, is buried in St Giles’ churchyard at Gravesend. She travelled to England with her settler husband, John Rolfe, and died there in her twenties ‘of a fever’ in 1617. Her grave is lost, but she has a modern statue.12 Transients, and especially foreign seamen, have long been a cause of trouble. At Southampton during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, cases involving sailors from Genoa, Venice and Florence engaged in the wool trade were tried in the town court. Frequently these related to fights between men from those cities, but the ostler of the Crown Tavern was fined for theft from an Italian in 1492, and there was a street brawl around the same time involving a black drummer from a ship of Venice, the beadle of Godshouse and two Venetian oarsmen. In 1430 negotiation between a fleet commander, the cultured Luca di Maso degli Albizzi of Florence, and the city authorities of Southampton defined mutually acceptable rules of behaviour, in an attempt to avoid trouble.13 Although there is abundant historical evidence for immigration in the Early Modern period, archaeological and documentary evidence for specific immigrant groups can be limited, especially where they were debarred from property ownership. Between about 1570 and 1630, however, there was an immigration of Dutch and Walloon ‘Strangers’ to Norfolk, escaping anti-Protestant religious persecution in the Low Countries, and this has left an archaeological trace. At a site in Botolph Street, Norwich, one of the poorest parts of the city, rubbish pits produced abundant Low Countries and German ceramics. In other areas of Norwich, imported ceramics would indicate affluence, but here the pottery is likely to have been the personal property of Strangers.14 Immigrants brought elements of their cultures to England, but emigrants, by

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definition, left all behind. Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed attempt to establish a colony in 1585 at Roanoke in North Carolina was succeeded by the lasting colony of the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed at Cape Cod in 1620. Plymouth was the final port of embarkation for the Pilgrim Fathers, still celebrated by Americans as their founding population.15 Later emigration from Europe developed from fleets of a few small vessels carrying hundreds of people, to population movements of hundreds of thousands per year. The shipping companies that conveyed emigrants to the New World and the British Empire in the nineteenth century, and later, had their origins in an early example of government privatization. Overseas mail up until 1837 was carried by Admiralty sailing packets, but it became apparent that private steamship companies could deliver faster and cheaper. An annual subsidy of £29,600 was paid to the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company to carry mail to Spain and Gibraltar. Subsequently this company was awarded contracts to the Mediterranean and the East, changing its name accordingly to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, more familiarly known as P&O. Passengers followed, and its business had expanded by 1851 to cover the Far East and Australia. The Liverpoolbased shipping company of Samuel Cunard gained the contract to serve North America. This adversely affected Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s innovative notion of an integrated transport system from London, via the Great Western Railway, to Bristol and thence to America on his transatlantic liner, the SS Great Britain.16 Liverpool later became the main port for conveying European emigrants to America and Canada – principally Irish (especially after the famine of 1845), Scots, Welsh, English and Scandinavians but also people from southern and central Europe.17 Ford Madox Brown’s painting The Last of England (1855) now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, captures something of the mood of nineteenth-century emigrants, in a year when emigration was at its peak and perhaps 350,000 people left Europe. Brown’s image is of a middle-class couple, based on himself and his wife Emma, departing with some solid expectations though with bitter regrets. It plainly does not depict the abject poverty that led so many to leave. However, seaborne travellers were conveyed by commercial enterprises long before that. Pilgrimage in the medieval period, as we know from Chaucer, was more than just an exercise of religious devotion, but the equivalent of a holiday. The Shipmen of Bristol in the fourteenth century provided a continuous summer service to the ports of Galicia for pilgrims destined for the shrine of Santiago de Compostella. As many as 30 English pilgrim ships at a time anchored in the harbour of La Coruña and Weymouth ship owners received licences to carry pilgrims to Santiago in 1413 and 1428.18 An account of William Wey, who left from Plymouth in 1456, records that ships left from Portsmouth, Bristol, Weymouth and Lymington at the same time. His voyage lasted four days, though it could take seven or more. The pilgrims, packed on board, had an uncomfortable, seasick and, at times, perilous voyage: Wey advised travellers to find a place on the poop, for below it was ‘right evil and smouldering hot and stinking’.19 Despite these privations, some bold souls went onward as far as the Holy Land in Venetian vessels. Pilgrims, like later holiday-makers, returned with souvenirs, in the form of pewter badges. The

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medieval pilgrim badges from the Thames at London are very diverse in origin, including the scallop shell of Santiago de Compostela, the feather of St Barbara, the rose of St Dorothy, the sword of St Paul, St Richard of Chichester bestowing a blessing, the flowering heart of St Joseph of Arimathea and, above all, those of St Thomas of Canterbury.20 Excavations at Bugle Street, Southampton have also produced badges of St Thomas, from a stratified context of thirteenth-century date.21 In the north-west, pilgrim badges from the site of Meols, Merseyside are from shrines in England, Germany, southern France and Rome.22

CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND IMPRISONMENT Some people were less willing voyagers. The Georgian legal system included an unprecedented number of new capital statutes, the most notorious of which, 9 Geo I, c 22, prescribed capital punishment for over 200 offences, many of which would now merit no more than a fine. In practice, execution was frequently commuted to transportation to the New World colonies. However, after the American War of Independence, transportation to North America was no longer an option. As a temporary measure to house the growing number of condemned prisoners the Hulks Act (16 Geo III, c 43) was introduced, permitting the use of hulks as prisons – decommissioned naval vessels, lacking masts or rigging, and commonly in a very poor state of repair. Contemporary illustrations depict sheltered English havens full of penal hulks. This expedient was linked to schemes of works to be undertaken by prisoners. A more permanent solution was to establish a new penal colony, which was eventually achieved in New South Wales, from 1788.23 Living conditions on the prison hulks were atrocious, and the diet was equally bad. Some prisoners in the Woolwich hulks, destined for transportation, spent six months (October 1794– April 1795) without any kind of fresh food at all: inevitably scurvy and other diseases saved the government the expense of transporting many of them.24 The archaeological evidence for all this is remarkably slight. Substantial post alignments in Langstone harbour appear to represent remains of a jetty, possibly associated with the prison hulks that were moored in the harbour in the early nineteenth century. Components of a hulk, probably the rather ironically named La Fortunée, broken up in 1822 by convicts, have been recovered. 25 But transportation in the eighteenth century may seem comparatively merciful compared to earlier practice. In medieval Scilly a peculiarly nasty and hopeless death was prescribed for miscreants: ‘When anyone is attainted of any felony, he ought to be taken to a certain rock in the sea [the Bishop Rock], with two barley loaves and one pitcher of water. Upon the same rock, they leave the same felon until by the flowing of the sea he is swallowed up.’26 Military discipline also called for imprisonment. Graffiti in the guardroom cell at Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth include a complaint by a Corporal C. Smith of his ‘bad quarters’, while another writer refers, with remarkable restraint, to ‘This B Hole’. Smith’s inscription, in neat Roman capitals, includes the number 32 – his age or the date? Graffiti are obviously difficult to date, but these appear to be

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early nineteenth century. The cell also has a graffito illustration of a three-masted sailing vessel – possibly drawn from memory of shipping in the Solent, or of prison hulks in Langstone harbour, and apparently of late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century date. Prisoners of war were held at a number of strongholds, for example Portchester Castle, where Frenchmen held during the Seven Years’ War left inscriptions dating between 1756 and 1761.27 Portchester was used for holding prisoners of war from the time of the Dutch Wars, in 1665, until near the end of the Napoleonic Wars, in 1814. The occupants were originally held in the confines of the Inner Bailey of the medieval castle, but a riot in 1743 led to the development of fenced ‘airing areas’ and barracks in more open areas of the Outer Bailey – the original Roman fort. The ground plans of these buildings have been defined by geophysical survey and can be seen on the ground as low rectangular rises – which are particularly well defined in late spring, due to the differential growth of daisies. In the latter years of the camp, prisoners developed a lace-making industry and even had a theatre company and orchestra, which gave a performance of the Barber of Seville, attended by residents of Portsmouth and the surrounding area, in the basement of the keep. The medieval Wool House at Southampton also housed French prisoners in both the Seven Years’ and Napoleonic Wars. Later prisonerof-war camps have been defined by means of historical records and contemporary aerial photographs: for example, the camp at North Lynn Farm, King’s Lynn was built, on photographic evidence, between June 1945 and April 1946, and features rows of huts and other buildings for prisoners and military personnel, guard towers, water tanks, and even a formally laid-out parterre and knot garden.28 At commercial ports, the transfer of merchandise from ships to quays on lighters, rather than direct unloading to docks, provided ample opportunities for theft. In his Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames Patrick Colquhoun describes the situation in the late eighteenth century.29 Besides small-scale chronic pilferage from unsecured cargoes as they were transshipped, unloaded or stored, there were ‘river pirates’ who cut lighters adrift and unloaded the merchandise, ‘night plunderers’ who also specialized in emptying lighters nocturnally, and widespread bribery of crews and revenue officers to ‘look the other way’. This was one factor which resulted in the construction of secure, enclosed docks and warehousing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the seventeenth century, the royal dockyards were also synonymous with corruption and theft. Dockyard officials – most notoriously the master shipwrights of Chatham, the Pett family – were frequently engaged in fraud and bribery. Even Samuel Pepys, generally considered a man of probity, was not above accepting gifts from hopeful contractors. On a more petty level, dockyard workers had the perquisite of ‘chips’ – timber less than 36 inches long – and some went further by using their spare time to saw up usable wood.30 The high walls built around the dockyards were an attempt to improve security and control pilfering from naval stores. At Portsmouth an elegant oval plaque records that ‘This Wall was begun the 4th June and finished ye 13 December 1711’. Others of us since then who have employed builders may have wished to commemorate their departure in similar grand style.

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SLAVERY The least willing voyagers of all must have been slaves. Slavery is apt to be seen by some modern English people as a brief historical aberration on the part of Britain, mercifully ended by abolition in 1807. In fact slavery has been, and still is, a vicious worldwide practice, and far older than the Atlantic ‘triangular trade’ in trade goods, African human bodies, and sugar that developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Roman Empire, of which Britannia was one province, utterly depended upon servile labour: slaves were then the machines of their age, attending to all necessary basic tasks. Slavery was also a commonplace institution in Anglo-Saxon England. The trade in Irish slaves at Bristol in the eleventh century, for example, is condemned in a letter of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester.31 Skulls from Late Saxon cemeteries at Norwich and North Elmham in Norfolk, both probably female, show negroid African morphological features.32 Although Anglo-Saxons generally had Anglo-Saxon slaves, it is not impossible that these women reached East Anglia via trade routes from Africa to Western Europe. It worked both ways, of course, before England became powerful. Pope Gregory’s enquiry about fair-haired slaves for sale in the market at Rome, his being informed that they were Angli (English), his punning response that they were non Angli sed Angeli (not English but angels), and moreover that these people should be rescued from their barbarous paganism, is famous and might even be true; but no one has ever questioned that there were English slaves in sixth-century Rome. We should also recall the many crews of English ships captured by Barbary pirates in the seventeenth century, besides people seized from West Country coastal villages around the same time. The men and older women would have gone into various types of commercial or domestic servitude: the prettier girls and boys would have had another destination (see Chapter 4). They all have no voice. By the early seventeenth century, trade with Virginia (for tobacco) and the West Indies (for sugar) had developed at Bristol.33 The triangular trade, carrying ‘trade goods’ to West Africa, collecting slaves, carrying them to the Caribbean, and returning to port with sugar and rum, was a somewhat later development. In 1725 Bristol ships carried some 17,000 slaves from Africa, but congestion and limited berthing led to a decline later in the eighteenth century, and transfer of business to Liverpool. In 1807 Liverpool ships carried more than 50,000 slaves to the West Indies, just before abolition.34 The port of Whitehaven was developed initially for the export of salt and coal, but by the eighteenth century it also had an involvement in the tobacco and slave trades.35 The callousness of the trade seems inconceivable to us now, but was everyday business for many people then. T. Aubrey, who wrote The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea-Man’s Vade Mecum in 1729, referring to the deaths of slaves in transit, asks: What a devil makes these plaguey Toads dye so fast?36

His request to his company for some palm oil, a staple of the West African diet,

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might have been actuated by compassion, but might have had more to do with carrying a complete live cargo to its destination. Slavery was nominally abolished by the French National Assembly in 1794, though this was later cynically rescinded by the tyrant Bonaparte. Abolition followed in Denmark in 1803, whilst the United States banned import of slaves in 1807, at the same time as Britain abolished slavery entirely. Other European nations subsequently followed suit.37 The Abolition Bill of 1807 removed one side of the triangular trade, and the West Indies sugar trade collapsed in 1809, when any remaining slaves were emancipated. After abolition, and for the rest of the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy mounted an international campaign, costly in British lives and resources, to suppress the trade from both west and east Africa.38 The surviving material cultural evidence for the slave trade in England is surprisingly limited.39 Some affluent men might not have wanted the basis of their wealth to be known in polite society, even before abolition. Some of the grander town houses in Bristol, including those in Queen Square (built 1699–1727), were occupied by men involved in the slave trade. No. 29, now the South-West English Heritage Regional Office, was built by Henry Bright, a merchant, slave trader and Mayor of Bristol. In Liverpool all of the city’s mayors from 1787 to 1807 were participants, and Liverpool Town Hall (1754) has a frieze depicting African images. However, even by the late eighteenth century, there was a resident English black population of perhaps 10–15,000, including Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, who advocated abolition from their own experience. There are a few surviving tombstones of Africans from this time, including: the grave of Sambo (1736) at Sunderland Point;40 Myrtilla (1705) at Stratford-on-Avon; Scipio Africanus (1720) at Henbury near Bristol;41 Philip Scipio at Werrington, Cornwall (c. 1784); and Rasselas Belfield (1822). Belfield’s monument reads: A Slave by birth I left my native land And found my freedom by Britannia’s Strand. Blest Isle! Thou Glory of the Wise and Free. Thy Touch alone unbinds the Chains of Slavery.

This might not seem like many memorials, but of course the overwhelming majority of native English people from this period have no visible grave today. Only the favoured few were given a stone headstone, and many of those have been destroyed since they were emplaced.

LIVING CONDITIONS Working and living conditions for native English people were not necessarily much better than those of slaves, even in the nineteenth century. Settlements for dockyard workers grew up around the royal docks, and spread relentlessly from the eighteenth century onwards onto previously uninhabited areas. Industrial suburbs included Portsea (Portsmouth), Brompton (Chatham) and Bluetown

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(Sheerness), while earlier densely populated areas at Old Portsmouth, Woolwich and Deptford remained in use. Contemporary accounts of these areas are far from favourable.42 The working week at naval dockyards was normally six days, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the winter, sunrise to sunset in summer, but supervision often appears to have been lax, so life for workers might have been easier than it seems at first sight. There were early industrial-injury benefits and superannuation for the aged. These originated, at Chatham, from charitable institutions established by Sir John Hawkins after the defeat of the Armada in 1588. One was a pension scheme ‘for the perpetual relief of . . . mariners, shipwrights and seafaring men’ wounded or maimed in official service, funded partly by subscriptions from dockyard workers, partly from rents on property. The income was kept in the ‘Chatham Chest’, an iron-bound oak chest with five separate locks, but this system of security could be breached: there was some diversion of funds for personal enrichment, most notoriously by Robert Mansel, James I’s Treasurer of the Navy. The chest itself is now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Hawkins also established an almshouse at Chatham to house 12 pensioners. The original buildings, erected in 1592, were rebuilt in the eighteenth century. At their entrance was a gate with the biblical inscription:‘The poor ye shall always have with you to whom you may do good yf ye wyl.’ Despite such initiatives poverty remained a long-term problem. The Chatham Parish Workhouse, first built in 1725, housed the destitute, but the establishment of unions of parishes from 1834 to ‘rationalize’ the system led to a particularly cruel twist. Only women now were sent to the Chatham workhouse, whilst their children and husbands went to separate workhouses in Rochester. Not only were they all paupers, but they lost their family support as well.43 The old adage ‘as cold as charity’ comes to mind. MacDougall discusses the registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths at Chatham from 1575 to 1588.44 They all show a direct correlation with the arrival in town of new drafts of dockyard workers, after whose arrival all register entries increased. Of course, the arrival of a ship in port was always an opportunity for the ‘ladies of the town’ to employ themselves. ‘Jack Nasty-Face’, the pseudonymous author of Nautical Economy (1836), records the arrival of a flotilla of small boats around a ship newly anchored at Spithead in July 1808.45 The boats from Portsmouth, besides offering fresh provisions, were full of women. Over the course of the day around 450 women came on board, the crew being some 600, ‘nearly all young men’. The writer, evidently an officer and a cultured man, reflects of the prostitutes that ‘we cannot reproach them for their abject condition, lest this startling question should be asked of us: who made us so? . . . my constant prayer to heaven is that my daughters may never step a foot on board a man-of-war’. Thompson quotes the First World War sailor James Cox: I loved Chatham. If you was inclined to run after women, you knew all the places such as Mother Knott’s and the Dover Castle, where you met the women you wanted to see. In fact some of them had long standing arrangements with prostitutes, and were very friendly with them . . . And on top of that there was the homosexual people, you see

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. . . I’ve found among prostitutes very, very good women, irrespective of their lapses of propriety you might say . . . The sailors used to treat them straight, and they used to treat us straight.46

Enlightened attitudes to industrial housing and living conditions developed in the nineteenth century. Lever Brothers established their soap factory, named Port Sunlight, in 1888 on the Wirral Peninsula, in Cheshire. Port Sunlight village survives as a model village in ‘Old English’ style comprising three to four bedroom houses with gardens, besides schools, a museum, a library and a cottage hospital. The village pub was originally unlicensed, for this was planned as a temperance community.47

FOOD Information on the diet of prehistoric populations can be obtained by analysis of stable isotopes in human bone. In particular, carbon isotope ratios in bone collagen give an indication of the relative importance of marine and terrestrial foods.48 In Denmark, where several Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic cemeteries have been investigated, stable isotope evidence indicates a shift away from marine foodstuffs at around 4000 bc, coinciding with the introduction of farming. Very few Late Mesolithic burials are known from Britain, but some limited studies of Mesolithic human bone from Oronsay, Scotland indicate a marine-based diet (as would be expected on an island), whereas studies of Neolithic human bone from English sites consistently demonstrate a diet based on land foodstuffs – including meat from domestic animals, and cereals. The scale of this dietary change is uncertain, though it seems unlikely that Neolithic populations living on the coast would have neglected fish and shellfish entirely.49 The diets of coastal communities in Early Modern times are recorded to some extent, but sailors’ diets are much better documented. Rations would not have been drastically dissimilar to what sailors, and their families, ate on land – apart from fresh foodstuffs, of course: fresh provisions were taken on board for short voyages, though these soon ran out, and only dry and preserved food was left.50 As early as 1465, the provisions loaded aboard the carvel Edward Howard at Dunwich are recorded: ‘4 dozen bread, four barrels of beer, rye, saltfish, fresh fish, a cheese and the flesh of a whole beast’, supplemented by further provisions, including ale, taken on at Walberswick later.51 A naval diet of 1615 comprised per day: 1 lb of biscuit, 1 gallon beer, 3 oz of oatmeal, 4 oz bacon, 4 oz butter, and 8 oz cheese. The official daily Navy Ration of 1811 consisted of: 1 lb bread, 4.5 oz beef (salted), 2.25 oz pork (salted), 3 oz flour, 0.85 oz sugar, 1.75 oz cheese, and 1 quart beer.52 Beer was a relatively safe drink on land and at sea: water was often untrustworthy. The alcohol content, although low, seems to have been sufficient to inhibit bacterial contamination. A regular intake of eight pints per day in 1615 might sound to some excessive but, drunk over a whole day, it evidently had no perceptible effect on the sailors’ efficiency. These are broadly comparable diets, despite being two centuries apart, providing carbohydrates, fat and protein, and probably sufficient intake of

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calcium, phosphorus, iron and vitamins A, B group and perhaps D. The estimated total calorie intake for the seventeenth-century sailors is 5,250, enough for very active men, but only 2,750 for the nineteenth-century men, which seems puzzling. By the nineteenth century the beer ration had been reduced by 75 per cent, but the loss of calories formerly provided by beer was to some extent offset by a ration of sugar to sweeten tea, which the sailors provided for themselves. Presumably, they must have provided other sorts of supplements as well. The most obvious omission in these naval diets, of course, is fresh fruit and vegetables. The cause of scurvy (a debilitating and ultimately fatal condition resulting from chronic vitamin C deficiency) was much debated at least from the seventeenth century. There was one view that it was in some way related to salt: either exposure to the sea itself, to habitual eating of salted meat, or both. Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley, in his sea journal of 1778–82, adopted another view: that the ‘sea scurvy’ was related to lack of contact with the earth.53 After all, everyone knew at the time that sailors who were not already moribund rapidly recovered when they came on land. He therefore buried sailors suffering from the condition in boxes of soil (originally intended for growing salad crops) on the deck of HMS Jupiter. He claimed that this was effective though no doubt the placebo effect was short-lived. It is surprising that Dr James Lind’s A Treatise on Scurvy (1753), which established the significance of citrus fruit juices, took so long to be generally accepted.54 Even after that, noting the acidity of fruit juices, some physicians concluded that it was acidity itself that was the important factor, so any acid would be effective, even oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid). Despite these examples of what might seem now to us to be oddities, though not altogether daft in the context of the times, it was generally perceived by the later eighteenth century that fruit and vegetables were the key to the problem and in 1795 the Admiralty Board ordered the Victualling Board to supply syrup of lemons to all large blockading fleets, to be drunk with the daily rum ration.55 Supplies, including sauerkraut and lime or lemon juices, were taken on board where possible, and Royal Navy ships raised salt-tolerant salad crops such as cress and mignonette in large trays on deck. One of the many justifiable causes for complaint in the ‘Seamen’s Petition’ during the Spithead ‘mutiny’ of 1797 (more a disciplined strike, in reality) had to do with diet, showing that even ordinary seamen were then aware of its significance. Among other things they requested that ‘there might be granted a sufficient quantity of vegetables . . . which we greviously [sic] complain and lay under the want of ’.56 The French and Spanish navies did not adopt an anti-scorbutic policy at this time, nor allow for adequate rationing in general, which had a material effect on the health and effectiveness of their crews. Just before Trafalgar, the French admiral Villeneuve wrote to his Minister of Marine: ‘I will not venture to describe our condition. It is frightful.’57 Nevertheless, service in the British Home and Channel postings was not healthy. Of approximately 100,000 deaths of seamen in the period 1793–1815, around 50–62 per cent were attributed to disease, compared with 6–8 per cent to enemy action.58 During the Middle Ages on ‘fysshe days’ defined by the Church (notably in Lent and on Fridays), meat eating was prohibited and was replaced by fish, usually

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salted. Of course, a large part of the population ate very little meat in the first place. Besides the ostensibly penitential significance of this practice, it would have had economic effects on coastal fisheries and imports, besides beneficial dietary effects in terms of supplying vitamins A and D and fish oils. By the second half of the sixteenth century there were additional reasons for increasing the number of fish days. William Harrison writes of the introduction of new fish days ‘not for religious sake or publike order’, but ‘for the preservation of the navie and maintenance of convenient numbers of seafaring men’. William Cecil in 1563 proposed an additional fish day, on Wednesday, and this was implemented in an Act of 1563 (95 Elizabeth, c 5). Punishments for non-compliance were severe: a fine of £3 or three months’ imprisonment. Despite this, enforcement was difficult and by about 1585 attempts at modifying diet by statute were abandoned.59 Public resistance to government dietary initiatives (such as the current ‘five a day’ publicity campaign intended to increase fruit and vegetable consumption) thus goes back a long way. One consequence of the transatlantic trade in sugar, related in part to the new enthusiasm for tea drinking, was dental decay. We can only view Hogarth’s illustrations of London life in the eighteenth century with horror: such pain, so many extractions, and so much bad breath! Food was also widely adulterated. Alum and copperas were commonly used as food adulterants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: copperas was used to maintain a head in beer, producing a head ‘like a Colly Flower’, and alum was used in bread to improve the colour of inferior flour.60 The long-term effects of consumption are hard to assess, although chronic intake of aluminium can hardly have been beneficial. Attacks by German U-Boats on British merchant vessels from 1917, and the British blockading restrictions on German imports, had severe effects. Although supplies of contraband goods continued to reach Germany in neutral vessels, there were effects on morale and particularly the munitions industry. By the summer of 1916, civilians in Bonn received an official ration of 1,350 calories and 31 g of protein daily, inevitably leading to a black market. This is a near-starvation diet. The situation was rather better in England: ‘meatless days’ were brought in, and ‘war bread’ – a high-extraction product (actually probably healthier by twentyfirst-century standards, including a high proportion of fibre, though with a lower carbohydrate content) – was introduced. The average civilian calorie intake by the end of the war was around 3,360, compared to 3,450 calories in 1914. Despite reasonably effective rationing from 1917, there was scurvy in some towns when the potato crop failed in 1916. The word ‘vitamin’ was coined in 1912 by Casimir Funk, but the significance of vitamins was still not generally appreciated. It is probable that, amongst other stresses of war, the devastating influenza epidemic of 1918 was partly related to inadequate diet.61

WASTE MANAGEMENT Continuing with the basics of life, disposal of excreta, human and animal, has been a long-term difficulty. Urban waste disposal from London in the nineteenth century,

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when horses deposited huge quantities of dung on the streets, was to an extent managed by shipping ‘London muck’ in sailing barges to coastal farms in Essex and Kent for use as manure, with return cargoes of hay, livestock and other agricultural products. The unusual circular earthwork known as ‘the Shiplock’ on the estuary shore at Great Wigborough, Essex probably relates to this trade. The name is curious and unexplained – it did not serve ships and there is no lock: it might originally have been the ‘Sheeplock’ or perhaps the ‘Shitlock’. Rural agricultural areas always benefited from adjacent cities and fisheries: pilchard-processing waste was used as agricultural manure in Cornwall.62 Human sewage was more problematic. At London, the largest city in England since the Middle Ages, the old methods of disposal in cesspits or latrine pits, periodically emptied, or by direct discharge into the Thames, proved inadequate for a developing metropolis. This fact was made only too plain by the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858, when the Houses of Parliament were virtually uninhabitable. The city required better services, and consequently the Metropolitan Board of Works commissioned Sir Joseph Bazalguette to construct a new system in the 1860s. It was both a sewage and drainage system, with outfalls at Crossness and Beckton. Main sewage systems were constructed during the nineteenth century at all the larger coastal towns, but this raised problems of maintaining flow at some locations. Portsmouth is built on Portsea Island, at a maximum elevation of only 3.6 m od, so gravity flow of sewage and surface-water drainage to the sea was inadequate for large populations. The key infrastructure component permitting development of the nineteenth-century suburbs for dockyard workers east and north of Old Portsmouth was steam pumping of effluent.63 The magnificent James Watt & Co. beam pump of 1887, housed in a splendid engine house at Eastney, survives as a temple to Victorian sanitation. Sewage was originally discharged untreated at many towns by long outfalls, but pre-treatment became customary in the twentieth century, and the more stringent requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive will accelerate the trend towards reduction of marine pollution. Offshore dumping of untreated sewage waste was eliminated by an EU Directive of 1999. Other types of discharge to the sea have included industrial and mining pollutants, fertilizer runoff, ships’ ballast, colliery and other mining waste, oil and oil/ mud slurries from oil rigs, and harbour dredgings – often themselves contaminated with organic and heavy-metal pollutants.64 In places dumped and discharged materials have had significant effects on coastal geography. The increased sediment load of several rivers in Cornwall, related to exploitation of alluvial tin deposits, caused problems of harbour silting, and in the Tyne dedicated ‘ballast quays’ had to be deployed from the seventeenth century to avoid the effects on navigation of ballast dumped by returning colliers.65

DISEASE AND DISASTER It is so easy to forget one cardinal fact about the past, looking back from our era of more or less efficient sanitation and health services: many people, much of the time, suffered from clinical and sub-clinical diseases, especially in the crowded and

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unsanitary ports. Many of them died young from acute infectious diseases that now would be treatable with antibiotics. Analysis of the contents of medieval and post-medieval latrine pits shows that intestinal infection with parasitic nematodes – whipworms and mawworms – was very common.66 This was not life-threatening, but it would have been unpleasant and debilitating. A high infant mortality rate was expected, though feared. There is no reason to think that people in the past felt their losses less than we do, but they incorporated the imminence of death into their perception of life, as we do not. When the Humberside poet Andrew Marvell wrote ‘To his Coy Mistress’ in the seventeenth century he was actually being realistic, not just invoking special pleading to get her to bed: But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near. And yonder, all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity

The arrival of the Black Death to England, at Melcombe Regis near Weymouth on 7 July 1348, is recorded by William of Malmesbury. Estimates of mortality vary widely in different sources, but probably somewhere between 30 and 60 per cent of the population of Europe died in the subsequent epidemic: as much as 80 per cent are recorded to have died in some communities. Subsequently, plague remained an episodic hazard: for example, plague outbreaks are recorded at Weymouth in 1604, 1607, 1624 and 1625, and there was also a typhoid outbreak in 1691, after English prisoners were repatriated from France. This was not unusual: ports were always vulnerable to foreign shipborne disease. The royal dockyards suffered, as many places in England did, from the plague of 1666–7, which peaked at Chatham in July 1666.67 Attempts at infection control included prohibition of landings by vessels from ports known to have epidemics, and the establishment of isolation hospitals, for example at Baiter, Poole68 and on the Isles of Scilly at St Helen’s, where there are the ruins of an isolation hospital built in 1764, known as the Pest House. This was built after an Act of Parliament of 1754 required that any plague-ridden ship north of Cape Finisterre bound for England must drop anchor off this island.69 In fact, it appears that the hospital was rarely used, although a skeleton found in dune sands nearby is said to have been ‘of African or Asian type’, and could have been that of a sailor. Outside Plymouth, on the promontory known then as Howe Stert – later Mount Batten – wooden pest-houses were constructed during an outbreak of plague in 1625. Shallow seventeenth-century graves have been encountered in the area during building works and in archaeological trenches.70 Islands, and isolated headlands, were ideal locations for isolating persons afflicted with other diseases of one sort or another, for they could be confined there either for the good of society or for their own good. At Sheepstall in the Fal estuary are the archaeological remains of a deserted medieval leper village.71 What was termed ‘leprosy’ in the medieval period most probably related to a variety of disfiguring skin conditions, including true leprosy, the disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae.

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Leprosy is not a very contagious disease, but isolation of sufferers was then the only means of containing any spread. Isolation has been judged the best policy for other afflictions. On Osea Island in Essex, accessible from the mainland only at low tide via a causeway, a sanatorium for alcoholics was established in the 1920s, and recent press reports suggest that a facility for people with drug addictions might be developed there in future. The Kent and Essex estuaries, and Romney Marsh, were in the past notoriously unhealthy due to the prevalence of ague (malaria). Daniel Defoe comments on the young bloods who came from London for shooting in the Blackwater estuary during the early eighteenth century that ‘those gentlemen who are such lovers of sport . . . often return with an Essex ague on their backs, which they find a heavier load than the wildfowl they have shot’.72 It was certainly difficult to recruit the workforce for the royal dockyard at Sheerness due to its reputation as an unhealthy posting. Besides the risk of contracting malaria, Sheerness had no natural water supply, and during the eighteenth century water had to be shipped in.73 Water supply was a problem at many other ports. Weymouth, for example, was originally supplied by brackish wells until fresh water was piped from springs at Southdown Common in 1593.74 Local water supplies for the expanding dockyard suburbs around Portsmouth, too, proved inadequate and in 1811, the Old Pumping Station at Farlington ‘afforded the first public water supply to Portsmouth from outside sources’. In 1832 Asiatic cholera, from which Prince Albert later died, arrived in Chatham and killed more than 300, originating from a prison hulk in the Medway. The spread of this disease was directly related to poor sanitation, permitting infection from open, faecally contaminated water sources: once infected, the prognosis was poor. Add to that diseases such as smallpox, typhus and typhoid, and it is not surprising that Chatham had one of the highest mortality rates in the country in the nineteenth century.75 Besides disease, there was disaster on the coast. In the churchyard of St Mary’s, Happisburgh, Norfolk a large mound to the north of the church marks the burial place of 119 crew from HMS Invincible, wrecked on Haisbro’ Sands in 1801 whilst voyaging to join Nelson’s fleet at Copenhagen. Thirty-two crew members of HMS Peggy (1770) are also buried there, together with the most of the men of the revenue cutter HMS Hunter (1804) and six crew from the barque Young England (1876).76 At present, no coastal protection is proposed for Happisburgh, and the Shoreline Management Plan for this coast indicates that the churchyard will be on the eroding cliff edge somewhere between 20 and 50 years hence (see Chapter 6). Unless policy changes it will ironically be the land, not the sea, that first ‘will give up her dead’ and the north part of the churchyard will go first. Wyke Regis churchyard includes the graves of shipwreck victims from Deadman’s Bay, including men lost during the wrecking of Admiral Christian’s fleet in 1795, but churchyard burial was not invariable; 208 other bodies were buried on the shore at Chesil Beach where they were washed up.77 All around the country there are graves and memorials to lost mariners. They range in scale from the massively monumental (such as the columns erected for Nelson at Great Yarmouth and London, the Navy War Memorial at

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Portsmouth and the Dover Patrol Memorial), to lesser stone monuments (such as that recording the loss of the lifeboat Eliza Adams of Wells-Next-the-Sea in 1880), to simple brass plaques commemorating fishermen or fishing crews.78 Perhaps the loneliest is the stone and plaque at Porth Hellick on the Isles of Scilly, recording the place where the body of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell was found after his flagship HMS Association was wrecked on the Gilstone Rocks on the night of 22 October 1707. There is a legend that he reached shore alive and was murdered by a local woman for his valuable ring. However, it seems unlikely that he could have survived the wreck, and the case is unproven.

HEALTH, RECREATION AND FUN Paradoxically, although the coast was a disease-ridden and hazardous place, it was there that some of the earliest moves towards active promotion of health began. England’s seaside resorts had their origins in the belief that sea-water bathing and sea air were beneficial to well-being. As early as the sixteenth century, physicians such as Mulcaster recommended swimming in the sea for a remarkable variety of afflictions – including headache, dropsy, skin conditions and, remarkably, ‘falling away of either legge or any other parte’.79 Mineral springs were discovered at Scarborough in 1620, leading to the town’s development of a spa, and the health cure included drinking sea water.80 By 1734 visitors were lodging in some of the new houses recently built around the harbour. At around the same time visitors from London were travelling by ship or stage coach to stay at Margate. Brighton had a theatre and baths by the 1760s, and visits by the Duke of Gloucester in 1765 and the Prince of Wales in 1783 established a long-term royal link. At all coastal resorts, an elaborate infrastructure developed to serve the needs of health seekers: mobile bathing machines and bathing rooms (for changing and the preservation of modesty), bathhouses (providing cold and hot sea-water baths) and sanatoria (beginning with the General Seawater Bathing Infirmary of 1793–6 at Margate). However, not all 24 hours in the day could be spent in the pursuit of health. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century resorts had social centres, including circulating libraries, assembly rooms and theatres.81 By the end of the eighteenth century, there were resorts on many coasts with easy communications to cities and large towns, and growth continued into the nineteenth century, usually around historic towns and fishing ports – though other resorts such as Southport and Bournemouth were entirely new developments financed by local landowners.82 In the north-west, Blackpool expanded from the old core, whereas St Anne’s, Morecambe and Fleetwood were planned resorts.83 A reliable market led to expansion of specialist fisheries: Morecambe Bay prawns, for example, were caught by prawners operating from Arnside. Prawns and shrimps were an indispensable part of the Victorian seaside holiday afternoon tea.84 Road improvements in the early nineteenth century improved access to many resorts but the impact of the railways was more profound, for cheap and efficient transport made day trips by less affluent visitors possible, especially from the 1850s

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onwards. Two pieces of legislation further encouraged resort development: the Bank Holidays Act 1871 and the Holidays with Pay Act 1938 – although in fact a week’s paid holiday was provided by some employers as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there were some backwaters. Large-scale tourism developed late on the Suffolk coast – from the 1870s. Besides the region’s late start, the fact that resorts such as Aldeburgh and Southwold were served only by branch railway lines – at Southwold a narrow-gauge line – and were remote from the major cities meant that a tourist industry comparable in scale to that of the South Coast never developed. Southwold, however, belatedly followed the trend by building one of the last piers in the country, in 1900, principally to land steamer passengers from London. A uniquely genteel type of resort developed there.85 During the twentieth century coastal sanatoria were established at many locations, to reap the benefits of sunshine, light and air, while lidos – originating from simple open-air pools, but later incorporating sun lounges and other facilities – developed from the 1930s in response to the supposed benefits of sunbathing. Overall, better communications, increasing affluence and paid leisure time led to the heyday of the seaside resort from the 1930s through to the 1970s (albeit with an hiatus in the Second World War), but the advent of cheap foreign travel led to decline thereafter.86 In this century some of the most deprived communities in the country are those of former resorts.87 Seaside resorts, originally developed to promote health, are now seen by some as hazardous: there is suspicion of the microbiological state of bathing waters, and some potential visitors are suspicious of the people now housed in the former guesthouses. Nevertheless, many resorts are finding new roles for themselves as conference and retail venues, or as places offering specialist holidays related to water sports, the arts or the environment.88 In terms of surviving historic buildings and structures related to the seaside, the majority are houses, boarding houses and hotels. In the early phases of development existing buildings were adapted, but from the eighteenth century onwards grand and gentry houses and villas, squares, crescents, terraces and, later, bungalows were constructed. Seaside hotels, some of vast proportions, proliferated. There was an enormous diversity of styles, paralleling the prevailing styles of successive periods, though often with a distinctive seaside character. The monstrous Brighton Royal Pavilion of 1815–22, with its eclectic mixture of styles drawn largely from the east, is a grand example, but less pretentious structures are distinctively ‘seaside’, with their elaborate iron balconies, curved bay windows and brightly painted stucco. Modernist architecture, too, found a place by the sea in the twentieth century, as best exemplified by the De La Warr Pavilion (1935) at Bexhill-on-Sea and the Lido at Saltdean (see Figure 14).89 Seaside engineering – as opposed to architectural – features include towers (as at Blackpool and New Brighton), cliff railways, overhead cable cars and cliff lifts, as at Saltburn-by-the-Sea.90 An entire entertainment industry gradually developed, to form the ‘mature’ seaside culture of the twentieth century, including circuses, end-of-the-pier shows, aquaria, funfairs, amusement arcades, cinemas and winter gardens, besides all the beach paraphernalia of Punch and Judy shows, donkey

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Figure 14. The De La Warr Pavillion at Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex of 1935, architects S. Chermayeff and E. Mendelsohn.

rides, sand castle construction and special seaside foods from fish and chips to candy floss. Seaside piers developed from purely functional harbour structures.91 Pleasure cruises from St Katharine’s Dock and Gravesend originated in the early nineteenth century, landing at the pier at Margate, which was replaced in stone after a storm of 1808.92 The wooden pier at Ryde, constructed in 1813 for Portsmouth packets, was another early example. The London tourist trade was also the main factor resulting in pier construction at Southend, where an eventual length of over 450 m was necessary in order to extend across mud- and sand-flats to a suitable berth for tourist vessels. Over 60 piers were constructed between 1860 and 1900. Ultimately, the key to the success of the resorts they served, and the main factor determining the date of construction, was the development of a rail link to major cities, for rail travel eventually replaced sea trips in sailing packets and paddle steamers, and piers largely lost their original function as berths. The nineteenth-century wave of construction led some engineers to specialize, and to develop novel solutions to the problems of building on unstable sands: Eugenius Birch, who had thirteen piers in his portfolio (including Brighton North and West Piers) is perhaps the best known. Clevedon Pier is considered by pier connoisseurs to represent the finest example of form following function. It is supported by tall elegant trestles constructed of slender ironwork, so as to minimize resistance to the tide of the Bristol Channel and accommodate the 14 m tidal range. No longer just landing stages, piers increasingly were provided with theatres, ballrooms and a host of minor amusements in an inimitable and eclectic style; but by the First World War the construction boom

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was over. The pier at Deal, Kent is said to have been the last built, in 1957, but it is an unimpressive structure, largely used for fishing.93 The philanthropist Joseph Cunningham is generally credited with establishing the first holiday camps as early as 1894, when he leased land on the Isle of Man for the use of workers from Liverpool, and this was followed by the development of camps elsewhere by church and secular organizations, including municipal authorities, political organizations and trades unions. Commercial holiday camps began in the 1920s, but rapidly expanded in the 1930s. Originated by the entrepreneurs Captain Harry Warner, Fred Pontin and Billy Butlin, they coincided with the first statutory provision of holiday pay for all workers. Butlins’ camps at Skegness and Clacton set a new standard, with all conceivable facilities on site: meals and a full programme of entertainment and social events for adults and children were provided. Accommodation was in chalets that today might seem Spartan, though the availability of electric light, running water from taps, and sprung mattresses would have seemed luxuries to many at the time. Alongside the established ‘formal’ seaside leisure economy of the old resorts and holiday camps, there was an independent low-budget colonization of under-valued coastal land from the late nineteenth century onwards. Shanty towns grew up from temporary holiday ‘villages’ along large parts of the Sussex coast and elsewhere. Plotlands were a particular form of coastal residential development, arising from twentieth-century agricultural depression, low land values and lack of planning controls. Typically, low-grade farmland was acquired by speculators, divided into rectilinear plots with a basic street system and then sold on to prospective occupants, who were then free to build as they chose on the individual plots.94 The outcome was a cheerfully anarchic assemblage of mainly single-storied structures made of cheap and recycled materials, expressing individual taste without restriction. They were originally intended for holiday use, but many became permanently occupied through time – although at first electricity, street lighting, metalled roads and often sewerage were lacking. There were, and in many cases still are, extensive areas of plotlands on the coasts of East and West Sussex, and along the East Coast from Sheppey to Lincolnshire, with concentrations on Canvey Island and at Jaywick Sands in Essex. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 enabled local authorities to prevent the further spread of plotland settlements, and there was general upgrading of the housing and infrastructure. Perhaps the most whimsical example of plotland planning is at Jaywick.95 Ordnance Survey maps up to the 1925 edition show a D-shaped embayment of the sea wall between Martello Tower C and Lion Point, within which was salt marsh. In 1929, however, the marsh was acquired and developed by F. C. Stedman as the Brooklands Estate, named after the motor racing circuit in Surrey. Stedman was a motoring enthusiast, and the layout within the D is intended to mimic the radiator grille of a Bentley: the parallel streets (forming the vertical bars of the grille) are named after car manufacturers of the time, such as Austin, Alvis and Humber. Though the development was intended only for temporary holiday use, and initially even overnight stays were forbidden, a permanent community developed after the

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Second World War. In 1953, the folly of developing seaward of the main sea wall was shown all too plainly, for 35 people perished during the storm surge of that year. Later attempts by the local council to compulsorily purchase and clear the deteriorating site were unsuccessful and, despite provision of some basic services and some new construction, the estate has so far defied regeneration initiatives. It is fascinating to visit, for it shows a unique and quirky twentieth-century popular set of architectural and decorative styles uninfluenced by ‘high culture’, but it might not be there much longer. After the Second World War, the expansion of coastal caravan sites continued, for they evaded building bye-law restrictions: static caravans are in principle temporary and portable structures. The visual effects are, of course, appalling. Moreover, though supposedly only seasonally occupied, some caravans are in fact occupied year round, in some cases by old or impoverished owners. The nominal seasonal occupation means that, at present, caravan sites do not necessarily figure in coastal risk management assessment, so coastal defences may not be provided for this vulnerable population. The urbanization of the South and East Coasts has continued, with further development of holiday and retirement homes, upgrading of existing holiday camps and expansion of holiday villages, such as those at Hemsby and California in Norfolk. On the South Coast, the net effect of all these types of development by the end of the twentieth century, combined with expansion of the old coastal resorts and ports, was ‘a semi-continuous belt of suburban development between the Isle of Thanet in Kent and Southampton . . . no grand design . . . a string of new residential suburbs and theme parks, mobile homes and caravan sites between’.96 Further west, Bournemouth expanded over Christchurch and Poole, to extend eventually for some 14 miles along the coast. Fortunately, some undeveloped coasts were protected, largely as a result of the National Trust’s ‘Enterprise Neptune’ – a long-term plan to acquire and conserve coastal land – which began in 1965. The latest twentieth- and early twenty-first-century coastal amenity developments have been designed to attract a more affluent and sophisticated market. At Brighton, for example, Rowley sees the town’s seaside location as becoming increasingly marginal.97 Its attractions as an arts and retailing destination, and a centre for conferences and exhibitions, are instead increasingly emphasized. At Brighton, as at many other places, that characteristic late twentieth-century development – the marina, with its associated shops and entertainments – was opened in 1979. Recreational yachting is generally taken to date from 1660, when Charles II was presented with the Mary by the Dutch at the Restoration. The sport flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, partly under royal and aristocratic patronage, when several clubs were established, including the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes of 1833.98 The marina was largely a development of the late twentieth century, providing full facilities, often with expensive waterside housing. Some are de novo, others occupy former commercial harbours, as at Dover and Ocean Village, Southampton. Although marina developments undoubtedly bring much-needed regeneration to resorts, there is a rather depressing sameness

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of design about them. Although notionally ‘maritime’, marinas and the thousands of leisure craft that crowd them have little reference to the local historic environment. Indeed, there is sometimes pressure to ‘tidy up’ what little remains of it – to remove historic hulks, wharves, jetties and industrial buildings. Moreover, since local authority planning responsibilities end at low water and since, until lately, there was no other means of ensuring archaeological mitigation during marine construction, it is likely that many intertidal and subtidal sites and structures have been destroyed without record. In terms of the historic environment, piecemeal, unplanned coastal urbanization and development has been disastrous in many areas. Many historic buildings or structures, originally built in isolated situations, have now lost their original context and setting. At Jaywick, Martello Tower ‘C’ (built c. 1808–21) is now surrounded by holiday chalets. Nelson’s monument at Great Yarmouth – a Grade 1 Listed Building, comprising a 144 ft-high column surmounted by a figure of Britannia, erected in 1817 in an undeveloped area of dunes to the south of the town – now sits unhappily amidst industrial buildings. Surviving archaeological sites in areas just inland of the strip of coastal development have become completely separated from those in the intertidal zone, although they once formed part of the same economic system. In many areas the two can only be linked through surviving ‘bridges’ of undeveloped historic landscape, often in National Trust ownership. Where modern routes, such as the M27 north of Portsmouth, cut right along the coastal edge, there is not even that possibility: there is now a disjunction between the archaeology of Portsdown and of Langstone harbour. Individual archaeological investigations before redevelopment at previously developed coastal sites provide some new information; but overall the urbanized coastal strip has been archaeologically sterilized. It will now be very difficult to develop a coherent understanding of the relationship between the prehistoric and early historic coast and its hinterland in such areas. Designed ‘polite’ landscapes on the coast take various forms. From at least the eighteenth century there were ‘picturesque’ landscapes on the coast, incorporating sea vistas, with the added advantage of allowing recreations such as boating and bathing. In Cornwall, for example, the parklands of houses such as Trebah, Glendurgan and Bosahan had drives and pathways affording views of the Helford estuary. There was a concentration of ornamental walks around the Fowey estuary, associated with mansions and gentry houses.99 At Menabilly, features of the Rashleigh’s park include a Grecian-style daymark, grotto, mausoleum and salt-water bath. Although of Scottish origin, there are also numerous coastal golf links around England – indeed the sport originated on natural ‘links’: coastal dune grassland. Though widely considered by archaeologists to be highly destructive to historic landscapes, some golf courses preserve earlier features, such as the medieval ridge-and-furrow fields on Berwick Links. On a humbler scale, the miniature golf course is a curiously persistent and charming feature of many seafronts. Some people in the early twenty-first century are disposed towards less sedate forms of recreation, though whether these will leave any lasting trace on the historic environment remains to be seen. Surfing, which originated in Hawaii, first achieved

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a high-profile cultural status in California, where it was celebrated in song by the Beach Boys, and spread to England as the enthusiasm of a few individuals in the 1960s. Newquay is now the surfing capital of the UK. ‘Tombstoning’ is defined as ‘jumping from a great height (e.g. a cliff) into the sea as an act of bravado; an “extreme sport” that seems to have begun in the West Country.’100 Aficionados prefer the less emotive term ‘coasteering’. Unsurprisingly, there have been injuries and fatalities.

THE ARTS The influence of the coast and sea on English literature, music and visual arts has been enormous, and would readily form the subject of a book in itself. In Thomas Hardy’s novels the coastal landscape of Wessex becomes a dramatis persona; the misty, ague-ridden coastal marshes of the Thames estuary haunt Dickens’s Great Expectations; and in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman the seascapes of Dorset are involved both in the Darwinian palaeontological subplot and in the lovers’ tragedy. Matthew Arnold takes ‘Dover Beach’ as the starting point for his lament on the loss of religious belief, as the ‘sea of faith’ recedes. In the music of Vaughan Williams and, especially, in the chilling Peter Grimes of Benjamin Britten, based on George Crabbe’s poem The Borough (itself, in turn, based on landscapes around the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk), the sea is ever-present. Seascape paintings range in quality from those of Turner to the productions of amateur water-colourists. The most public of the arts is, of course, sculpture; and in recent years the coast has provided a number of settings which have aroused varying reactions. Antony Gormley’s work Another Place on Crosby Beach consists of 100 cast-iron figures modelled on the artist’s own body, placed along three kilometres of beach. It has a strangely numinous character and, by all accounts, has proved generally popular. Maggi Hambling’s stainless steel sculpture The Scallop on Aldeburgh Beach is of two interlocking broken scallop shells, 4 m high, with the pierced inscription ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’, taken from the libretto of Peter Grimes, as a memorial to Britten. It has aroused controversy locally, and has been vandalized with paint and graffiti. Why one work should be, by all report, regarded with liking and affectionate subversion101 and the other viewed by many with hostility, despite being on a much smaller scale, is puzzling but gives pause for thought. There are several examples of the arts having had a formative influence on the modern physical appearance of historic coastal places. Britten’s long association with the Suffolk coast resulted in the conversion, from 1965 onwards, of the vast mid-nineteenth-century maltings complex at Snape to a concert hall, which hosts music by performers of international repute, and of an adjacent barley store to the Britten–Pears School of Music. This former industrial site on a backwater creek now attracts audiences from far afield, not just for concerts, but to visit associated galleries and shops. Cornwall was a remote area until the westward extension of the railway system in the nineteenth century, after which it attracted artists drawn by the quality of the light, the striking character of the coastal landscape

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and its inhabitants and, more prosaically, the low cost of living. Walter Langley of Birmingham settled in Newlyn in 1882. He was followed by others, who between them established the distinctive post-Impressionist ‘Newlyn School’ in the years before the First World War, although various styles of visual art have continued to flourish at Newlyn and elsewhere in the county. By the early twenty-first century, numerous historic buildings, from net lofts to chapels, had been converted to galleries in many of the coastal harbour towns, besides the prestigious Tate Gallery at St Ives. The character of these places has, of course, been changed: art, and the associated tourism, co-exist besides the traditional working fish harbours. Public folk art on the coast takes the form of boat decoration, murals and, distinctively, shell pictures. The most elaborate example that I know is on a gable-end wall of the Eastney Tavern at Southsea, which is entirely covered with elaborate circular, rectilinear and swirling patterns of cockle, whelk and scallop shells, enlivened with pieces of broken colour-glazed china and a doll’s head, and with the inscription ‘Welcome Stranger and Friend’ picked out in cockle shells. No one seems to know the name of the artist, though he is said, darkly, to have been a ‘Frenchman’. It seems entirely fitting that he should be anonymous. Coastal folk art also deserves its own book. Graffiti, that most urban of public folk arts, does (or should it be ‘do’?) not seem to have developed a distinctively coastal genre, despite being ubiquitous.

SOULS PREHISTORY AND PRE-CHRISTIANS Our coasts have been the scene for experiencing the delights and pains of the body, but they equally have been a focus for spiritual aspirations. Our ancient past is, literally, prehistoric so we have no written records to explain the meaning of certain types of sites and deposits that are regularly found along the coast. Archaeologists can certainly detect, define and describe consistent patterns of behaviour in successive prehistoric periods from what has been left, and we can infer that they related to belief systems; but their ultimate significance has been utterly lost. By around 4000 bc, monumental stone architecture had been developed in Brittany and adjacent areas, consisting of ‘megalithic’ communal tombs and arrays of standing stones or menhirs.102 A bewildering variety of structures still survives, some with astronomical orientations. Similarly diverse megalithic structures are widespread in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and parts of South-West England, and there are even a few in the south-east, around the Medway, for example at Kit’s Coty House in Kent. Cunliffe sees the western ‘megalithic’ culture as an indigenous development transmitted along the western seaways.103 Over most of southern and eastern England and Scotland, there was a different ‘ritual’ tradition involving the construction of largely earthen monuments, including henges, and apparently associated with a type of pottery known as Grooved Ware. This seems to have originated in Orkney around 3200–3100 bc and may have spread southwards

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from there. By around 2800–2700 bc stone construction began at one henge – Stonehenge – at first using ‘bluestones’ imported partly by sea from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales and, later, constructing the familiar trilithons of the site from sarsen stones, probably of more local origin. Around the same time, Britain was influenced by a new practice of generally single burial, probably originating in the Middle Rhine area. These burials are accompanied by a new type of ceramic – the Beaker – and often with rich grave goods of metal, flint, gold and amber. Cunliffe refers to this new phenomenon as the ‘rise of the individual’. Burials of this date, and on into the Middle Bronze Age, were normally under earthen burial mounds or barrows, still rather quaintly named as ‘tumuli’ on Ordnance Survey maps. On the Isles of Scilly, earthen and stone construction was combined in the ‘entrance graves’ that overlook the Atlantic, as at Bant’s Carn (see Figure 15). For every barrow surviving as a mound, many more have been ploughed flat over millennia, and are detectable only from the air as cropmarks, which define the circular ring ditches which surrounded most of them. On the downs of southern England, where the thin soil has only been ploughed since prehistory at times of national adversity and food shortage – mainly in the Napoleonic and Second World Wars – many barrow mounds survive and some overlook the sea. There are coastal barrow cemeteries in Dorset on Nine Barrow Down, Purbeck and the Five Maries at Chaldon Herring – the latter name perhaps indicating continued ritual use into the Christian period.104 In the north, at Easington in southern Holderness, Bronze Age barrows, dated to c. 2000 cal bc, have been excavated on the beach and a large circular ditched site recorded. It might have been a small henge, but was badly eroded: inserted in its ditch were the cremated remains of a young man, dated to

Figure 15. Bant’s Carn, Halangy Down, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly.

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around 2500–2000 cal bc. However, complete excavation was not possible and the sites may by now have been lost to erosion.105 Other barrow groups in the area are located on slightly higher ground, though when constructed they would have been surrounded by coastal wetlands. Along the Northumberland coast, a range of Bronze Age funerary monuments has been excavated, notably at Lower Hauxley, where dune migration has exposed especially well-preserved Bronze Age cairns and cists.106 There is no reason to think that the maritime location of all these sites had any special meaning when they were constructed, and some were certainly further from the contemporary coast when raised. Erosion over some four millennia has brought the coast to them. However, imminent destruction of some by cliff erosion does give a special urgency to excavating and recording them today. Currently a barrow at Peacehaven Down, Sussex, now right on the clifftop, is being excavated before it goes over the edge. However, some Bronze Age ritual structures were very much related to the coast. One, consisting of a circle of timber uprights surrounding an inverted oak tree, and dubbed by the media ‘Seahenge’, was recorded and excavated on the beach at Holme-Next-the-Sea, Norfolk in 1999.107 The wooden construction permitted very precise dating by dendrochronology – to the late spring or early summer of 2049 bc. Palaeoenvironmental analyses showed that the site was originally constructed on salt marsh, most probably behind a dune barrier; its location on the beach in 1998 resulted from more recent dune recession. The central oak tree trunk had been cut across transversely, transported to the site using ropes made of honeysuckle stems which were passed through specially cut towholes, inverted and placed – roots uppermost – in a central 1.5 m-deep pit. After this, an imperfect ‘circle’ of split oak timber uprights was placed in a construction trench around the tree, effectively surrounding it and controlling access to, and the visibility of, the central area. The split posts were mostly aligned with their bark facing out, so giving an external impression of one vast tree, whilst inside only freshly split timber would have been seen. Toolmarks on the wood show that at least 51 axes were used. Any archaeological deposits originally associated with the timber construction have long since eroded away, although a Middle Bronze Age axe, pottery, animal bones, burnt stone and charcoal were recorded nearby in peat that formed later. The significance of all this is now impenetrable, though the use of trees as markers, and the inversion of the tree itself, were obviously significant to the builders. There is no direct evidence that there was ever an associated burial or mound, in contrast to a second timber circle nearby, which had two timber ‘sleepers’ that possibly supported a bier or coffin. It will remain an enigma. Although the first structure at Holme may not have been intended for burials, human remains have certainly been placed in watery and wetland coastal environments for millennia. A Neolithic human skeleton from peat beds between Hartlepool and Seaton Carew, dated to 3632–3342 cal bc, could be an early example of a ‘bog burial’.108 The body of a middle-aged man, showing evidence of healed injuries to skull and ribs, had been placed on its right side in a contracted position with a small cache of flints. A prehistoric skeleton from Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex

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could have been of similar date and type of deposition.109 In the south, a Later Bronze Age cremation cemetery has been recorded on Long Island in Langstone harbour, where cremation urns have eroded from low cliff sections and foreshore exposures. The contents of one vessel have been dated to 1410–1060 cal bc. At this period the harbour was a low-lying area of wet grassland, drained by freshwater streams, with areas of salt marsh nearby. Four bronze hoards have also been found, as well as spreads of burnt flint, which could represent pyre sites. There is no known evidence for settlement in what is now the harbour and it seems that the area was reserved for funerary and ritual activities.110 Isolated skulls have also very frequently been found in estuaries and coastal wetlands, especially in the Thames, and it is thought that at least some of these relate to a specific belief system and depositional practice.111 One example comes from a Late Bronze Age wooden platform in Fenn Creek off the Crouch estuary, Essex, which was subsequently dated to 927–823 cal bc.112 Attention was first drawn to the site in 1977, when two human skulls were found on the platform by a passer-by. It is unfortunate that this find pre-dated systematic archaeological survey of the area, and occurred before there was a consistently funded archaeological service, for the full context of these skulls was never established. Later archaeological examination of the eroded remains of the site could do no more than establish a date for it and define its environmental context – in an intertidal creek not unlike that of today. The poor quality of the record for these finds is typical. One of the larger single collections of human remains from an estuary was recovered during the construction of the Preston Docks, in the Ribble estuary, during the 1880s.113 They were found with remains of red deer, aurochs, horse and occasional whale, and two prehistoric dugout boats, a brushwood platform and bronze spearhead. Twenty human skulls were recovered, eight of which have been dated by radiocarbon. Five of them are Neolithic (from 3840–3640 cal bc onwards), although dates extending to the Anglo-Saxon period were also obtained. Six of them show evidence of trauma – perforations, a depression fracture, and cut marks. It is possible that the skulls were deliberately separated from the bodies before depositing them in the river, although natural processes of decomposition could well have separated the skulls from other bones. Furthermore, since they were collected by Victorian labourers on site, and only later were sold to local antiquarians, the selection of skulls – the most conspicuous and no doubt remunerative bones – is perhaps not surprising. To accept all these remains uncritically as ‘ritual’ depositions would therefore be unwise. In the Middle to Late Bronze Age there was certainly a widespread practice of depositing (or, in archaeological terminology, ‘placing’) metal artefacts, including axes, chisels, spearheads, rapiers, dirks, shields and bowls, in wet places. Unfortunately the contexts of these finds are again rarely well recorded, and most have been found unstratified – lying loose on shores or dredged up from estuaries. Some may have eroded from coastal settlements or ritual sites; others may have been just accidental losses overboard from vessels. There have been very many isolated finds of bronze artefacts from estuaries during dredging and construc-

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tion – or just by people walking along the shore.114 A bronze rapier came from dredging near Mixtow Quay in the Fowey estuary, and during construction of the Royal Edward Dock at Avonmouth in 1903 a similar rapier was recovered from a depth of some 50 ft, apparently in channel sediments.115 This find reflects an early phase of archaeological work alongside development, fostered by the high profile of local archaeological societies in Bristol at the time: several elected members of Bristol Corporation were active in archaeological research. During capital dredging for navigation in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Thames, very large quantities of prehistoric and later artefacts were recovered.116 Although some of these may have been casual losses, or represent material eroded from adjacent shorelines, it is likely that many were placed deposits. In particular there is a remarkable collection of Later Bronze Age leaf-shaped swords from the reaches around the City of London. In the Humber Wetlands a rather different pattern of deposition seems apparent: most finds were not placed in rivers, nor in general in coastal wetlands, but rather in peat mires of various types. Ritual deposition there seems generally to have been associated with periods of active peat growth due to rising groundwater, a pattern also distinguishable at Fengate, Peterborough.117 It may be that objects were ritually placed in an attempt to propitiate whatever gods governed the rising groundwater that was ruining ancestral farmland. By contrast, in the Humber estuary, Van de Noort suggests that coastal wetlands had no ancestral associations at all and in some cases were ‘new land’ with no proprietorial rights. Certainly there seems to be little evidence for ritual deposits in the coastal zone of the Humber Wetlands. It now seems obvious that many of the numerous later archaeological finds from rivers and estuaries are by no means accidental losses, but were intentionally placed there. The formal belief system which originated in the Later Bronze Age, involving deposition of precious things in water and wet places, persisted. Hume’s interpretation of the elaborate Roman clamp used during castration (as part of the ritual of the Mother Goddess Cybele), and found in the Thames at London as a casual loss or perhaps disposal in the later Roman Christian period, now seems questionable.118 The practice of deposition in water developed later into an apotraphaic (or ‘goodluck’) vernacular superstition, beneath the level of formal religion. It has persisted for millennia. Sammy Cahn’s lyrics for the song ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’ (1954) reflect the persistence of this belief in the twentieth century, and every twenty-firstcentury shopping mall water feature has coins in it. The cliff castles of south-western Britain have generally been interpreted as defensive sites of the first millennium bc. Typically they are on promontories, isolated by one or more lines of banks and ditches. However, they are frequently in remote locations, well away from productive land, and so they may have had ritual or religious significance, rather akin to the headland chapels and crosses of the Middle Ages.119 A Roman period site has been excavated at Nournour, Isles of Scilly, comprising 11 or more circular stone buildings. The surprisingly rich artefact assemblage – coins and brooches – has been interpreted as possibly votive.120 This site may have been a shrine to a sea goddess. The Romano-British temple at Jordan

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Hill, east of Weymouth, is of more conventional form for the period: a centralsquare – probably two-storied – building with a surrounding pillared veranda. Only the fact that it had a sublime view over Weymouth Bay leads one to think that it might have had a maritime dedication. At Sutton Hoo, Suffolk the very high-status, probably royal, cemetery of the late sixth to early seventh centuries ad overlooks the Deben estuary. Martin Carver sees the lavish burials there as, in part, a reaction to the arrival of the mission of St Augustine in ad 597 and the conversion of the kingdom of Kent to Christianity, with the implied extension of Continental influence into England. The burials, especially the great ship burial, were emphatically pagan, and were assertions of power and authority. The campaign of excavations in the 1980s also detected groups of satellite burials around some mounds, which are interpreted as those of execution victims. Radiocarbon and stratigraphic evidence could indicate that they date from the seventh to tenth and eleventh centuries, but it is unclear whether they overlapped with the main phase of use of the royal cemetery or post-dated it. Hanging and beheading, as evidenced here, were not necessarily related to crimes such as murder, for Anglo-Saxon law made provision for fines in compensation for violent crime. These burials, therefore, could be seen as those of individuals who in some way were ‘ideological or political deviants’, executed at a cwealstow, or ‘killing place’.121

CHRISTIANITY Roman Christianity was brought to England with the mission of St Augustine in 597, prompted by Pope Gregory, and this resulted directly in the conversion of Kent. But there was an indigenous Celtic Christianity, originating from late RomanoBritish practice, well before then. The differences between the two traditions were not resolved until later in the seventh century, and then abruptly, some might say brutally. The Isle of Lindisfarne, close to the royal estate of Bamburgh, was granted by King Oswald of Northumbria to Aidan of Iona in 634. Aidan founded a monastery in the Celtic Christian tradition. Subsequent bishops of Lindisfarne included Cuthbert (685–7). At Lindisfarne itself little survives visibly from this period, apart from a fragment of a carved stone Anglian cross shaft with interlaced decoration, though excavations have revealed evidence of early Christian and later occupation. The Lindisfarne Gospels, a wonderful masterpiece of seventh-century calligraphy and art, are now in the British Library, and St Cuthbert’s coffin and its contents can be seen at Durham Cathedral, both conserved by a quite remarkable process of dutiful curation over centuries. Following the Viking raid on the island in 793, monastic life was maintained until 875, when continued occupation became untenable after repeated raids. The monks under Bishop Eardwulf and Abbot Eadred evacuated the island, carrying with them the stone sarcophagus of St Cuthbert and the head of St Oswald. Their semi-mythic seven-year journey ended in 882, when they settled at Chester-le-Street. However, St Cuthbert’s bones did not rest easy:

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William I’s vengeful campaign in the north (1069) led to a retreat of the community back to Lindisfarne with its precious burden, briefly, before a return to Durham (1070). In the post-Conquest period a Benedictine priory was established on the holy site of Lindisfarne.122 Lindisfarne was one of many Anglo-Saxon and Celtic religious establishments founded at apparently remote coastal locations. Although many of these sites now seem in the middle of nowhere, viewed from an age of relatively efficient land transport, they were then frequently next to busy seaways. They combined the qualities of isolation, for those who did not own a boat, with communication, for those who did. At Scarborough a Saxon monastery was established on the site of the Roman ‘signal station’ in the seventh and eighth centuries, and a chapel was constructed on the Roman ruins around ad 1000.123 Many of the Roman Saxon Shore forts (see Chapter 4) were reoccupied by religious communities in the Middle Saxon period, for example at Burgh Castle, Suffolk, where the Irishman St Fursa founded a monastery in the late seventh century. The first bishopric in Suffolk dating from the 630s was at a place called Dommoc, which is likely to have been at Dunwich, or the Roman shore fort at Walton Castle near Felixstowe, both of which have since been lost to erosion.124 It is possible that monasteries were frequently established in ruinous Roman sites simply for practical reasons, to reuse building materials; but there may well have been a more or less explicit identification with the glories of the Imperial, and latterly Christian, antique past. St Hilda’s Abbey, Whitby originated in 657, when Hilda herself transferred her community from Hartlepool to a new headland site overlooking the sea and harbour, where again there may previously have been a Roman fort or signal station. It was a double monastery, for both sexes, housed separately. Under Hilda’s patronage, the poet Caedmon composed ‘godly and religious songs . . . in English’. The abbey was famously the scene of the Synod of Whitby (664), which was called by Oswy of Northumbria to resolve differences between the Celtic and Roman practices which threatened to split the Church in England. Oswy’s unilateral decision – influenced by the rhetoric of St Wilfrid – in favour of the Roman church was essentially political in nature, and set the direction of the English church for a thousand years. The early abbey was destroyed in 867 by Scandinavian raiders. Archaeological investigations, partly in advance of cliff erosion, indicate that it was laid out as a series of isolated stone cells aligned along paths. Finds from the excavations included coins, metal hanging bowls and pans, writing implements and book mounts, small items of personal adornment, and keys, all of which might imply that the original rule forbidding private property may have been disregarded. More recent excavations, in 2007, have extended the area of known settlement, which included an Anglian hall some 9.2 by at least 15 m, with associated waste from iron, lead and glassworking. The abbey was refounded in the Norman period, subsequently enlarged and embellished during the thirteenth century and later, and finally suppressed in 1539.125 Bosham in Chichester harbour is one of the oldest Christian sites in southern England: Bede records that when St Wilfrid arrived to convert the South Saxons

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in 681 he found a small monastery there already, headed by an Irish missionary, Dicul, and established around 650. A Benedictine establishment or monastery was in existence at Domesday. The existing Church of the Holy Trinity includes much of the Anglo-Saxon fabric, dating to c. 1050–1100.126 There are legends asserting that both Cnut and Harold Godwinson are buried at Bosham, for which there is no real evidence, but Bosham appears to have been the main residence of Earl Godwin, and the Bayeux Tapestry records Harold praying there before setting off for the Hastings campaign of 1066. In parts of the country where Roman civilization was never established, hermitages, chapels and other religious foundations were inevitably de novo. The subcircular stone cell of the hermit St Eligius, and the adjacent eighth- to tenth-century chapel, on the island of St Helen’s in the Isles of Scilly, as well as the cell of St Levan in Cornwall, are examples. To modern visitors these sites seem right at the very edge of the world, but St Eligius’ cell is adjacent to one of the few good sheltered deepwater anchorages of Scilly. Elsewhere in Cornwall, early Christian sites, comprising a small religious settlement within an oval or sub-circular enclosure, are known as ‘lanns’. Examples around the Helford estuary include St Mawgan, Mawnan and St Anthony. They are often in creekside locations, probably related to the seaways used by Celtic missionaries between Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.127 Later medieval monastic sites on the coast often perpetuated the sites of the founding Anglo-Saxon monasteries, and others were entirely new foundations, but they became linked to the wider economic life of the country. Quarr Abbey, for example, a twelfth-century Cistercian house on the Isle of Wight, participated in international trade and owned wharves at Great Yarmouth and warehouses at Portsmouth.128 In the north-west, monasteries at St Bees and Furness were involved in the coal and iron industries from the thirteenth century onwards.129 The twelfthcentury quays of Grange Pill in the Severn have been referred to above. They date from a period when the Manor of Woolaston was the property of Tintern Abbey, so it seems likely that they were built under monastic direction. The Augustinian Priory of St Michael was established on the island of Steepholm in the Bristol Channel during the twelfth century. The former priory site, abandoned around 1260, was partly reoccupied by coney warreners for over a century after the priory was closed. Excavations have defined a midden, including rabbit bones.130 Following the suppression of the monasteries, and the establishment of the Church of England in the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church went underground. Catholic service books and devotional works were smuggled to post-Reformation England, besides priests themselves.131 The Reformation may have had another, less predictable effect on the archaeological record. The first significant phase of tomb robbing of the royal burial mounds at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk dates from the sixteenth century, and this could indicate the fading of the medieval attitudes and superstitions that previously had protected them. The sustained campaign of looting and destruction of monastic property soon after ‘must have lessened [such inhibitions] still further’.132 St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra and Patron Saint of children, seamen and travellers,

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was imprisoned during the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian (ad 303–11), and later participated with zeal in the Council of Nicaea (ad 325). Legend and report do not make him sound an entirely amiable character, somewhat austere for modern taste, and prone to occasional violence: he physically attacked Arius, the originator of the eponymous ‘heresy’, at Nicaea. The events during his voyage on pilgrimage to Palestine, which involved him in castigating sailors for gambling, who in turn mocked him, do not make him sound altogether cuddly. In Crozier’s libretto for Britten’s Saint Nicolas, the saint swears to punish them for their impiety. There duly follow violent lightning and a thunderstorm, accompanied by tumultuous waves which threaten to overwhelm the vessel.133 Still, in the end, he saved them after their joint penitence. Despite, or perhaps because of, his uncompromising attitude some 400 churches were dedicated to him in medieval England, especially at sea-ports. There are fine surviving medieval churches of St Nicholas at King’s Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich and many other ports. At Southampton the chapel of St Nicholas included a tomb commissioned in 1491 by the Scuola de Sclavonia, to commemorate the oarsmen of Mediterranean galleys from Dalmatia and Istria who died there.134 It has been destroyed.

POST-CHRISTIANITY? Whether or not we are now in a post-Christian society, and at a time when many profess to have no belief at all, it is plain that neo-paganism is a cultural strand today. As G. K. Chesterton remarked: ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing: they believe in anything.’135 In places, as in the tidal reaches of the Severn Gorge, twenty-first-century rockface paintings can be seen. To the uninitiated, they resemble Australian aboriginal art. Some pagan groups claim ownership of prehistoric ritual structures, on the grounds that they are the spiritual descendants of those who constructed them. It is asserted, with some justification, that throughout the Christian era, a pagan subculture persisted. There is archaeological evidence for this, for example the apotraphaic ‘placed deposits’ such as sixteenth-century stoneware Bellarmine jugs containing fabric scraps and pins that are found from time to time during renovation of old buildings. Whether the neo-pagans have any real lineal cultural connection with this, or are more like a modern folk music club, where songs retrieved from aged men in the late nineteenth century by folksong collectors are now sung, is debatable. However, this can lead to a clash of cultures, and never more sharply than during the excavation of the roughly circular ritual structure of 2050–2049 bc which became exposed on the beach at Holme-Next-the-Sea, Norfolk and was dubbed by the media ‘Seahenge’. The site’s archaeological significance has been discussed above. Francis Pryor has provided a narrative of the events surrounding the excavation, and has placed the site in a wider context,136 so here I shall confine myself to a short account of events and my own perceptions of them. The site was first ‘discovered’ by a local archaeologist in the mid-1990s, and reported to Norfolk Landscape Archaeology, though local residents at Holme had

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known it was there for decades. We were told it had not changed over that time. It is certainly true that it would have looked the same for decades, but a vertical wooden post driven down into intertidal sediments is rather like a stick of seaside rock: it will still read ‘Holme-Next-the-Sea’ all the way down but eventually, as you suck and chew at it, you reach the end. In fact, there was good evidence that this coast is highly dynamic, subject to dune recession and beach lowering, and that the site was on a trajectory to destruction. It seemed a unique prehistoric monument that required detailed recording before it was inevitably eroded away. I first visited the site with Francis Pryor and Maisie Taylor on a bleak day, just after it had been ‘discovered’. We looked at it and began to suspect that the central element was an inverted oak tree with its roots pointing skyward. At first we thought that was just too weird, but soon we were compelled to accept that it was so. A programme of recording, excavation and analysis was developed. A press release about the site had an unexpected outcome. It captured the attention of the media and this spread literally worldwide; such is the effect of the relationship between people and the sea. Shortly, crowds of people arrived to see it and the small car park at the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) Reserve became full of media vans from many nations, with satellite aerials on top. It soon became necessary to control access around the excavation by means of temporary fencing, to avoid more extensive damage from trampling. This was somewhat ironic, given that the timber circle itself had almost certainly been constructed to control access to a ‘special place’ some 4,000 years before. The RSPB, understandably, wanted an end to this as soon as possible, for the crowds were disturbing birds and damaging their feeding ground. They wanted the site excavated and removed. On the other side there were local people who, not unreasonably, considered the site to be theirs, and wanted it to stay where it was. Shortly, pagan groups intervened, claiming it as their own. I recall trying to explain, fruitlessly, to a pagan that prehistoric ritual monuments were routinely excavated in advance of modern commercial developments, although usually all that survived were the postholes into which long-decayed timber components had been placed: this site was different only because the wood survived. Meanwhile the excavation, under the direction of Mark Brennand, continued. The pressure from all sides put Mark, Brian Ayers (then County Archaeologist) and Philip Walker (then Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Norfolk) under severe stress: Mark most of all, for he had to be a public face and an excavation manager. It was very hard physical labour for the excavation team, and at awkward hours, to fit with tides. Came the day when the outer timber circle had been excavated and removed and all that was left to do was to lift the central trunk. After a previous altercation when pagans had ‘sat in’ on the monument and David Miles, then Chief Archaeologist at English Heritage, talked with them, an injunction to exclude them had been put in force. The Norfolk Police enforcing the injunction were affable and jolly, but we archaeologists were sorry it had come to this. The tackle was placed around the trunk and it began to be raised. Just then there was a shout, and a young woman bounded towards the trunk. Dr Bill Boismier felled her with a rugby tackle before she reached

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it (fortunately for her, for she would probably have been injured or killed had she made it), aided by a policeman. Some in the crowd shouted ‘Shame on you!’ and ‘Police brutality!’ Amidst all this mayhem I was the first into the 1.5 m-deep pit left from removal of the trunk. I slithered rapidly down the wet clay side of the pit, well aware that the tide was turning, and that the time left for observation and recording was extremely limited. We had no idea at all what might be in there, for there was no precedent for this site. Looking around rapidly, and scraping judiciously with my trowel, I was relieved to find that there was nothing there beyond an extension of the plaited honeysuckle rope used to drag the trunk into position. Maisie and I, between us, recorded and collected it. Finally, offerings from the pagans were placed in the pit, before all was submerged by the rising tide. This has been an extended description of a single site but, I hope, justified: for it did require professional heritage managers, including myself, to reconsider the whole issue of ownership of the heritage. It is so easy to assume that, because we are able to put such sites into a wider cultural context, have the technical expertise to record them to a high standard, and want to learn as much as possible about how and when they were constructed, our decisions about its future should take priority.137 This is not necessarily so.

MYTHS AND LEGENDS As has been discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 there are, without any doubt at all, drowned lands all around our coasts. The myths and legends of England incorporate what might perhaps be a folk memory of such losses but they have often been adopted and elaborated by the literary establishments of successive ages. In the West Country the lost land of Lyonesse – in the Cornish language Lethowstow – is especially potent. Farms, a city, a castle and 140 churches are reputed to have lain between Land’s End and Scilly.138 According to one legend, the remnant of King Arthur’s knights, after the last battle, fled along a winding road across Lyonesse pursued by Mordred and his forces. The wizard Merlin intervened and, raising his arm, caused an enormous earthquake. Mordred and his army were swept away: ‘At evening, there was nought from what was then first termed Land’s-end, to St Martin’s Head, but a howling and boiling wilderness of waves, bearing here and there upon its bosom a fragment from the perished world beneath or a corpse tossed upon the billows over which the seabirds wheeled and screamed. The remnant that was preserved reached in safety Cassiteris, called afterwards Silura, and now Scilly.’139 Tintagel in Cornwall is the legendary place of Arthur’s conception as a consequence of the adultery of Igerna and Uther Pendragon, as recounted in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, written around 1135–8, though with no earlier source to support this. Of course, it seems highly unlikely that there could have been one. An inscribed slate found at Tintagel during the most recent campaign of excavations is thought to have been originally a fifth-century inscription for an emperor – indicated by the clear letters AVG, for Augustus – possibly Honorius.

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Later it was inscribed, perhaps around ad 550, with the names of Paternus, Coliavus and Artognou, which is a useful indication of the survival of a degree of literacy into the post-Roman period in the south-west, albeit not of calligraphy, for their names are barbarously written. Although the name Artognou excited a short-lived media frenzy, it had nothing to do with the Arthur of legend.140 The legends of the shadowy King Mark, and of Tristan, Prince of Lyonesse, and his great love Isolde, were incorporated into the mythic cycle. The sixth-century Longstone, or Tristan Stone, at Newtown on the Fowey estuary is inscribed to a certain Drustanus, who some have supposed to be the real man around whose memory the later legends developed.141 The familiar Arthurian passage in the poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Idylls of the King (1869), captures the mood in a way that thrills and chills: So all day long the noise of battle roll’d Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur’s table, man by man, Had fall’n in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

The subsequent events, as presented by Tennyson, are well known: Arthur’s order to Bedivere to throw his sword Excalibur into the lake; Bedivere’s twofold failure; his final acquiescence; then the arm rising from the water, ‘clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful’, to catch Excalibur, which releases Arthur to be taken kindly by the three Queens to an unknown destination, as the ‘Once and Future King’. The implicit reference in all this to the Bronze Age practice of placing precious things in water, particularly weapons and people, is obvious. The legend of Drake’s Drum has some Arthurian resonances: the hero continues to support his people after death. The drum, painted with Drake’s coat of arms, is housed at the Drake, Naval and West Country Folk Museum at Buckland Monachorum, Devon. It is reputed to have sounded of its own accord at times of war, peril or other significance, including the occasion of Nelson’s being made a freeman of Plymouth (Drake’s home port), at the time of Dunkirk in 1940 and during the Falklands War in 1982. One of the stranger legends of the coast was first recounted by Ralph of Coggeshall (c. 1207), referring to an event some 40 years earlier, in the time of Henry II, which reputedly took place at Orford in Suffolk. Fishermen caught in their nets a wild man, naked, bearded and hairy. He would not, or could not, talk,

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‘although oft-times hung up by his feet and harshly tortured’ – a procedure which, one assumes, passed for psychotherapy in the twelfth century – and showed no reverence in church, nor any Christian belief. He was allowed to swim in the sea, within an enclosure of nets, from which he once escaped, though returned willingly, only to escape back to the sea subsequently ‘and was never afterwards seen’.142 Perhaps the most widespread and persistent legend is of the bells of drowned churches or sunken ships heard ringing beneath the sea, curiously either on stormy or quiet nights, or giving warning of storm or shipwreck. Sites include St Anne’s on Sea and the legendary lost town of Kilmigrol in Lancashire, Carbis Bay in Cornwall, Boscastle, Hayling Island, Shipden (the lost port off Cromer, Norfolk), Dunwich in Suffolk, Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, and Forrabury in Devon. There are also examples of stolen bells ringing under the water, including those taken by Vikings from Bosham, Sussex, and by a mermaid from the church at Marden, Hereford and Worcester. Occasionally, drowned sailors, former bellringers, return to ring church bells, as at the church of St Gluvias, Penryn, Cornwall.143 These perceptions are not confined to Britain. There is a legend that the bells of the port of Rungholt in North Friesland, lost in a storm of January 1362, can still be heard. Perhaps it is a universal wish. Well-attested historical events can also assume an almost mythic character. The treasury of King John included sumptuous jewels given to him by Pope Innocent III, the Bishop of Norwich and the Knights Hospitallers, besides the regalia of his grandmother Matilda, 143 silver cups, and no doubt more. All was lost on 11 October 1216, during a disastrous crossing of the sand-flats across the mouth of the old river Ouse in the Wash, then known as the Wellstream. The estuary was then 4.5 miles wide at low tide and, during the crossing, the wagon train lost its bearings and direction in mist and left the secure route across the flats. Roger of Wendover records that ‘the ground opened in the midst of the waters and whirlpools sucked in everything, men and horses’.144 Unsurprisingly, there have been repeated attempts to define the place and recover the treasure, and the writer has been approached by investigators seeking funding from English Heritage to do so. So far there has been no success on either count.

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What next? Wallasea is a low island reclaimed from salt marsh and mud-flat, about 6.5 by 1.6 km, at the confluence of the rivers Roach and Crouch in Essex. In common with the other islands of the Essex archipelago, it has a long history of human occupation and economic activity, of which the earliest evidence is a group of first-century ad red hills – salt-producing sites. Intensive use of the island began in the Early Medieval period, when its marshes and mud-flats were transformed into agricultural land, at first mainly for sheep grazing, by the construction of dykes and sea walls. Sinuous internal banks, following the lines of natural creek systems, marked successive phases of land claim, property boundaries and subdivision. Initially, settlement was not year-round, but permanent farms were established from the Later Middle Ages onwards. By 1875, a resident population of 135 people lived in 13 houses, and in 1879 a school was opened. It was not exactly a rural idyll – very bleak in winter when north or east winds blew – but the island was home to a community, and it had a historic landscape reflecting phases of growth and development over two millennia.1 All that changed after the night of 31 January 1953. The storm surge that devastated the North Sea coasts of eastern England and the Netherlands – over 2 m above predicted tide levels – hit Wallasea. As the spring tide rose after the initial surge, the sea walls were overtopped, the island filled with sea water like a washbasin, and waves scoured breaches in the sea walls from their inner sides. The sea walls were constructed of salt-marsh clay, with no internal armouring of concrete blocks or rock rubble (as on their seaward faces), and with no anticipation that scour and erosion from inside the island could possibly happen. Next morning, an observer at Burnham-on-Crouch described the breaches in the sea walls of Wallasea as ‘toothless gaps’. Most of the 37 people still on the island the night before were evacuated in the morning, but a few remained to find and tend the surviving livestock. Two people had drowned overnight. Most of the buildings were so badly damaged that demolition was inevitable. Only one of the farms survived, and the farmland, by then largely arable, was abandoned for six years, for the soil was impregnated with salt. Eventually, the sea walls were repaired and raised. Over the 1960s and 1970s there was a new phase of change. The old winding field ditches were infilled to create larger fields better suited to twentieth-century farming methods, new rectilinear drainage ditches were dug, and any surviving dilapidated buildings were demolished. The entire island was systematically bulldozed flat, destroying all archaeological earthworks.2 In 2005, the Environment Agency invited comments and advice on whether the

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sea walls of parts of Wallasea – or another location elsewhere – should be breached as part of a Managed Realignment and Habitat Creation scheme, to allow new salt-marsh habitat to become established on parts of the existing arable land. The Agency wanted to know which location would be the least damaging to the historic environment – although plainly that was only one consideration among many in the selection of a site. During my initial field visit, Wallasea seemed a dreary place, with almost all trace of past human occupation obliterated, and the land given over to intensive arable production. A crop-sprayer delivered herbicide as a low greyishyellow cloud under a greyer sky. It was intensely sad. There was no hesitation about the response, for the island’s historic environment had already been destroyed: there was almost nothing left to lose there. The re-creation of natural habitat now under way at Wallasea will bring new, abundant and beautiful life to the island, but not human life. The scheme is intended to restore parts of it to a condition similar to its appearance before any people intervened.3 Most old inhabitants of the island are long gone, and soon living memory of their way of life will perish. Wallasea’s fate represents a microcosm of what happened on that dreadful night in January 1953 all around the North Sea. The official estimate of deaths in the Netherlands was 1,835, while 307 people died in the east of England – 112 in Essex alone – and around 24,500 houses were destroyed or damaged. Thousands of livestock were drowned, and extensive areas of farmland were contaminated with saline water.4 It was far and away England’s worst peacetime disaster, so far.5 The catastrophe of the 1953 flood might or might not recur, but there will certainly be increasing threats to the coastal historic environment, driven both by climate change and economic factors. The events of 1953 defined the flood management agenda for much of the rest of the twentieth century. The storm surge occurred less than eight years after the end of the Second World War, in which the English had learnt from experience that endurance, and not counting the cost, eventually brought victory, at least of a sort. Military defence and flood protection are, of course, two quite different things, but when a nation has the perception of being assaulted they may seem comparable to people at the time. The very terms still used, even today, in flood risk management, such as ‘Hold the line’, have obvious military resonances. The Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, declared the floods a ‘National Disaster’, and a committee under Lord Waverley investigated the causes of the flooding, and made recommendations for future flood protection. Some £20 million – a vast sum at the time for a nation only just recovering from war – was spent on flood defence improvements in the following year. The committee also urgently recommended construction of a Thames Barrier, but in fact it was not completed until 1982. However, rational appraisal of whether all the land being defended was worth the cost of defence improvements, and of their long-term maintenance, seems to have been limited – although some 1953 breaches were never repaired. In general, abandonment of territory was not something that could be countenanced at that time, and in that historical context. It took a strange pair of bedfellows – environmentalism, and the new political

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and economic attitudes of the 1980s – to change attitudes. The environmental movement, and its principles, can be traced back at least to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. By the latter decades of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of people had ceased to regard the natural world as something to be ‘tamed’. Rather, they thought we should work with natural processes. In 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit a Biodiversity Convention was agreed, committing governments to develop Action Plans for conservation and sustainable exploitation of biodiversity. The changing cultural context also led to environmental Directives and Recommendations from the European Union, which have been incorporated into domestic legislation, regulation and practice.6 These measures take our environment seriously, and require its protection to be a fundamental component of policy and planning, in part through designation of Special Protection Areas (SPAs), and Ramsar sites, for bird conservation, and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) to ensure protection of habitats and other species. In terms of coastal defence construction, there are now specific targets to be met in terms of biodiversity: schemes must not cause a net loss of habitats that fall within a Biodiversity Action Plan and must, where possible, enhance the environment. Coastal habitat re-creation, to compensate for losses of habitat from European Marine Sites (i.e. SACs and SPAs) due to other developments such as port expansion, is also now frequently undertaken to comply with the EU Directives.7 Alongside the shift of ‘environmental’ attitudes from the domain of a few eccentrics to their incorporation into the mainstream of policy during the 1980s and ’90s, a much more hard-headed approach to public expenditure followed the election of the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher in 1980, and this was continued under successive governments of both persuasions. In the 1990s, the notion of ‘sustainability’ came to the fore politically and became embedded in the New Labour government’s policies from 1997 onwards. Briefly stated, sustainability means not taking actions now that will impose unsupportable burdens on our children or grandchildren. It is a much-abused word but does, in fact, mean something. To commit ourselves to defending the coast in its present form, for ever, would be to write a blank cheque to be signed by future generations. In practice, such a commitment would be neither possible nor affordable. As a result of changing environmental and economic attitudes, the pendulum has now swung completely, from the mid-twentieth-century perception that almost all land must be defended, to one where the defence of any coast – populated or otherwise – has to be justified rigorously. This is entirely rational, especially in the face of the current models for climate change through the twenty-first century.8 The IPCC reports that ‘more than 89% of >29,000 sets of observational data from 75 studies are consistent with a warming trend’. There is ‘high confidence’ that anthropogenic warming, induced by emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the last 30 years, has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems. Coasts are projected ‘to be exposed to increasing risks . . . exacerbated by increasing humanly-induced pressures’. Mean global sealevel rise was around 1.8 mm per year in the period 1961–2003, but 3.1 mm per year

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in 1993–2003. In the twentieth century there was a relative sea-level rise (corrected for land movement) around England of about 1 mm per year. Estimates of potential future sea-level rise are currently being revised upwards: they depend partly on unpredictable events.9 Sea-level rise is a continuing and long-term trend, but it is during specific extreme storms that major coastal change occurs, especially where natural coastal-barrier beaches and dune systems are breached catastrophically. There will probably be an increased frequency of ‘extreme precipitation events’ during this century, and storm intensity might increase. There has been a rise of around 0.7º C in sea temperature over the last three decades, and severe storms are now more frequent than in the period 1930–99, though still less frequent than in the 1920s. This seems to be related to changes in North Atlantic air-pressure differentials, but whether these are related to man-made climate change impacts is as yet uncertain.10 The long-term effects later in this century of accumulating atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases on climatic and coastal change are predictable, if present trends continue. Over the next decade or so, however, it is possible that changes in oceanic circulation and heat transfer between the sea and atmosphere – the El Niño effect of the Pacific and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation – may mask, or even temporarily reverse, the underlying warming trend. This could be unfortunate should it result in a series of cooler than average years at some latitudes, for that could diminish the political pressure to take action on emissions.11 It is possible, though as yet unproven, that we are now entering a new phase of rapid coastal change, comparable to that last experienced in the late thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.12 As noted above, in 1287 a storm surge flooded the peat pits of East Anglia to form the Broads; on the South Coast, the ports of Old Winchelsea and Promehill were destroyed; and at New Romney over a metre of flood silt was deposited in St Nicholas’ Church at an elevation of 4.88 m od. The implications for coastal populations today are alarming: at the very least, the 1287 surge must have peaked at around 5 m od at New Romney. A comparable surge today would inundate, and severely damage, large parts of our coastal towns and drown many people. In January 1362, a storm surge in the North Sea destroyed the ports of Ravenser Odd on Spurn Head and Rungholt in North Friesland, and many thousands drowned in the Low Countries, as the Zuider Zee in the Netherlands and the Jade Bay in Niedersachsen enlarged catastrophically. The most extreme storm experienced in England appears to have been rather later in date – the Great Storm of 1703. There has been some speculation that it was a tsunami but, in fact, it seems to have resulted from exceptionally low air pressure over southern England: there are contemporary barometric records. This caused hurricane-force winds between 24 November and 2 December, and drew Atlantic water into the Channel. Flooding and destruction of buildings was widespread, most spectacularly the loss of Henry Winstanley’s Eddystone Lighthouse and the unfortunate Winstanley himself, who was in the building when it fell. The hazard continues. As storms become more frequent, dune barriers, which form natural defences along many coasts, are increasingly subject to erosion and,

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potentially, breaching. Increased rates of dunefront retreat have already been recorded at many locations.13 On the night of 9 November 2007, weather and tide conditions similar to those of January 1953 led the Environment Agency to issue Severe Flood Warnings for parts of the East Coast, and evacuation of vulnerable parts of Great Yarmouth and elsewhere in East Anglia ensued. The Thames Barrier, and the new barrier protecting the port of Rotterdam, were emplaced – the latter for the first time – but, in the event, the storm surge did not coincide with a high spring tide. Disastrous storm surges are well attested historically, and are certain to happen again, sooner or later. So what is being done about managing flood risk and coastal erosion? Despite what we might remember of the freedom of our old childhood playgrounds on the beach, and those of our children, the coast is far from free. It is amply provided with regulation, legislation and international conventions.14 Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs) require detailed consideration, for they are the strategic high-level plans that set the long-term policy for coastal management.15 The coasts of England and Wales have been divided into 11 Littoral Cells – extensive lengths of coast (for example Cell 3 – the Wash to the Thames), within which sediment moves, but between which sediment transport is considered to be minimal. Each cell is the responsibility of Coastal Authorities Groups (CAGs).16 The cells are further subdivided into more manageable units known as subcells. An SMP sets the future policy for cells and subcells, still further subdivided into shorter lengths of coast, termed Policy Units. An SMP should ‘provide the basis for policies for a length of coast and set the framework for managing risks along the coastline in the future’ and ‘identify the best approach or approaches . . . over the next 100 years’.17 The SMP does not consider how these policies should be implemented: that is dealt with in subsequent stages of Strategies and individual Schemes. It is important to note that the terminology is now in terms of ‘risk management’, rather than absolute ‘defence’. For each Policy Unit, Defra has defined four possible policy options. ‘Hold the existing defence line’, as the term suggests, will involve maintaining, and often improving, existing defences. ‘Advance the existing defence line’ will relate to situations where new land reclamation is the best option, although it seems unlikely that it will be used widely. ‘Managed realignment’ calls for the identification of a new sustainable coastal defence line and construction of new defences landward of the existing defences. Finally, ‘No active intervention’ means just that – allowing dynamic coastal processes to proceed in an unconstrained way, with no investment in defences or, alternatively, to allow existing defences to deteriorate or be overtopped without maintenance or repair. The latter two options will almost always have impacts on the historic environment. ‘Managed realignment’ involves breaching sea defences (some of them of considerable antiquity: see Chapter 2), while construction works for the new sea wall and/or new drainage systems for the realigned area may cut through, and damage, archaeological sites. The effects of rewetting buried sites with saline water are hard to assess without experimental evidence but, very likely, will lead to disintegration of poorly fired ceramics,

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enhanced corrosion of metal artefacts, and changes in microbial activity leading to decomposition of organic materials that were in a semi-stable state. ‘No active intervention’ just permits continued erosion, with consequent physical loss of sites. The policy options cover time spans of 20, 50 and 100 years, and are subject to review approximately every decade; consequently the preferred option may change over time. The considerations influencing selection of the preferred option for any coast are very varied, and comprise technical, environmental, social and economic factors. The Coastal Authorities Group, the Environment Agency, and their consultants engage in a process of stakeholder consultation in an attempt to balance various sectoral interests, but still produce a sustainable outcome. For example, just a few of the factors that might influence policy selection could include the need to protect major infrastructure (e.g. nuclear power stations) and major centres of population; the requirements of the EU Birds and Habitats Directives to protect or re-create wildlife habitat; and allowing eroding cliffs to supply sediment to maintain beaches. Inevitably, the preferred policy option cannot meet everyone’s concerns, and some hard decisions have to be made. Change will happen, whether we do anything about it or not: put bluntly, is there any point in spending resources now on trying to defend a coast that, whatever is done, will indisputably erode or be permanently flooded with sea water later this century? Perhaps it is better to get out straight away. Indeed, there is nothing unprecedented about the setting back of sea defences. Evidence for this comes from the Severn estuary, especially around Oldbury, where sea defences, probably of early seventeenth-century date, overlie medieval ridge-and-furrow field systems, showing that earlier farmland had been abandoned.18 However, where significant economic or cultural assets today are located on coasts, and where the preferred option on coastal management grounds is ‘No active intervention’, clashes of interest occur, especially since government policy, at present, is not to provide compensation for losses attributable to natural processes. The current approach is not without its critics. Alex Midlen distinguishes the three main drivers of government policy on flood defence and coast protection: cost, nature protection legislation, and community opinion.19 In his view community opinion comes a poor third. Still, unless there is an immediate and pressing threat, people generally have better things to think about, and may not have a community opinion: there was certainly a low level of public participation in the first generation of SMPs.20 To give a specific example of the issues involved, the review of the Shoreline Management Plan covering the coast from Kelling to Lowestoft Ness, in Norfolk and North Suffolk, had to consider one of the most dynamic coasts in England.21 The earlier SMP, completed in 1996, recommended a ‘Hold the line’ policy for the clifftop villages of Happisburgh and Overstrand. The revised plan of 2006 examined sediment transport in a wider sense, considering that the eroding cliffs on this part of the coast are a vital supply of sediment. This sediment is transported by longshore drift south-eastwards, where it maintains the beaches and dune systems that protect much of the Broads, and the farms and the

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villages on that coast.22 The decisions on the policy options for Happisburgh and Overstrand were also influenced by economic factors: the value of assets potentially lost compared to the costs of sea defence construction and long-term maintenance, besides questions about their long-term sustainability. A policy of ‘No active intervention’ was preferred in the revised SMP. The consequences of this for some residents at Happisburgh and Overstrand could be severe; at present they stand to lose their properties without compensation and, moreover, some vulnerable houses have become uninsurable and unsaleable, while their market values have shrunk to pitiful sums.23 Residents, unsurprisingly, feel that this is socially unjust. Some of them bought properties with the reassurance that they thought was provided by the earlier SMP of 1996, perhaps not realizing that SMPs were always intended to be subject to periodic review and reconsideration. Certainly, until recent years, environmental considerations (e.g. contaminated land and coastal erosion) were not usually considered as part of the survey involved in house purchase. The whole issue of social justice is much debated and recently there have been several national newspaper articles on the subject.24 Moreover, at a time of rising world food prices, and when the value of agricultural land has almost trebled from 2005–8, some people question the entire approach of abandoning farmland.25 Government spending on flood and coastal risk management has increased from £307 million in 1996 to around £600 million in 2007/8, with an intention to increase spending to £800 million in 2010/1. However, there could never be sufficient funds to protect everywhere in the long term, even were it desirable visually and ecologically to armour all our soft coastlines with rock rubble and concrete. Resources are likely to be focused on major settlements and infrastructure: small villages and isolated buildings are therefore especially vulnerable. Policy in this area is, however, fluid and developing at the time of writing. Defra is considering alternative ways of appraising flood and erosion defence schemes by means of ‘Multi-Criteria Analysis’, and ‘Adaptation Strategies’ are also being investigated. As things stand, though, large parts of Happisburgh will be lost over the next 50 to 100 years, including the wonderful, mainly fifteenth-century, Grade I Listed St Mary’s Church, the Grade 2 Listed manor house, and other historic buildings. The church’s graveyard contains unknown thousands of burials, besides below-ground archaeological remains of earlier church buildings. These are, in one sense, assets capable of providing significant archaeological and scientific information. More viscerally, the burials are of some residents’ ancestors. Is it acceptable to allow their loss? Will we be content to allow the bones of Happisburgh’s former population, and those of the mariners from wrecked vessels (referred to above in Chapter 5), to erode from the cliff and be scattered over the beach? One Adaptation Strategy being considered to ensure the survival of coastal communities threatened by erosion is termed ‘roll-back’. This would involve relocation of settlements inland. There is currently much debate about how this might be achieved, most probably using sections in a new Planning Policy Statement being developed by the Department of Communities and Local Government (PPS 20: Development and Coastal Erosion Risk). In principle, it should be possible to

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allocate land in advance for redevelopment, to replace existing coastal villages, and to accommodate their populations. Discussion about ways and means of achieving this is at a very early stage; but so far, there seems to have been little consideration of the fact that communities are more than just groups of individual dwellings. A sense of place is an essential component of community coherence, but the existing places will, in all probability, be lost. Whether it would be possible to contribute to re-establishing this sense by relocating at least some of the village’s historic buildings and structures to the new settlement is very much open to debate. The issues surrounding relocation of historic buildings are outlined below. Meanwhile, there is an atmosphere of public distrust, not helped by sensational media reports. Although the present Shoreline Management Plan policy for the dune coastline protecting the Norfolk Broads and the villages around them is ‘Hold the line’, it is plainly necessary to consider all possible options for later in the twenty-first century, in the interests of long-term planning. It would be insane not to. Still, the discussions at a recent conference in Norwich organized by Natural England, with representatives from the Environment Agency, the Broads Authority and Norfolk County Council, were reported in the regional newspaper as ‘a radical plan being considered by conservation bosses . . . behind closed doors’, which would involve ‘six villages to be surrendered to the sea’.26 Articles along similar lines appeared in national newspapers. There was, in fact, no ‘plan’, and no intention to do anything at all, other than maintaining the existing defences – just to consider all possible options for the future. The impacts of inadequate communication between professionals, the media and the public are obvious, for they contribute to a climate of fear in which inward investment and house purchasing are inhibited, and the economies of some coastal areas suffer accordingly. Numerous historic sites and landscapes around the country are under threat from erosion or flooding, not just in East Anglia. For example, the North Yorkshire coast between Whitby and Flamborough is characterized by resistant rock headlands, such as at Robin Hood’s Bay, Whitby and Flamborough Head, with intervening stretches of till-covered cliffs and shore platforms.27 Mean rates of erosion are around 0.25 m per annum for the till cliffs, but they are prone to sudden catastrophic rotational failure, involving slippage of large semi-circular areas of land, especially when groundwater is suddenly replenished by prolonged rainfall after drought. A recent event involved the loss of the Holbeck Hall Hotel at Scarborough in 1993 but, historically, large areas of land and historic assets have been lost. Filey Brigg, for example, consists of a narrow ridge of till over rock, and here a Roman signal station was excavated in 1993–4, prior to its loss by erosion.28 Erosion is also a problem on rocky headlands, notably at Whitby, where excavations were undertaken by English Heritage in 1993, and more recently in 2007, to record features associated with the Abbey and associated Anglian settlement before their loss. The erosion of the headland is being monitored by Lidar (light detection and ranging) survey, combined with historic map regressions. The overall rate of erosion is 0.22 m per annum, although significantly greater rates are being observed in some areas. This gives some means of predicting areas of known or

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suspected archaeology requiring excavation prior to their loss.29 Further south, the Holderness coast consists mainly of low cliffs of till – glacial clay – which is easily eroded. Localized beach depletions known as ords enhance cliff erosion rates, and the ords migrate southwards at about 0.5 m per annum, from Barmston to Spurn Head, which has resulted in a mean annual loss of around 150 m since the publication of the first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps in the 1850s; but earlier erosion resulted in the loss of some 30 towns and villages since the Middle Ages.30 Sheppard has estimated a loss of around 4 km of land since Roman times, though this could be an overestimate. Predicted rates for the near future are c. 1.8 m per annum. Spurn Head itself has migrated westwards, and been transformed from a line of small islands in 1852 to its present, artificially constrained, form. Sites on the low coasts of East Anglia are also at risk of loss, including some of the 18 Martello towers surviving in Essex and Suffolk: the sites all have recently been resurveyed, revealing earthworks of now-demolished towers, enclosures, boundary stones placed by the Board of Ordnance, and the remains of forward batteries.31 Intertidal archaeological sites on lowland coasts and estuaries, usually stratified within soft unconsolidated sediments such as salt-marsh clays or peats, are especially prone to erosion, which may be very variable over short lengths of coastline.32 Indeed, the very fact that an intertidal site is visible means that it is eroding: sites still sealed beneath sediment cover are stable, but of course cannot be seen. Physical protection of sites in dynamic intertidal environments will hardly ever be possible: the only options are to excavate and record before loss of the site; monitor and record as the site erodes away; or to judge that the site is not sufficiently significant to merit any attention. In practice, the availability of funding will be the main factor determining the scale of what can be done. We will have to cope with (the jargon term is, of course, ‘manage’) the process of change, for change is inevitable, and we must do so in a way that ensures that beautiful, precious and informative things are not lost, or at least not lost without being recorded. There are, at present, very limited sources of funding for mitigation where a ‘No active intervention’ policy is selected.33 The first step in tackling this is to undertake survey, to determine exactly what we are trying to conserve. Despite archaeological investigations over more than 200 years, it was clear by the 1990s that our knowledge of coastal sites was particularly poor. English Heritage therefore initiated a programme of Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys (RCZAS) to improve our knowledge and to enhance the computerized data-bases known as the National Monuments Record and the Local Authority Historic Environment Records, some of which can now be accessed online.34 At the time of writing (October 2008), surveys have been completed or are under way along the entire East Coast, from Berwick to the North Foreland in Kent, in North-West England between the Dee and Solway, and in the Severn estuary. Earlier studies of the Isles of Scilly, Dorset and the Isle of Wight are requiring some additional work to bring them up to the standard needed to supply information for the SMPs, as are some of the earliest RCZAS themselves. Results from these surveys, and from other surveys of the coastal historic environment, have been discussed in previous chapters, and are available online.35

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The surveys have two main phases. Phase 1 (Desk-Based Assessment) draws on data from aerial photographs, Lidar surveys, historic maps, the local authority Historic Environment Records, the National Monuments Record and other sources. Lidar is an aerial survey technique which can detect very small height variations on land surfaces, and can produce high-resolution digital terrain models. These can be given artificial ‘shadows’ by digital manipulation, which helps in the detection of ploughed-down earthworks that are invisible by other methods. As part of the Severn estuary RCZAS the flood bank known as the Great Wall of Elmore, Gloucestershire was studied using Lidar, extending its known length by some 30 m; and in the same area a previously unknown barrow or windmill mound, a flattened moated site, and ridge-and-furrow fields were mapped. Parts of fish weirs off the Somerset coast were newly recorded by Lidar.36 Phase 2 (Field Assessment) comprises a rapid walk-over survey, designed to check records from Phase 1 on the ground, and to find types of site which are not visible from the air, and assess their significance and vulnerability.37 Of course, all the surveys are producing sites of special interest, some of them at risk of destruction by coastal change. There is a terrible temptation to concentrate on such sites, and to put funding into excavating and recording them in detail now. However, for the time being, resources are being focused on completing the national ‘baseline’ survey first, for time is short. Baseline information from the surveys, and an initial ranking of sites and areas in terms of their significance and potential, are needed as soon as possible so as to inform SMPs and to help in developing ways of either recording or protecting sites before they go.38 Although the present aim is to get a broad-brush overview, we already have to think about mitigation for significant sites and buildings that will, whatever happens, be lost soon. Unlike the natural environment, re-creation is not an option: once archaeological sites and historic buildings are lost, they are gone for good. The pervading philosophy in heritage management in the UK is that sites, monuments, and historic buildings should, where possible, be conserved in situ – where they are, and in their present state, excepting dereliction – but, in practice, on coasts this has to be considered pragmatically, on a case-by-case basis. Change will happen, and we have to manage it as best we can. There is fortunately a well-established procedure for excavating and recording archaeological sites in advance of their destruction, usually in response to commercial developments, at terrestrial sites, set out in Planning Policy Guidance Note 16: Archaeology and Planning (PPG 16). In essence, PPG 16 advises developers to preserve sites where possible, or to fund their excavation, recording and publication if not. That principle works well where a ‘developer’ can be identified. This could be any organization undertaking flood and erosion management works, or commercial developers constructing, for example, waterfront housing or marinas. Mitigation for archaeological sites is thus often possible, albeit rarely cheap. This does not apply, of course, where natural processes are resulting in loss of a site – there is no ‘developer’ who could be considered responsible for funding the works. Threatened historic buildings are still more problematic, and usually have a

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higher public profile. People may well not be aware of the buried archaeological sites in their locality, but buildings, such as lighthouses or coastal fortifications, are often defining, or even iconic, features of a place. The options are very limited, and there is much discussion about them. First, buildings can be protected by means of hard or soft defences – concrete and rock rubble, or beach ‘nourishment’ with sand and shingle dredged from offshore. This might be indefinite, or for a predefined time period, perhaps 20, 50 or 100 years, subject to periodic review. However, problems arise where protection of a specific building could impede sediment transport along the coast, resulting in erosion elsewhere. A second option could be to record the building, and then allow its loss – although in practice it is likely that demolition would be necessary, rather than leaving an unsafe collapsing structure. A rather more controlled form of abandonment might involve removing architecturally or historically significant parts of the building, for re-erection or display elsewhere. The third option is complete relocation: moving the building back from the present coast to a sustainable place, though where possible maintaining the structure’s coastal setting. Obviously this is more easily done for some types of structure than others. Timber-framed buildings can be dismantled and moved, and often have been in the past. Massive stone structures, especially those mainly built of poor-quality materials such as flint nodules, as in the case of East Anglian churches, probably could not be. Furthermore, there is an argument related to authenticity: some people would say that a historic building that has been moved from its original context, and then rebuilt, is no longer ‘historic’, but is a twenty-first-century structure. Nevertheless relocation is happening already. A recent example is the Clavell Tower at Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset. This circular three-storey tower with a surrounding colonnade was built in 1830, by the Revd John Richards Clavell, as an observatory and folly. Its numinous setting led to its being featured in P. D. James’s novel The Black Tower, and it was a place where Thomas Hardy courted Eliza Bright Nichols. Its precarious clifftop location has led to its relocation 25 m inland, to save it from destruction by erosion. The scheme was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and other bodies, led by the Landmark Trust, at a cost of £898,000. The works are now completed. It is not yet possible to quantify the numbers of historic buildings threatened by erosion or permanent flooding, until the Environment Agency has completed production of erosion risk maps to complement the existing flood risk maps.39 However, it is already plain that it would be unrealistic to consider relocation for more than a very small proportion of them. Natural processes of coastal change, and the impacts of coastal management schemes, are by no means the only factors affecting the coastal and maritime historic environment. Changes in agricultural practice have been devastating. For example, as noted in Chapter 2, economic pressures in the twentieth century resulted in a 25 per cent loss of the Lincolnshire coastal grazing marsh to arable production between 1990 and 2000, and the loss of around two thirds of grazing marsh in the Thames estuary between the 1930s and 1980s. Besides the adverse effects of this change on coastal wildlife, archaeological earthworks, including field systems, settlement sites and saltern mounds, have been destroyed slowly by

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repeated ploughing, or abruptly by intentional bulldozing. Natural England has initiated the Coastal Grazing Marsh Project in Lincolnshire, and the Essex and North Kent marshes have been designated as Environmentally Sensitive Areas, with the aim of arresting and reversing this trend.40 These initiatives are already successful in reinstating habitats, but many archaeological sites have already been destroyed. Something similar happened in Suffolk in the aftermath of the 1953 floods. The sea walls were raised and old gravity sluices replaced by pumps, every marsh ditch in the area that had been flooded was cleaned out, and 5,000 acres were ploughed. The pumps permitted maintenance of a lower water level in the dykes, in turn allowing installation of clay drainage pipes. Widespread conversion to arable or to grazing ‘improved’ by use of artificial fertilizer accelerated, and by the early twenty-first century only about 3 per cent of the former 10,000 hectares consists of unimproved grazing.41 A unknown number of archaeological sites was erased or damaged. The lowered water tables have also led to the drying-out of formerly waterlogged sites, so wooden structures and other organic materials have deteriorated, due to degradation by bacteria and fungi. During the construction of the Channel Tunnel in 1986–92, it was widely predicted that commercial ports would suffer as a result, and that some in the south-east might close altogether.42 This has not happened. Despite a commitment on the part of the present government to reduce CO2 emissions by transferring freight transport from road to rail, the economics do not stack up. I am told that it is far cheaper, and logistically simpler, to rely on lorry-borne container transport direct to the port. Moreover, there is no government strategy to divert traffic away from the south-east ports: market-driven development is preferred. Many goods destined for the north and west of the UK or Ireland are still likely to travel via ports in the south and east of England. In fact, economic projections suggest that there will be a continued rise in the use of freight vehicles. At Dover, for example, freight vehicle traffic is projected to rise from 2.3 million units in 2003 to 3.12 million units in 2014, to 3.52–3.92 million in 2024 and 3.72–4.52 million in 2034.43 Increases in the numbers of tourist vehicles, overall passengers, and cruise passengers are also predicted, besides rises in transport of fresh produce and aggregates. To cope with this expected demand Dover, like many other ports, is hoping to expand: a new terminal at the Western Docks is proposed. Proposals for port expansion are at various stages of planning and development elsewhere, for example at Harwich (Bathside Bay), Felixstowe (South Extension), Sheerness, and Avonmouth. A completely new port for London, the London Gateway, on the site of the old Shellhaven Oil Refinery, is also planned. Where these developments are at pre-existing ports, the terrestrial and coastal impacts are partly on existing historic port buildings, which may either lose their setting or just be in the wrong place to be accommodated in the new development. There may, however, be ‘heritage gains’ in terms of restoration, and new uses for historic buildings that, at present, have no function and are dilapidated. Where areas of foreshore or shallow subtidal water are being reclaimed to construct new berths, archaeological sites may be damaged or destroyed by engineering works

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and compaction. New capital dredging, to create larger channels to accommodate the massive vessels now in use, could potentially have adverse impacts on historic wrecks and other submerged sites, though port authorities are increasingly accepting the necessity of diverting new navigation channels around the most significant wrecks, and recording others prior to dredging. It is encouraging that collaborative negotiation between heritage managers and port authorities is, in many cases, leading to constructive solutions, or effective mitigation. But port expansion may also have knock-on effects. Frequently ports are in estuaries and are surrounded by areas of designated wildlife habitat, including SPAs and SACs. The EU Directives mentioned above require compensation for any habitat lost as a consequence of development, if possible within the bounds of the existing site. This necessitates new areas of Managed Realignment, to re-create habitat of the type lost, with effects on any archaeological sites within the realigned areas. In fact these need not necessarily be close to the development area. Many of the old London docks were infilled with demolition rubble prior to the late twentieth-century redevelopment at Docklands, which was built mainly for the financial industry. However, St Katharine’s Dock has been preserved and partly reconstructed, providing berths for a collection of historic ships. Jackson sees the end product as an unsatisfactory pastiche: ‘an example of the English middle class unwillingness to preserve working class monuments as they actually were when working . . . and their equal desire to sanitise and recreate them as expressions of their own “artistic” sensibilities’.44 The same harsh stricture might be made about dock regenerations or even total reconstructions elsewhere. The early nineteenthcentury HMS Trincomalee and other historic vessels are berthed at Hartlepool, and are surrounded by buildings in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century style. Despite first impressions from a distance, virtually all of them are late twentieth century in date. Meanwhile, many buildings of the fascinating and utterly authentic old Fish Docks at Grimsby are in a state of semi-dereliction, interspersed with still-profitable small businesses dealing in shellfish and other commodities: heritage waiting to become heritage, if only new uses can be found for the historic buildings and funding for their conversion. There are not many places left in England where a whiff of the old major fishing ports can be experienced, smelt and tasted. Interested readers should go there now, for the area will change fundamentally soon, by demolition or regeneration. Regeneration would obviously be much preferable, but finding a way of giving some sense that, for many people, this was once a place of awful, mind-numbing, hard and sometimes dangerous labour will be difficult. Regeneration should also support the existing businesses, not sanitize them, so the place retains its reality and functionality. It would be so sad if it were to end up too tidy, like St Katharine’s Dock: sadder still if there were wholesale redevelopment. At a local or regional level people may not always appreciate the historical significance of redundant and derelict structures, and of rundown areas, which may speak to them of past labour, suffering and exploitation which should be rejected – better got rid of. In that way, virtually all trace of defining industries such as coal mining and shipbuilding has been obliterated in many areas.

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The offshore aggregates industry has expanded massively in recent years, in response to an increasing unwillingness of people to have sand and gravel pits on land: the disruption caused by extraction and transportation of the product from gravel pits on land is understandably unpopular. Marine aggregates can be dredged from offshore with less visible effects; they can be transported in bulk more cheaply by sea, and landed closer to the places where they are needed for construction. However, the effects of extraction on marine ecosystems and fisheries, and on submerged prehistoric sites and more recent historic ship and aircraft wrecks, have to be considered during the Environmental Impact Assessment process. The gravels and sands being extracted were deposited by rivers during the Pleistocene, and frequently include Palaeolithic flint artefacts, animal bones and fine-grained sediments which preserve palaeoecological information. During the Mesolithic, new river catchments developed and soils formed over the Pleistocene deposits, so sites of this period, too, are easily damaged by extraction. Collaboration between industry and archaeologists to develop methods of site detection, investigation and protection (where possible) has led to a protocol setting out best practice.45 Studies funded through the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (in effect a tax on the industry) have provided most of the new information on the submerged prehistory of the North Sea and Channel outlined in Chapters 1 and 2. Some campaigning groups have claimed that offshore aggregate extraction is a factor exacerbating coastal erosion.46 Certainly, near-shore dredging for aggregates resulted directly in the loss of the village of Hallsands, in Devon, in the early twentieth century by a process of beach ‘draw-down’.47 The extraction areas nowadays are far further offshore. Nevertheless, all new proposals for offshore extraction now have to be preceded by a ‘Coastal Impact Study’ as part of the process of obtaining regulatory consent before the Crown Estate will grant a dredging licence. Plainly, if the study were to identify potential deleterious impacts, the whole proposal would fall at the first fence. The communications industry also has potential effects on the historic environment: not just the damage caused in cable laying, but also construction of infrastructure at the landfall. An early phase of offshore development began in 1851, when the first cross-Channel telegraph cable was laid, initiating the era of international telecommunications. Many signals are now relayed mainly by satellite, so the impacts of this industry on the maritime historic environment have diminished, although increased digital communication is most effectively transmitted by cable. In fact, cables themselves have now become part of the historic environment and, at times, were implicated in conflict. As noted above, German seabed communication cables were cut in the First World War and diverted to Porthcurno in Cornwall. It might seem odd even to suggest designation and protection of early sea-floor cables but they are as much a part of the wider historic environment related to communication as, say, Roman roads or early nineteenth-century semaphore towers. As noted above, the discovery and licensing of North Sea oil and gas reserves in the 1970s led to a massive programme of rig construction and operation which

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transformed the economies of some East Coast towns. Reserves are now declining, and it is estimated that some 500 platforms are nearing the end of their design life. However, international legislation requires that all these offshore structures be decommissioned and disposed of on land.48 As in the case of communication cables, the extent to which we need to conserve, or even designate, modern ‘heritage’ is much debated, but it would be regrettable if no physical remains at all of this major phase of the country’s history survived. Organizations concerned with industrial heritage are actively considering this at present. In the future, the depleted gas fields of the North Sea could have a new role, which might have new impacts. The UK is now largely dependent for its supply on natural gas conveyed by pipeline from Norway and Russia. Continuity of supply is obviously essential to the country’s economy, but unforeseen events might disrupt it. A solution currently being considered is to store a strategic reserve of imported gas in the old extracted gas fields. New seafloor pipelines and infrastructure would be needed for this, with potential effects on submerged and coastal archaeology. Nuclear power stations, completed from 1956 onwards, were constructed in remote locations in case of catastrophe. Several of the 11 nuclear power plants were built on coasts, for example at Sizewell, Bradwell-on-Sea and Dungeness. Rowley argues that their principal function was not to generate energy, but to produce plutonium for weapons.49 In fact, they have never generated more than 10 per cent of the country’s electricity. Placing potentially contaminating facilities on coasts has not proved to be what we would now call a ‘sustainable’ option: far from it. The sand and shingle bars and beaches of the Suffolk coast and Dungeness (although the latter are in principle able to cope with a 1 in 10,000-year storm event) are inherently dynamic, and will become increasingly so given the scenarios now being presented for global sea-level rise.50 The sites of the first nuclear power plants will demand vast expenditure on coastal defences to avoid release of radioactivity far into the future, long after their limited period of usefulness. The need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in an attempt to mitigate global anthropogenic climate change is now giving increased impetus to the idea of a new programme of civil nuclear power stations. Given that the sites of existing plants must be protected come what may and that local communities have become accustomed to living close to these facilities, which are significant employers, new construction on the same sites seems probable. In the twenty-first century, the push towards achieving sustainable energy is having new impacts. The government target is that 20 per cent of the UK’s energy should be supplied from renewable sources by 2020. Onshore wind farms are best placed, plainly, in windy places, and preferably away from centres of population to avoid visual intrusion and noise. Remote coastal and offshore locations often seem ideal. However, some of the most visually impressive and atmospheric historic buildings and monuments on the coasts of England owe their special character in part to their isolated visual setting. Whether construction of wind farms nearby would enhance or detract from this is, in one sense, a matter of personal taste. Some people find the juxtaposition of the ancient and modern exciting; some

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do not. But generally speaking, historic environment professionals would advise against major changes in setting. Most offshore wind farms will not affect the visual setting of sites on land, since they will scarcely be visible from the shore, but construction, operation, and eventual decommissioning could have impacts on submerged wrecks and prehistoric land surfaces. Procedures for assessment, survey and mitigation to reduce or eliminate impacts have been developed.51 Tidal energy is also likely to become increasingly significant. The government has asked the independent Sustainable Development Commission to assess the potential of tidal power in the UK, review current technologies, and in particular to consider proposals for the Severn estuary as a tidal resource. Potentially, a barrage some 10 miles long could generate around 10 per cent of the UK’s energy needs.52 Obviously a scheme of this magnitude would be very controversial, and would require a wide-ranging Environmental Impact Assessment before approval. Construction across one of England’s most significant historic seaways would be bound to have an impact on wrecks and submerged landscapes; and the onshore facilities for power distribution and maintenance would affect coastal sites. During the First and Second World Wars fish catches everywhere were much reduced, but from around 1925, and again after 1946, the German fishing industry in the North Sea rapidly expanded, using larger, higher-powered trawlers. There was competition with English fishermen for export markets to supply salt-cured herring, and German industrial trawling for ‘undersized’ herring to supply fish oil and meal in the mid-twentieth century depleted the breeding stocks. The English fisheries declined throughout the twentieth century, despite repeated initiatives to revive the industry. This can be seen as part of a more general British economic decline, in that the herring fishery was ‘long-established, localised, labour-intensive and export-oriented’, so that increasing international competition, and expansion of protection, made decline almost inevitable.53 Other fisheries suffered for a variety of causes. The development of an indigenous Newfoundland fishery ended English involvement there; the vast pilchard shoals off West Country coasts in the nineteenth century had simply ceased to arrive by 1900, no doubt in part because of rapacious exploitation; overfishing (partly by East Coast vessels) took huge catches of mackerel in the south-west, decimating stocks; and Icelandic protection of cod stocks, by extending national limits progressively from 12 miles to 200, led to the ‘Cod Wars’ of the late 1950s to 1970s. Since then, the fishing industry has been regulated by European Union quotas, though in themselves these can have deleterious effects – for example the discarding of by-catches whose quotas have already been taken. The alternative is illegal landings. Enforcement of quotas, and also mesh sizes, has proved difficult; and the long-term effect has been progressive continued depletion of stocks, and the further decline of the industry. The future effects of climate change and damage to marine ecosystems by trawling and pollution can only be surmised, but are unlikely to be benign.54 Plainly, there will be economic effects on fishing ports, which will have impacts on their historic environment, as noted above for Grimsby. The history of English seaside resorts from the seventeenth century onwards has

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been considered in Chapter 5. It is probable that cheap air travel will not continue indefinitely and this, combined with the potential effects of global warming, is likely to mean that English coastal resorts will once more become more desirable holiday destinations. Many still are. Others would have to reinvent themselves if they are to be attractive. At present many of them are ‘disadvantaged’ and down at heel. Problems include: the 180-degree catchment area of coastal towns – in contrast to inland towns, which can receive visitors from all around their hinterland; an outdated holiday product; the high-maintenance requirements of coastal buildings to prevent them looking shabby; multiple occupation, related fundamentally to low house prices and unwieldy large properties, such as boarding houses, which are difficult and costly to adapt; suspicion about the safety, in microbial terms, of bathing water; and the generally negative perceptions that have developed in response to all of the above.55 A press release from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 30 November 2007 from the Culture Secretary, James Purnell, announced a £45 million government investment over 2008–11 in seaside resorts, focused on ‘cultural and heritage infrastructure’, led by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. This will provide opportunities for conversion, and new uses, for seaside historic buildings that are currently in a poor state of repair or derelict. Besides all these issues, some ‘horizon scanning’ suggests the possibility that projects abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s might be revived. The idea of building a barrage across the Wash to create a vast freshwater reservoir capable of supplying 600 million gallons per day – enough then for some 10 million people – was considered.56 In view of the chronic water supply problem for south-east England, and the prospect of increased frequency of summer drought due to climate change, it is not impossible that the idea might be considered again despite the environmental consequences, if push comes to shove. At one stage, there was a proposal to construct London’s third airport on reclaimed intertidal flats on Maplin Sands off the Essex coast. In fact, it proved easier to build at Stansted and, more recently, to construct the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow. However, should the volume of air travel continue to increase (which is probable in the short term, whatever happens later), airport construction somewhere in the Thames estuary might not be out of the question.57 Also ‘horizon scanning’, we do not know what new problems the twenty-first century may bring, as pressures on resources induced by climate change begin to bite. It is debated whether the westwards expansion of the Huns, which in turn pushed Gothic and Germanic peoples westward to overrun the Roman Empire, was solely a consequence of climate change,58 but the fact remains that there were vast population movements in the late fourth and fifth centuries. Drought, desertification, famine and flooding might lead to large-scale movements of population once more. Mass migration might recur in this century and, plainly, no nation could allow itself to be overwhelmed. This would inevitably necessitate enhanced border control, and an increased domestic military deployment.59 Besides, pirates (see Chapter 4) continue to operate, though not in home waters: the threat now

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comes from well-armed Somali pirates seizing vessels and disrupting trade through the Suez Canal, to the extent that some shipping companies have chosen to divert their routes around the Cape, with all the added economic and environmental costs this involves. Obviously, terrorist groups might exploit this situation. To repel migrations, and to deal with trade disruption, the Royal Navy might once more be our chief defence. Fears that the naval dockyard at Portsmouth might close have been dispelled by government’s decision, announced in 2007, to place contracts for construction of two new aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, and to deploy them at Portsmouth as their home port (see Chapter 4). Instead, at Plymouth, Devonport will be wound down. Still, the days when Admiral Beatty could put to sea with his entire fleet, of 370 ships and some 90,000 men, to intern the German High Seas Fleet in 1918 are long gone.60 An underlying theme of much of this book has been that human behaviour has been profoundly affected, and at times determined, by climate change over many millennia. Now we are undoubtedly heading for troubled times. The climate changes ahead will not be unprecedented, at least over the coming decades, and humans have survived climate and coastal change before now; but the ability of modern industrialized societies to cope in the longer term is as yet untested. The latest IPCC and UKCIP reports give no grounds for optimism.61 Padfield argues that nations with unrepresentative, centralized, rigid political and economic systems ill adapted to changing circumstances underwent decline in the past – by a quasi-Darwinian process of selection.62 However, where the challenge to nations and systems is global, and the most powerful are unwilling to take the lead in mitigation, all might go under together, irrespective of the efficacy of their institutions. In the context of the Cold War and the prospect of annihilation in nuclear war, Tom Lehrer sang, ‘we will all go together when we go’, but his words could prove apt once more. At the UN Summit at Bali in December 2007, the comment from the representative of Papua New Guinea, directed at the United States of America, encapsulates the frustration felt by many: ‘We seek your leadership, but if you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Get out of the way.’63 Legislation on an international scale to force individuals to participate in mitigating the anthropogenic causes of climate change is plainly necessary, for unless obliged to comply, most people will not make fundamental changes to their lifestyles, however well meaning they might be. Sir Arthur Bryant, contributing to that remarkable flowering of forward thinking and altruistic attitudes at another time of adversity in England’s history, wrote: Unless the state acts as trustee for the helpless unborn, society can scarcely endure. For through the unthinking and unrestrained greed and selfishness of its life tenants, its heritage will be wasted, and its slowly-accumulated and hard-won unity, prosperity and civilisation will be succeeded by disintegration, ruin and barbarism.64

As an historian, he took the long view, past and forward: but today, read ‘global community’ for ‘state’. The ‘helpless unborn’ will inevitably have to face the

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consequences of our actions. Whatever happens, there is a general consensus that climate change impacts are now unavoidable, and that only their scale can now be mitigated. We will have to adapt to changing circumstances. National and international policy will increasingly involve attempting to mitigate the effects of climate change. Shoreline planning will be increasingly focused on adaptation rather than defence: professionals do not now think in terms of large-scale coastal and flood defence other than for major centres of population and key infrastructure. The emphasis now is on risk management, for risk at the coast is unavoidable, and absolute defence is unachievable. Yet it is plain that the ultimate effects of the global and long-term processes are experienced at a local and personal level. The loss of ancestral hunting and gathering grounds in the North Sea, as relative sea level rose rapidly, must have been appalling to Mesolithic populations. Many medieval entrepreneurs must have been ruined by the loss of newly reclaimed land, or their assets at ports, in the devastating storms of the fourteenth century. We inextricably participate in a very long-term process that goes back, as we have seen, to at least around 700,000 years ago. Should states fail to provide – and perhaps they cannot, ultimately – individuals would have to fend for themselves. Even now, I have found that people who live on coasts have asked me about how they should respond to coastal change – much as they might collar doctors or accountants for free advice when they meet them socially. The answer has to do with personal risk assessment. We all use the word ‘risk’ colloquially in everyday speech but it has another, and more tightly defined, technical meaning.65 Risk is defined as a function of the probability of an event happening, and the consequences if it did. Let me make this more explicit. Let us imagine that you are a young urban professional, affluent enough to own an old shoreline building on an estuary as a holiday home. The probability of flood damage to such a property is high, and the probability of its entire loss over the next hundred years is likewise high, due to relative sea-level rise. Yet, to you and your heirs, the financial consequences might be low, compared to your other assets. If you were well informed, you might well have bought it knowing that it had a limited life. In another sense, though, the consequences could be catastrophically high, for you might be exposing your family and friends to the possibility of drowning in an extreme flood. Let’s consider another situation. You are a retired person, not very well off, who has put all their assets into buying a beach bungalow just landwards of a shingle beach. The probability of flooding and erosion might be low here: there might never have been sea floods, and the beach is stable. It is likely that sometime later in the twenty-first century things will change; yet you judge that it will ‘see you out’, and you have heirs to whom loss of the asset will not make much difference. Yet, the consequences might again be very high in an extreme event: you might lose your only financial asset in an exceptional storm surge – or your life. Everyone living on the coast should work through their own individual risk assessment, referring to the Environment Agency Flood Risk Maps and their Coastal Erosion Risk Maps, when available, assess whether or not the benefits

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outweigh the risks, and accept personal responsibility for their decision. Certainly we cannot rely on the dependency-culture attitude that ‘they’ will protect us, and compensate us if things go badly. Don’t whine, don’t whinge. If you suffer, don’t pretend that the information you needed to assess your risk was not available.66 But finally, to see the sea every day in all her moods – tranquil, capricious or violent, but always lovely; to enjoy the bliss of a sea bathe after a hot summer day at work; to relish the comfort of a winter fire as the gale howls outside; and, above all, to participate in the long history of English coastal people from the deep past to the far future, is enough to make me accept risk.

POST SCRIPT To write a book that, in its last chapter, deals with current affairs almost ensures that it will be out of date before it is published. However, my publisher has been so kind as to allow me to add a few words, to bring it more-or-less up to date. The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America late last year aroused great hopes and expectations, especially in his own country but, to some extent, abroad as well. The intransigence of the former Bush administration in terms of developing environmental policy to address climate change – and consequently coastal change – left many people intensely frustrated (above, p. 198). Whilst few would doubt President Obama’s sincerity in wanting to confront the appalling facts of the matter, he has come into office at an awkward time. In my original introduction to this book, written in October 2008 (above, p. xi), I referred briefly, and just at the end, to ‘economic confusion’ and the effects that might have on the funds for coastal risk management and the conservation of the historic environment. At the time that was an afterthought. I suppose that very few people, then, could have imagined how overwhelming the present state of economic affairs would become, and how soon. President Obama no doubt has the intention of developing a sane environmental policy for the USA, which in turn could lead the whole world; but, for the time being, it seems that he is enmeshed in dealing with pressing economic problems, with scant time for addressing concerns that, in the long run, are much more significant. This situation seems widespread across many countries. Meanwhile, recent economic changes have had at least one immediate effect on the English coast: the skipper of an Icelandic fishing boat – the Tomas Thorvaldsson – chose to land his catch at Grimsby today for, following the problems of his nation’s economy, he can now get a better price here – something that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago. This is an unpredictable time when unanticipated things happen. However, some anticipated events have not happened. I had expected that, by now, the UKCIP 08 Climate Change Scenarios would have been released. Re-named the UK Climate Change Projections 09, they are still not available. So many areas of policy and planning, by many types of organisations, depend on them, so we hope for them soon. Development of the Defra-led UK ‘Coastal Change Policy’ proceeds,

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but is not yet ready for release; and the Environment Agency ‘Adaptation Strategy’ is still being developed. These, and other, initiatives discussed in Chapter 6 are still awaited. There have been several useful new academic publications about the English coast and its history over the last few months which I would have liked to discuss. It’s too late to include them fully now; but there are two that I must mention. Zoe Hazell has presented a definitive review and database of submerged forests and peat exposures (see Chapters 1 and 2): Hazell, Z. J. (2008), ‘Offshore and intertidal peat deposits, England: a resource assessment and development of a database. Environmental Archaeology, 13, 101–10. In Chapter 5, I discussed briefly the inspiration that the Arts have drawn from the coast, and the effects, in turn, that they have had upon it. Robin McInnes has turned that on its head in his study ‘Using art to assist understanding of long-term coastal change’, in which he made use of visual images, mainly from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, as a source of information on past coastal change and as a tool for future management. (<www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/fellowships-and-internships/research-outputs-fromthe-crown-estate-caird-fellowship-2008>). PM 23rd March 2009

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Appendix: The scientific basis Chapter 1 and, to a lesser extent, Chapter 2 rely heavily on information derived from various areas of science. This might be unfamiliar territory for some readers. It is not possible here to provide full explanations of all the approaches and techniques mentioned, but this appendix provides a brief introduction to some aspects of scientific analysis relevant to this book.

SEDIMENTS AND SOILS The archaeological evidence for pre-modern humans comes principally from sediments, and more recent archaeological sites are often sealed within or beneath sediments. Clastic, or minerogenic, sediments are formed of rock fragments, from a Greek word meaning ‘broken’, as in ‘iconoclast’. These may be large fragments, as in the case of beach shingle, or may be composed of fine fragments and particles: of sand (0.02–2 mm), silt (0.002–0.02 mm), or clay (less than 0.002 mm). Biogenic sediments, such as peat and organic mud, are formed partly or wholly of dead plant material. The type of sediment deposited provides direct information on environmental conditions in the past at any location. Glacial sediments, formed in extremely cold climate phases, are generally clastic. They may be unsorted sediments, composed of a haphazard mixture of large stones, sand, silt and clay, such as till (also referred to as boulder clay), which represents material directly ground from the landscape by glaciers, and subsequently deposited when they melted. Alternatively, they may have been sorted into size categories by current flow, in glacial outwash streams and rivers. Depending on current velocity, they may be of gravel, sand, silt or clay – obviously a high-energy flow will move and deposit larger rock fragments than a sluggish stream. Current velocities were often very high close to glaciers, for warming in spring resulted in massive and sudden discharges of meltwater. Some wind-deposited, or aeolian, sediments were deposited by dust- or sandstorms during cold dry periods in glacial stages, and these are known as loess and cover sand. Sediments formed in warm climatic phases have, in general, a finer-textured mineral component, for there was not the same violent seasonal variation in river flows, and they include more biogenic deposits, since in warmer conditions there is more plant growth.1 Peat is a widespread interglacial sediment, though the type of peat formed has depended on local vegetation. On upland bogs, peat formed from

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Sphagnum moss or heathers is common; in lowland river valleys and lake margins, peat formed of sedges, reeds or debris from alder trees predominates. On coasts, the types of sediments deposited depend on wave and current energy: beaches exposed to violent wave action are typically composed of shingle or coarse sand, whereas in sheltered estuaries clayey and silty sediments such as intertidal mud are more frequently seen.2 Where sediments have later been exposed to fully terrestrial conditions, for example, due to sea-level fall or changes in river channel morphology, soils develop on them. Soil types are extremely varied, depending in part on the ‘parent material’ – the sediment or bedrock on which they have developed. Soils include enormously complex communities of living organisms, from bacteria and fungi to moles, and they support very varied plant communities, all of which in turn influence the soil type that forms. My friend Patricia Wiltshire captures this interaction between geology, climate and living things by saying that ‘soils are places’. In archaeological terms, soils are of special interest since they represent the land surfaces on which people lived. Ancient soils that have become buried beneath later sediments, known as palaeosols, often have archaeological sites on them which may be almost undisturbed, so that artefacts are in situ, as left by the inhabitants – for example, spreads of waste from flint tool production, or butchery waste at ‘kill sites’. The structure of palaeosols which have been submerged beneath saline water – at prehistoric sites now in the intertidal zone, for example – has been considerably modified and it is often difficult to understand or even see them from observation on site. A technique known as soil micromorphology, which involves impregnating a soil sample in a plastic resin, and then examining thin sections using a polarising microscope to identify minerals, organic components and microstructures, can help to define the original soil type present and the processes which it has subsequently undergone.3

PALAEOECOLOGY Sediments and palaeosols often contain the remains of living organisms – more specifically their hard parts, which are composed of very durable biomolecules and minerals. These include the exoskeletons of beetles (consisting of a resistant biomolecule named chitin), shells of molluscs (calcite and aragonite), animal bones and teeth (apatite), the outer covering of pollen grains (sporopollenin) and wood (lignin). Different categories of biological remains require different conditions for their preservation but, broadly speaking, waterlogged fine-textured minerogenic sediments and peats preserve the widest range of material, since decomposition by micro-organisms is inhibited in these sediments. These subfossil biological remains are of two main types. Microfossils, as the name implies, are invisible to the naked eye, or almost so. They include palynomorphs – pollen grains, fungal spores, bacteria, silica structures from plant cells (known as phytoliths), microscopic charcoal, and cysts and eggs of nematode

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worms. The remains of single-celled organisms are also preserved, including diatoms (plantlike organisms with outer coats made of silica) and foraminifers (a group of amoeba-like organisms with tests or ‘shells’ of calcium carbonate, which live in the sea and brackish water). Macrofossils can be seen with the naked eye, but often require microscopic examination to identify or study them. They include seeds, wood, charcoal, insects (especially beetles), mollusc shells and the bones of fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, including humans. Extraction of biological remains from the sediment involves a range of techniques, including chemical treatments and sieving. Identification of this partly decomposed and fragmentary material is a specialist business, involving comparison of micro- and macrofossils with ‘reference’ specimens collected from modern plants and animals. Once the remains separated from the sediment have been identified, a knowledge of the present-day ecology of the species identified permits more detailed reconstruction of the ancient ecology, termed palaeoecology.4 Diatoms and foraminifera are especially useful for reconstructing relative sea level and other coastal changes, since the adaptation of the various species to marine, intertidal, estuarine or freshwater environments is known from modern living organisms.5 During a typical study, remains of a range of types of organism, and both micro- and macrofossils, will be examined. Different categories of organism differ in terms of their environmental adaptations, so give different, and often complementary, environmental information; and different categories of subfossils are dispersed differently, so they may give a regional or more local picture of a past environment. Of course, some species have become extinct. We cannot observe directly the habitat indicated by, for example, mammoth bones; but we can infer the environmental conditions in which this species lived, from the sediments which contained the bones of the animal, and from the remains of other organisms in them. Animal bones, mollusc shells and remains of food plants also provide information on human diets. On the coast, midden deposits, composed largely of food waste – shell, bone and plant remains – are especially informative. Further information on human diet is provided by analysis of stable isotopes of carbon ( 13C) and nitrogen (15N) in collagen, a protein found in bone.6 δ13C (pronounced ‘delta C13’) values indicate the amounts of marine foods in the diet, since oceans are enriched in 13C compared to terrestrial habitats. δ15N values increase at higher levels of the food chain, by a process known as isotopic fractionation.7 Values in the bone collagen of humans and other animals are about 2–4 per cent higher than the values in the protein they ate when alive. Top predators have the highest values, especially those from marine ecosystems, in which food chains are longer than those on land (e.g. seals). The bones of humans eating mainly plant foods have lower values than those from people who rely on animal protein. Oxygen isotope compositions are of value in indicating the mean temperature, and hence the latitude or general geographic region in which a human or animal lived whilst bone was forming. δ18O values in bone phosphate are closely related to those in drinking water, which in turn are affected by mean annual air temperature.8 This can provide evidence for long-distance migration.

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STRATIGRAPHY Having determined the conditions in which sediments were formed, and learnt something about their palaeoecology, we need to establish relationships to sediments above or below, to understand the sequence of events – to develop a narrative or story. Stratigraphy is the study of relationships between sediments. A sediment directly overlying another is almost certainly later in date, and the character of the transition, or contact, between sediment types can indicate whether a gradual or abrupt environmental change resulted in the change in sedimentation. However, simple ‘conformable’ stratigraphy of this type is often disrupted. Watercourses often cut through the pre-existing sediment sequences, and may be preserved in sections, infilled with still later sediments. At offshore sites, tidal currents have often caused gullying and erosion of sediments that formed before the area became submerged. The advance of glaciers across a landscape has, in places, entirely removed all sediments down to bedrock. For this reason, the oldest sedimentary sequences are very fragmentary: often only ‘islands’ of undisturbed ancient sediments survive intact from formerly much more extensive areas. It is difficult to correlate separate fragmentary sequences from different areas – to establish whether or not they were contemporary. We also need dates if we are to develop a narrative.

SCIENTIFIC DATING Until the mid-twentieth century, dating was almost the preoccupation of archaeologists, for the artefact-based dating techniques available were inadequate, and very often approximate. The advent of reliable scientific dating techniques freed archaeologists to examine other, more interesting, aspects of the past, such as subsistence bases and social structure. More recently, the precision of dating techniques has been increasingly refined.9 It is beginning to be possible to think in terms of individual years, and generational timespans, in the prehistoric past. Increasingly, the vast spaces of prehistory will be refined chronologically to an individual human level of time perception. There is now a very wide range of scientific dating techniques, but only those that are directly relevant to sites discussed in this book need be outlined here. Radiometric dating methods depend on the facts that elements have isotopes, which differ in the number of neutrons in the atomic nucleus; that some of these isotopes are unstable, and undergo radioactive decay at a known, and regular, rate; and that measurements of the amounts of the original isotope still present in a sample give a measure of the amount of time over which radioactive decay has proceeded. For present purposes, radiocarbon (14C) dating is by far the most important. Carbon has three isotopes. The predominant one, with an atomic weight of 12 (12C), has 6 protons and 6 neutrons in its nucleus. Another (14C), commonly known as carbon-14 or radiocarbon, has 6 protons and 8 neutrons. 14C undergoes radioactive decay, emitting beta radiation. This occurs at a regular

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rate: 50 per cent of the atoms originally present will have decayed after 5,730 years, and 75 per cent after a further 5,730 years. This time period is referred to as the half-life of the isotope. Carbon is taken up by plants from the atmosphere, and those plants may then be eaten by animals, so any sample derived from a plant or animal can be dated by determining the proportion of 14C still present. However, the concentration of 14C in the atmosphere has not remained constant through time, so radiocarbon determinations (expressed as years bp – before present) have to be calibrated using data from the annual growth rings of an exceptionally longlived tree – the bristlecone pine of the California mountains. The calibrated dates are expressed as years cal bc or cal ad. The main limitations of radiocarbon dating are that samples older than about 58,000 years include so little 14C that accurate measurements are not possible, and that the calibration curve does not extend back beyond about 7,000 years. Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating (OSL) is indirectly related to radioactive decay. Materials with atoms arranged in a crystalline structure, such as quartz sand grains, contain radioactive elements in small amounts. These decay, releasing radiation that displaces electrons, which then become ‘trapped’ at points where the crystal lattice is imperfect. When sand grains are suspended in water and exposed to light, the electrons are released, emitting light. Once these grains have been deposited as sediment and buried, energy once more accumulates within the crystal lattices by decay of radioactive isotopes in the sediment. The accumulated energy can be measured when a sample is reheated in the laboratory. This provides a measure of the time that has elapsed since deposition. Dendrochronology, or tree ring dating, is based on the fact that tree species growing in temperate climates show seasonal variation in growth, following a cessation of growth in winter. Annual ring widths depend on environmental variables, such as annual variations in temperature and rainfall. The technique depends upon comparing sequences from sections of wood samples from different sources: each has its own ‘signature’ composed of successive narrower and wider rings. Ring-width sequences obtained by coring wood from a living tree – obviously of known date from the present – are cross-matched with older timber from buildings and, successively, with wood from still older sources, such as archaeological sites and peat bogs. If overlapping sequences from all these sources can be obtained, a tree-ring chronology extending back over thousands of years may be obtained. In some cases, for particular areas, it may not be possible – yet – to link samples from archaeological sites to modern timber of known date, so only a ‘floating chronology’ is available for the time being. Dendrochronology can only be used for the post-glacial period.10 Palaeomagnetic dating depends on the fact that the magnetic field of the earth varies, through time, both in intensity and direction. Rocks and sediments which contain magnetic minerals become magnetized during formation, and crystals and particles become aligned on the magnetic field at the time of sediment formation. Their alignment is then fixed, despite subsequent magnetic variations, and a natural remanent magnetism (NRM) is preserved. This provides a measure of the

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geomagnetic field existing when the rock or sediment was formed. The variables measured are: ● ●

● ●

Declination – the angle between magnetic north and true north; Inclination – the dip of a freely suspended needle relative to the horizontal. It is 0º at the magnetic equator, and 90º at the magnetic poles; Intensity – the strength of the field; and Polarity.

Over very long periods of time, the earth’s geomagnetic field reverses: the poles change positions through 180 degrees. Such polarity reversals are detectable in rocks and sediments and can be dated by radiometric methods. The present orientation of field is known as normal polarity, the opposite being reversed polarity. This is only of use for dating Lower Palaeolithic sites, for the most recent polarity reversal occurred around 780,000 years ago. From sediments spanning the last 10,000 years, a complicated pattern of short-term variations in the earth’s field has been identified and this can be used to establish more precise dates for post-glacial sites. Amino acids are the components of proteins; they become linked in long chains to form protein molecules, present in the body of every living thing. Proteins survive in subfossil remains. Amino acids occur in two mirror-image forms, or isomers, only one of which occurs in living tissues. After the death of an organism a process called racemization occurs, in which the one isomeric form is converted to the other. Isomeric determinations thus can provide a measure of the age of organic materials. Some groups of organisms – especially voles – have undergone rapid evolution during the Pleistocene. In voles, the principal change has been in the dentition: a shift from teeth with closed roots (with a fixed and finite growth period) to those with open roots (which continue to grow indefinitely). Genera and species of voles from Palaeolithic sites are important chronological indicators.

THE QUATERNARY AND CLIMATE CHANGE The techniques outlined briefly above enable us to investigate sites in detail, to learn a good deal about their palaeoenvironments, and determine their chronological place in the Quaternary. This is the most recent of geological periods, spanning approximately the last two million years. The precise definition of the beginning of the Quaternary is still being debated and defined by geologists: somewhere between 1.8 and 2.6 million years ago will eventually be chosen. The Quaternary comprises two epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The term ‘Pleistocene’ (from Greek, meaning ‘most recent’) was originally used by Sir Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century. Later, the Pleistocene came to be regarded as synonymous with the ‘Ice Age’, when glaciers advanced into latitudes where today temperate climatic conditions prevail. The evidence for this came initially from the studies of

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the Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz, who recognized that many geological deposits in temperate Europe had been deposited by glaciers. By the late nineteenth century, the existence of several glacial stages, separated by temperate interglacial stages, had been established: sediments containing fossil remains of warm-climate organisms such as Hippopotamus were observed at latitudes where this animal could not now live. During the twentieth century, this basic model of alternating glacial and interglacial stages was refined and developed by the application of new techniques, especially the study of sediments from ocean floors, where there is a more complete sequence of sediments than on land.11 The second epoch of the Quaternary is the Holocene (from Greek, meaning ‘completely recent’). It refers to the last 12,000 years, when glacier ice has retreated to high latitudes and altitudes. However, there is every reason to think that our present warm period is essentially similar to previous interglacials. This being so, it is probably more realistic to think of the Holocene as no more than a stage (termed the Flandrian, from the deep sediment sequences of this period in Flanders) of the Pleistocene. Unfortunately, the Quaternary sedimentary record on land, and in shallow seas such as the North Sea, is very fragmentary. Glaciers have repeatedly ploughed across the land, removing many earlier deposits. The study of oxygen isotopes in deep ocean sediments and ice cores has revolutionized our understanding of the Pleistocene in recent years, by demonstrating that there have been far more climatic oscillations than those established from terrestrial sediments. Oxygen has three isotopes, with atomic weights of 16, 17 and 18 (16O, 17O, 18O). Water molecules (H2O) may include oxygen atoms of any of these three isotopes (H216 O, H217O, H218O), and thus they differ in molecular weight. During evaporation of sea water, the lighter H216O water molecules evaporate preferentially, so that atmospheric water vapour becomes enriched with the light oxygen isotope 16O. During cold phases of the Pleistocene, much of the H216O fell as snow on land and was trapped in glacier ice. At the same time global sea levels fell. These two processes left the oceans depleted in 16O, and increasingly enriched in 18O. Conversely, in interglacial stages, glacier ice melted, releasing 16O back into the oceans. Many deep ocean sediments include abundant foraminifera and it is possible to measure the 18O/16O ratios in the calcium carbonate of their shells, or ‘tests’, using mass spectrometry, as a proxy indicator of oceanic oxygen isotope ratios. By measuring successive samples from cores of ocean floor sediments, variations through time in isotope ratios can be established, and these reflect temperature variations.12 Ocean sediment cores have now been examined from the Atlantic and Pacific, establishing that there have been numerous ‘interglacial’ and ‘glacial’ stages during the Pleistocene, and very many interstadial phases. The Quaternary has now been subdivided, on the basis of these studies, into a set of Marine Isotope Stages (MIS), taking our present stage as 1, and numbering them backwards into the past. Cores taken from polar ice caps also preserve a record of changing oxygen isotope ratios in snowfall, and measurements from ice cores can therefore also give information on changing temperature during the post-glacial period, or Holocene.

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The chronology is based on recording annual ice deposition (as registered by dust and salt content), and extrapolating these data back through the full sequence. Correlating the terrestrial/shallow sea (mainly geological and palaeoecological) evidence and deep ocean evidence (MIS) for climate change is challenging, but there is now a consensus on at least the broad outlines (see Table 1 in Chapter 1). Climate change (and also changes in land levels) has had major effects on sea levels, so that prehistoric sites now exposed on the coast may have been well inland when occupied. Other sites are now deeply submerged under the sea and, conversely, some that were coastal when occupied are now kilometres inland.

SEA-LEVEL CHANGE, SITE PROSPECTION AND INVESTIGATION Finding and investigating Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites that are still on dry-land is often not too difficult, though it involves hard work and persistence. Sections through sediment sequences are often visible in sea cliffs, on beaches, or in gravel or sand quarries; and sites are often exposed during developments such as new roads, railways, housing or office building. Sites and sections can be recorded, and samples collected, for the various kinds of analysis outlined above. In coastal areas, however, especially in estuaries, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic land surfaces are often deeply buried beneath later sediments, so investigation is more problematic. Geophysical survey techniques can be used to produce three-dimensional models of buried deposits and, by combining these geophysical results with borehole data, the ‘sedimentary architecture’ of an area can be reconstructed, which permits inferences about changing landscapes through time, and suggests potential locations for archaeological sites.13 However, much of the evidence for early hunter-gatherer people is now submerged beneath the North Sea and English Channel, due to rising sea levels since the end of the latest (Devensian) glacial stage. The reader might reasonably ask why we should bother to look at it, when it is so hard to do. The first reason is that our ignorance of submerged prehistory is enormous. It has been suggested that those low-lying areas of now-submerged land may have been the most significant to hunter-gatherers, offering vast tracts of wetland and coastal landscapes rich in food – plants, shellfish, fish, wildfowl and herbivores. ‘Upland’ areas that are still land today would have been densely forested in interglacial stages, and might have been considered unproductive and dangerous by people at the time, apart from the river valleys that extended inland from the contemporary coast. Dense temperate forests did not produce much human food and were inhabited by predators, such as bears and wolves, which could have stalked people unseen. Secondly, this submerged landscape is being destroyed by modern economic activities: beam trawling, gravel and sand extraction, wind farms, cable laying and channel dredging for new and enlarged ports are all intensely destructive. We could lose most of this archaeology before we even begin to understand it. Fortunately, the process of

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Environmental Impact Assessment (see Chapter 7) requires consideration of all environmental aspects before development, and there is now active collaboration between archaeologists and the aggregates and renewable energy industries. The seas around England are often turbid and full of suspended sediment in many places, so visibility for divers is often very limited. The distribution of historic wrecks designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 reflects the preference of sport divers for clear, warmer waters. Most designated wrecks are in the south and south-west seas and there are few along the East Coast. The portfolio of designated wrecks has, until recently, been established largely as a consequence of reports of wrecks from amateur divers: but my colleague Mark Dunkley intends to develop a more balanced list of sites, based on information from a wider range of sources. Detecting large structures, such as wrecks, by diving is often difficult, and exploring offshore submerged landscapes, coasts and sites still more so, and calls for a highly specialized set of techniques. In fact we have to approach the study of submerged prehistoric sites using remote techniques, almost as though they were on another planet.14 Bathymetry – the depth and form of the seabed below the present water surface – gives only an approximate indication of the land surface that existed before it was submerged. In some places the surface has been truncated down to bedrock, or gullied, by erosion. Elsewhere, extensive sand-wave fields and banks have developed over former land surfaces and these are frequently dynamic and shifting. Nowadays, bathymetric survey is based on sonar techniques, particularly multibeam sonar survey. Surveys are undertaken for navigational purposes by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO). In addition, side-scan sonar is used to generate images of the seabed. Besides this, the superficial layers of the seabed surface can be examined by grab sampling. This is a technique often used in ecological survey, to sample seabed organisms, but is also now being used to sample for artefacts and seabed exposures of peat.15 This is only the seabed surface, however. To look beneath, seismic techniques, often referred to as ‘sub-bottom profilers’, are used. Acoustic signals are transmitted into sub-surface seabed deposits, and the return signals reflected from interfaces between different sediment units comprise the output; but interpreting them depends upon a sound knowledge of the regional geology. Interpreted profiles give an insight into the depth of superficial seabed sediments above bedrock, the Holocene (Flandrian, or post-glacial) land surface and drainage pattern, and earlier Pleistocene deposits. 3D seismic data represent a new source of information.16 Petroleum GeoServices has provided a set of marine seismic data (the 3D Seismic MagaSurvey), collected over decades by the petroleum industry, oil and service industries at huge cost, covering 23,000 km2 of the southern North Sea.17 This has permitted a detailed mapping of the coasts, estuaries, rivers and lakes of the submerged post-glacial landscape – which was last seen by people around 8,000 years ago – besides deeper, and older, Pleistocene deposits and features. To examine deposits in more detail, to verify interpretations based on geophysics alone, and to obtain samples for palaeoecological analysis and scientific dating, seabed vibrocores

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are drilled. A chronological framework for part of the latest (Devensian) glacial stage and the Holocene has been provided by radiocarbon dates on peat, wood, mollusc shells and bone.18 Beyond the range of radiocarbon dating, and for some deposits that do not include organic materials, OSL dating is used. These techniques can be used to develop models of submerged and buried topography, but this is only half the picture. The reconstruction of ancient coastlines depends also on knowledge of sea levels in the past.19 Pleistocene global sea-level changes, referred to as eustatic change, were on a massive scale related to climate change, associated with interglacial-to-glacial cycles. These, in turn, resulted in thermal expansion and contraction of the world’s oceans, and melting and re-forming of land and sea ice. The maximum ice advance of the Devensian glacial stage was around 22,000 years bp, when global sea levels fell to 110–130 m below those of the present. By contrast the ‘fossil’ Pleistocene coast and raised beach at Boxgrove, Sussex, dating from around 500,000 years ago, is at +40 m od, and c. 8 km north of the present coast.20 However, sea level at any given time and place results not just from global (eustatic) sea-level changes, but also from uplift or depression of the earth’s crust (tectonic and isostatic change). Isostatic change in England has resulted largely from repeated alternation of ice and sea water loading, and of phases when the area was land and ice-free (so that loading was removed). In general terms, those parts of the crust which have most recently been loaded with sea water, or glacier ice, undergo uplift or ‘rebound’, whereas those that have not been recently loaded are stable or subsiding. There has also been longer-term regional tectonic uplift, related to movements of the plates which make up the earth’s crust. In southern England, for example, regional uplift over the course of the Pleistocene has led to the development of Pleistocene raised beaches and river terraces at Boxgrove and elsewhere. Holocene raised beaches in the north-west are related much more to isostatic change: parts of northern England and Scotland are still rebounding after the glaciers which covered these areas in the latest glacial stage melted. Given that these principal variables – eustatic, tectonic and isostatic – have changed simultaneously, it is customary to speak in terms of relative sea level (RSL) change for any given location. RSL change, and hence coastline position, during the late Devensian and Flandrian can be reconstructed with greater precision than in earlier periods. The basic principles are that organic sediments, such as peats, can be dated by radiocarbon; the environment in which they formed (in relation to their contemporary sea level) can be determined from palaeoecological evidence; and their present elevations and positions can be fixed. These data combine to provide a Sea Level Index point (SLI) for a given location.21 In areas where numerous SLIs are available, age-depth plots – ‘sea-level curves’ – can be assembled.22 There are frequently problems with doing this, due to incomplete data or to compaction or erosion of sediments, but in principle, by combining the known submerged topographic data with age-depth plots and taking into account subregional isostatic factors, it is possible to propose models of changing coastlines for the Late Devensian and Holocene. Linking together the models of sedimentary sequences, sedimentary architecture

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and landscape change derived from present-day marine and terrestrial areas is a special problem. Quite different sets of geophysical and geotechnical techniques are used in these contrasting environments, and there is frequently very little information from the shallow near-shore zone. Moreover, there is also a conceptual problem, for the mechanisms driving changes in Pleistocene sedimentation in the two zones are quite different – respectively, sea-level change and isostatic uplift.23 Interpreting offshore sequences in terms of current models derived from land sites may simply not be possible. However, the proximity of raised beach sediments and river terrace sediments in southern England offers an unusual opportunity to attempt correlation.24

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Notes

Introduction 1 2 3 4 5

Thompson (1980) and, for example, Aberg and Lewis (2000). Cunliffe (2001). Flemming (2004); Gaffney et al. (2007). IPCC (2007); Jenkins et al. (2007). I will try to minimize jargon in this book, but ‘historic environment’ is a useful, if clumsy, shorthand term which encompasses archaeological sites, historic buildings and structures, wrecks and entire landscapes. There are hardly any landscapes in Britain which have been unaffected by people in the past, and some are completely artificial. In this sense, the environment which we inhabit is entirely ‘historic’. 6 Cunliffe (2008: 17–19). 7 Muir (2008).

Notes to Chapter 1: The deep past 1 2 3 4 5 6

Parfitt et al.(2005). Stringer (2006: 99). Yong (2008). Parfitt et al. (2005); Stringer (2006: 72–3). Bridgland (1994: 11). Lyell (1830); Reid (1899). For a memoir of this remarkable man, see Preece and Killen (1995). Reid also perceived that the North Sea had been land in glacial and early and late interglacial stages. He produced a map of this postulated landmass, which corresponds wonderfully well with modern understanding of palaeogeography. 7 Godwin (1975: 210). 8 Wymer (1999); White and Schreve (2000); Stringer (2006). 9 It needs explaining here, however, that dates derived from scientific techniques, including radiocarbon dating, can be expressed as years bc or years bp (‘Before Present’, arbitrarily defined as ad 1950); and that radiocarbon determinations need calibration to convert them to true calendar years (cal bc or cal bp). In scientific publications, both uncalibrated and calibrated dates are given, together with error terms and laboratory reference numbers. In Chapters 1 and 2, I give them much more simply, to avoid cluttering the text for the general reader. I refer to dates which have been published as ‘cal bp’, or just ‘bp’, as ‘years ago’, but will retain dates ‘cal bc’. Only dates derived from dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) can give straightforward calendar dates ‘bc’. Readers wanting the original

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dating determinations and full information are referred to the publications cited. 10 Parfitt and Ashton (2003); Parfitt et al. (2005). Ancient rivers which no longer exist are usually given names from the places where sediments they deposited were first seen, or are best exposed. Other rivers have changed their courses through time, often dramatically. The Thames, for example, at one time flowed across north Essex, before it was diverted southwards by glaciers. Ancient courses of rivers are usually indicated by the prefix ‘palaeo-’; thus, the offshore part of the river Arun, now submerged under the Channel, is known as the palaeo-Arun. 11 Parfitt et al. (2005); Rose et al. (2001). 12 Antoine et al. (2003); Gupta et al. (2007). 13 Stringer (2006: 163). 14 Preece (1995). In the longer term, of course, the 34 km of sea now separating Dover from Calais, on the site of the Weald–Artois pericline, has to a large extent determined the course of the history of England. 15 Pope (2003); Roberts and Parfitt (1999). 16 Bates (2005). 17 Isle of Wight County Archaeological Unit (1999: 27, 33). 18 Innes and Blackford (2003). 19 Bridgland (1994). 20 Singer et al. (1973). 21 Wymer (1999: 99–103). 22 Loader (2001). 23 Bellamy (1998); Cameron et al. (1992). A ‘Finds Reporting Protocol’ has been developed by Wessex Archaeology, with ALSF funding, for use by the staff of Aggregates’ Companies at wharves. The lithics and associated animal bones and sediment samples landed at Flushing, though first reported by an amateur collector, were efficiently incorporated into this protocol, and will shortly be analysed, to help place the finds in context. 24 Directive 97/11/EC, which amends the original Directive 85/337/EEC on ‘The assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment’, which came into effect in July 1988. 25 The ALSF originated in April 2002 with the aims of reducing the use of newly extracted aggregates by increasing their cost, thus making the use of recycled aggregates more commercially viable, and to provide funds to address the environmental effects of extraction. This has included the impacts on submerged archaeology (see <www.defra.gov. uk/funding/schemes/alsf.htm>). The Minerals Industry Research Organisation has also provided funding. Projects supported by these two sources have dramatically increased our understanding of the ancient landscapes of the North Sea and the Channel and should permit us to define areas of special interest from which extraction should be excluded. 26 Wessex Archaeology (2007). 27 Ashton et al. (1992). 28 However, Reid (1899) reported eroded blocks of Cromer Forest Bed Series sediments on the beach at Happisburgh, and was able to show that these were eroding from reefs about half a mile offshore. Recent re-examination of mammalian remains and hand axes from the beach imply the existence of an early hominin submerged site, or sites (Simon Parfitt, personal communication.) 29 Stringer (2006: 137–70). 30 Gaffney et al. (2007). 31 Glimmerveen et al. (2004); De Wilde (2006).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 – 2 1

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

217

Wymer and Robins (1994). Ashmead et al. (1974); Jacobi (1980); Campbell (1977). Hosfield (2007). Hallam et al. (1973). Brigham et al. (2007: 65–6, 194). Fulford et al. (1997: 107–8). Bell (2007: 3). Van de Noort (2004: 35–40); Mellars and Dark (1998). Jacobi (1978). Bell (2007a: 332–4). Weyman (1984). Waddington et al. (2003); Waddington (2007). Brigham et al. (2007: 65–6, 194). Van de Noort (2004: 6). Hall and Coles (1994: 28–37); Crowson et al. (2000: 168–72). Reader (1911: 249). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 62–70). Hosfield (2007). Ibid. Middleton (1990). Bonsall et al. (1994); Cherry and Cherry (2002). Roberts et al. (1996). Scales (2007). The writer has watched roe deer grazing on salt marsh and upper mud-flats around Poole harbour, and has observed deer hoofprints (probably of roe) on intertidal mud in Essex. Presumably, deer graze on coastal marshes either to seek nutrients not available in their usual woodland habitat, or else when grazing is sparse there, even though they place themselves in a dangerous open environment with no cover from predators, including human hunters. Roberts et al. (1996); Gonzalez and Cowell (2007: 19). Bell (2007a: 10–12). Riley (1988). Bell and Walker (1992: 68–9). Cope and Lemdahl (1995). Metcalfe et al. (2000); Shennan and Andrews (2000). Long et al. (2000). Van de Noort (2004: 16). Lambeck (1995); Shennan et al. (2000a, b); Ward et al. (2006). Gaffney et al. (2007). Simmons et al. (1981); Bell and Walker (1992). Waller (1994); Devoy (1979); Scaife (1998); Evans (1995). Wessex Archaeology (2007). Allen and Gardiner (2000). Velegrakis et al. (2000: 99). Gaffney et al. (2007). Salt deposits were originally formed in this region during the Upper Permian (c. 260–251 million years ago) and were subsequently buried beneath later layers of rock. Under pressure, crystalline salt can flow like a liquid and, over geological time, differential

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compression by the mass of overlying deposits caused a slow sideways flow. In some places, the salt layers were depleted, whilst elsewhere they increased in thickness, deforming and raising the overlying rocks to form huge, roughly circular, dome-like hills. In places the overlying rock has collapsed to form central depressions. Momber (2004). Grøn and Skaarup (2004). Wessex Archaeology (2006a). Peeters (2006). Murphy (2004). Coles (1998, 2000); Flemming (2002, 2004). Waddington (2007); Waddington and Pedersen (2007). Waddington (2007: 207).

Notes to Chapter 2: Lost and new-made lands 1 Lyell (1830). 2 Rippon (2000). 3 The effects of global (or eustatic) sea-level change, driven by climate change, are superimposed on more regional (tectonic or isostatic) changes in the elevation of the earth’s crust, besides localized compaction of sediments with consequent lowering of the ground surface. Thus, for any given location, one can only speak of relative sea-level change. 4 Long et al. (2000). 5 Devoy (1979). 6 Murphy and Brown (1999: 13–15). 7 Wilkinson and Murphy (1995). 8 Wessex Archaeology (2005: 11). 9 Wilkinson and Murphy (1995). 10 Heppell (2004; personal communication). 11 Crowson (2004). 12 Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 90–100). 13 Ibid. table 18. 14 Johns et al. (2004: 21–31); Ratcliffe and Straker (1996, 1997). 15 Ratcliffe and Sharpe (1991); Thomas (1985). 16 Scaife (1984). 17 Bell (2007). 18 Thomas (1958); Bell (1990). 19 Allen and Gardiner (2007). 20 Woodcock (2003: 2–6). 21 Greatorex (2003). 22 Long et al. (2007: 189–99). 23 Reid (1913). 24 Drury and Lane (2004: 4). 25 Wymer and Robins (1994). 26 Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 28–34, 90–100). 27 Seel (2000); Wessex Archaeology (2006). 28 Allen and Gardiner (2007: 65–6). 29 Bell (1990).

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30 31 32 33 34

35

36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

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Brigham et al. (2007: 65–6, 194); Fulford et al. (1997: 154–5); McAvoy (1993). Loader (2007: 51). Seel (2000). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 98–100). In addition it seems that some tree species, particularly yew, colonized poorly drained valley-floor soils and peat surfaces, where they are not found in England today. The subfossil trees could represent an extinct ecotype. Wilson et al. (2000: 99–125, 250). Competition for resources with the Inuit, who apparently colonized Greenland at roughly the same time as the Scandinavians, could have played a part in the extinction of the Greenland Norse settlements. Moreover, the Inuit had a largely self-sufficient hunting economy. The Scandinavians, by contrast, were farmers and fishers, and depended in part on imported raw materials such as timber and iron. Briffa and Osborn (1999). It was ended by the disastrous conditions of the fourteenth century, when terrible weather over a series of years led to failure of harvests, epidemics of animal diseases and widespread starvation. Cracknell (2005: 2). Lamb (1995: 191); Rippon (2000: 30–1). Van de Noort (2004: 109). Waller (1994: 75–9). Rippon (2000: 138–41). Murphy (2002). Crowson et al. (2005). Fulford et al. (1997: 124–7). Drury and Lane (2004: 4). Cracknell (2005: 267–9). Buglass and Brigham (2007a: 55). Quoted in Drury and Lane (2004: 9). But only along certain parts of the coast – from Dunwich south to Aldeburgh and from Southwold north to Benacre. Wheatley (1990: 68–70). Williamson (2005:128–32). Yarham (1988: 3). Rackham (1987: 359). Some limited peat extraction from shallow pits continued into the Early Modern period. Cunliffe (1980). Woodcock (2003: 8–10). Behre (2004). Fulford et al. (1997). Rippon (2000). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 157–65); Palmer-Brown (1993). Fawn et al. (1990); Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 166–82). Fulford et al. (1997: 165–6). Wessex Archaeology (2004b: 21–3). Fawn et al. (1990); Sealey (1996). Good and Plouviez (2007). Lane and Morris (2001). Kirkham (2001); Drury and Lane (2004: 6).

220 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 8 – 4 3

Strang (1997: 3). Morris (1994); Allan and Gardiner (2000); Loader et al. (1999: 18). Sunter and Woodward (1986: 6–8); Holbrook (2007: 132). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 47–59). Going (1997); Sealey (1995, 1996). Grove and Brunning (1998). Rippon (2000). Gale (2001); Edlin (1949). See Crowson et al. (2000: 138). Murphy (2001: 320). Van de Noort (2004: 135). English salt produced by this technique is said to have had a characteristically bitter taste, presumably due to polyphenols and other naturally occurring compounds in the original sediments. It was an acquired taste, enjoyed by natives but unpopular for the export market. It is said to have been unsuitable for curing fish: sea salt from other sources was preferred. See Brownrigg (1748: 133). Bell et al. (1999); Cooper (2006: 206). Drury and Lane (2004: 7); Buglass and Brigham (2007: 28). Williamson (2005: 42). Newman (2004a: 10, 14). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 80–108). Gale (2000: 48–50, 63). Francis (2004: 72–3). Fulford et al. (1997: 146). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 80–108). Philpott (2004: 18). Murphy (1992). Bell (1981); Parkes (2000); Reynolds (2000). Gale (2000: 43). Johns et al. (2004: 106); Fulford et al. (1997: 147). Bell (2007a: 258). Robinson (2003). Brown (1996, 1988). Murphy (1988); Wiltshire and Murphy (1998). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 143–50); Meddens (1996). Van de Noort (2004: 54–7). Francis (2004: 30). Bell and Neumann (1999). Bell (1990). Bryant (1997: 25). Bell (1992, 1993, 1994); Bell et al. (2000: 344); Gardiner et al. (2002). Albone et al. (2007: 91–3). Luff (1995); Baker (2005). Monaghan (1987: 164); Wessex Archaeology (2005). Dickson and Crowther (2007: 41–2). Brigham et al. (2007: 19). Williamson (2005: 43). Lee (2005); David Gurney (personal communication).

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113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158

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Parkes (2000: 28). Tann (2004: 24–38). Murphy (2005). Baykal (1979); Bottema et al. (1980); Van Zeist et al. (1977). Behre and Jacomet (1991: 91). Rippon (2000: 229–31). Brigham et al. (2007: 19). Johns et al. (2004: 113). Baker (2005). Loader et al. (1997: 17). Quoted in Murphy and Brown (1999). Green (1994); Williamson (2005: 45). Bone and Dawson (2007: 192). Åhrberg (2007); Cunliffe (2008: 76–9). Fischer (2007); McQuade and O’Donnell (2007). Louwe Kooijmans (1993). Bell et al. (2000); Bell (2007a: 237). Waughman (2005: 35–41). Loader et al. (1997: 12); Loader (2007). Van de Noort (2004: 43). Bond (1988: 78). Elrington and Herbert (1972); McDonnell (1993, 1994); Dickson and Crowther (2007: 63–6); Groves et al. (2004). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 20). Fulford et al. (1997: 143–5); Elrington and Herbert (1972). Dickson and Crowther (2007: 66). Ibid. 76. Strachan (1998); Everett (2007); Hamilton et al. (2003); Norfolk Archaeological Unit (2003). Wessex Archaeology (2006: 12–15). Murphy (1995a). Strachan (1998: 281); Rippon (1996: 124). Summarized in Rippon (2000: 223). Jacobi (1980). Otte (1977). Bell (1997; 2007a: 263–317); Jacobi (1980a). Bell (1987); Palmer (1990). Andersen (2007). Murphy (1993, 1994a); Murphy and Brown (1999: 15). Ratcliffe (1993). Murphy (1995). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 183–95). Murphy (1992). Ayers and Murphy (1983). Murphy (1987). McMillan (1968: 11); Murphy (1994, 1995). Wheatley (1990: 61). Winder (1992).

222 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189

N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 1 – 6 1

Fulford et al. (1997); Albone et al. (2007: 220–5); Williamson (2005: 42). Fulford et al. (1997: 145). Williamson (2005: 42). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 366). Francis (2004: 105); Allen and Gardiner (2000: 78, 84–6). Rippon (2000). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 208–9). Allen and Fulford (1990); Fulford et al. (1994); Hall and Coles (1994); Lydden Valley Research Group (2006); Rippon (1992); Simmons (1980). Allen and Fulford (1990a, b). Allen and Fulford (1990b); Hewlett (1997). Behre (2002: 304); Van de Noort (2004: 132). Crowson et al. (2005); Murphy (2007). Brooks (1988); Crowson et al. (2005); Hall and Coles (1994); Rippon (1994); Behre (2004). Van de Noort (2004: 139). Cunliffe (1980). Fulford et al. (1997: 135–6). Williamson (2005). Crump (1981). Albone et al. (2007: 144–7). Hall and Coles (1994: 146). Godwin (2005: 199–202). Smith (1940: 35). Buglass and Brigham (2007: 21–8). Fulford et al. (1997: 88–9); Parker (1998). Lydden Valley Research Group (2006: 33–45). Williamson (2005: 27). Hegarty and Newsome (2005: 81–7). Williamson (2005: 128–132). Ibid. 27–49. Gilman et al. (1997: 77). Van de Noort (2004: 160).

Notes to Chapter 3: Money, money, money . . . 1 Watts, ed. (1990: 137). 2 Hodgson and Brennand (2004: 18); Van de Noort (2004: 87); Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 98–9); Cunliffe (2008: 150–4). 3 Pollard (2007); Scourse (1997). 4 Cunliffe (2008: 179–83, 227); Williams and Brown (1999: 13); Gale (2000a). 5 Hamilton (2003: 74–7); Parham et al. (2006); Needham and Giardino (2008); Reynolds (2000: 7). 6 Fitzpatrick (2007). 7 Van de Noort (2004: 79–92); Clark (2004). 8 Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 152–7). 9 Van de Noort (2004: 87). 10 Cunliffe (1996: 116).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 2 – 6 9

223

11 Cunliffe (1975: 79, 149; 2001: 386–91); de la Bedoyere (1989: 98–101); Williams (1999); Philpott (2004: 22); Cooper (2006: 175); Petts and Gerrard (2006: 39); Williams (1999). 12 Fulford (1977); Crone (1992). 13 Wacher (1981: 62–3). 14 Cunliffe (1988); Cunliffe and de Jersey (1997). 15 Cunliffe (1988). 16 Markey et al. (2002). 17 Gale (2000: 109). 18 Cunliffe (1988: 103; 2001: 302–8). 19 Parkes (2000: 25). 20 Fulford et al. (1997: 166). 21 Hume (1863); Griffiths et al. (2007). 22 Van de Noort (2004: 89); Fulford et al. (1997: 156). 23 Creighton (2001). 24 Cunliffe (2001: 100); Marsden (1994). 25 Murphy (1984, 1992); Murphy et al. (2000). 26 Van der Veen (1999); Murphy (2001, 2003); Behre and Jacomet (1991); Van der Veen and O’Connor (1998). 27 Pearce (2003: Table 4); Webster (2007: 152). 28 Barrowman et al. (2007: 332–3). 29 Griffiths et al. (2007: 399). 30 Carver (1998: 180–2). 31 Hodges and Hobley (1988); Hodges (1977); Russo (1998: 146). 32 Hillam (1989). 33 Wade (1993). 34 MacGowan (1987); Wade (1997: 49–50). 35 Mike Godwin, unpubl. report. 36 Morey (1968: 47). 37 Kenward and Hall (1995: 781). 38 Rose (2007: 32–3); Gale (2000: 108). 39 The place name ‘the Camber’ at several English ports, including Portsmouth, indicates a shipbuilding area. ‘Camber’ refers to the curvature of the planks in a clinker-built hull. The same word today refers to the curvature of a road surface. 40 Rose (2007: 19–24). 41 Gale (2000: 108). 42 Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology (n.d.). 43 Loader et al. (1997: 26–8). 44 Francis (204: 107). 45 Williams and Brown (1999: 13, 29); Wheatley (1990: 78, 97). 46 Gale (2000: 105–7). 47 Wheatley (1990: 59); Morey (1968: 164–6); Milne et al. (1998: 7). 48 Wheatley (1990: 39–41). 49 Petts and Gerrard (2006: 109–17). 50 See, for example, Milne et al. (1998) and references therein. 51 Marsden (1971). 52 Marsden (1987, 2007). 53 Fulford et al. (1997: 88); Milne et al. (1998: 18–21). 54 Johns et al. (2004: 147).

224 55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95

N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 9 – 7 6

Rackham (1987: 91–2); Chinnery (1979: 154–5, 164); Hillam (1985); Groves (1992). Rose (2007: 36). Ibid. and Wheatley (1990: 113). Isle of Wight County Archaeological Unit (1999: 112); Petts and Gerrard (2006: 99). Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology (2008: 133–40). A Miss Trestrail of Southampton became the first woman passenger in a seaplane, from Hamble Point on 3 July 1912, though whether this qualifies her to be called by that delightful term of the period, ‘aviatrix’, seems uncertain. Their prototype HL1, though never finished, was exhibited at the 1914 Olympia Aero Show. Morey (1968: 48–9). Bryant (1963: 254). Cunliffe (2001: 105). Saunders (2004: 38, 65). Bryant (1985: 144). Rose (2007: 64–7). Saunders (2004: 252–4). Jackson (1983: 15). Morey (1968: 71–81). Richardson (2004: 59–60). Bryant (1940: 84). Richardson (2004). Strathern (2005: 135–7); Rose (2007: 93). Sheldrick (2006). Jecock et al. (2003). Gale (2000: 63); Fulford et al. (1997: 148–50); Miller (2002). Jecock et al. (2003). Williams and Brown (1999: 21); Wessex Archaeology (2004: 10). Gale (2000: 64). Gilman et al. (1997: 75). Marsden (1994). Williams and Brown (1999: 13). Fulford et al. (1997: 169); Loader et al. (1997: 23). Reynolds (2000: 14, 25). Grasby and Tomalin (2002). Gale (2000: 46). Fulford et al. (1997: 166); Loader et al. (1997: 23). Wheatley (1990: 47). Gale (2000: 46). Wheatley (1990: 90); Milne et al. (1998: 7). Readers with nothing better to do when stuck on the M25 on the Essex approach to the bridge might care to look around to observe the vast artificial chalk cliffs, with narrow strips of former topography left from quarrying, and to reconstruct, in their mind’s eye, the landscape as it was before the nineteenth century. Almost an entire anticline was quarried away. Reynolds (2000: 12); Parkes (2000: 15); Ratcliffe (1997); Gale (2000: 66). Murphy (1992). Gale (2000: 46); Trinity House, (n.d.).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 7 – 8 3

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

225

BMAPA (2007); Highley et al. (2007). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 24). Parkes (2000: 2); Wheatley (1990: 129). Wheatley (1990: 48). Morey (1968: 55). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 47–59, 80). Wheatley (1990: 172–3). Gale (2000: 102). Lydden Valley Research Group (2006: 66–7, 86–8). Bone and Dawson (2007). Morey (1968: 251–68). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 23). Wheatley (1990: 69). Gale (2000: 50–2); Ratclffe (1997). Isle of Wight County Archaeological Unit (1999: 31, 119). Francis (2004: 63). See <www.wessexarch.co.uk>. Lee (2005). Gale (2000: 44); Petts and Gerrard (2006: 47–59, 80, 85–108). Wheatley (1990: 172). Morey (1968: 219). Fitzpatrick (2007: 8). Holbrook (2007: 131). Parkes (2000: 54). Thorndycraft et al. (2003). Parkes (2000: 2, 6). Ibid. 13–14. Wheatley (1990: 128). McNeil and Newman (2004); Petts and Gerrard (2006: 85–108). Morey (1968: 220–3). Bryant (1963: 254–8); Rose (2007: 69). Richardson (2004: 10–16). In the late 1960s I was lucky to experience the dying fall of trade along the old City waterfront, though I did not appreciate it at the time. As a teenage sixth-form school pupil, needing money to go off to the Isle of Wight Festival, I spent a few weeks in a temporary post with a tea and coffee importers just north of Queenhithe. Part of my job involved running errands and delivering messages and documents – which would now be sent by email – around the City of London by hand. This provided ample opportunities for wasting time, mooching around vaguely, and watching what was going on in the City. I also had to write out, in longhand, and in ink, entries to do with Bills of Lading, in huge leatherbound ledgers. The work was not hard, just tedious, and the long morning and afternoon coffee and tea breaks were leisurely affairs. One day each week, one of the Partners would come down to take coffee or tea with the staff, and he would explain to us the special characteristics of what we were drinking. The office would have been very poorly lit even if the windows had been clean, which they were not. Even in the summer it was dark. There was a steep, narrow cobbled lane alongside; and from time to time there was a rumble and a clatter, as a cloth-capped man wheeled a fish trolley up or down the incline, over the cobblestones, to or from Billingsgate Fish Market. The smells were unforgettable: coffee,

226

129

130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

160 161 162 163 164 165

N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 3 – 9 0

tea, the aromatic scent of spices from the warehouses at Queenhithe, intermittently fish and, underlying all like a ground bass, bad drains and the Thames mud. The area has now been extensively redeveloped, though some of the old warehouses have been converted for other uses. Dick, ed. (1949: 256). Silver coins then were widely ‘clipped’ during circulation to remove small amounts of metal which, over time, were collected to make a saleable quantity. Clipping was a criminal offence. The yeomen’s ‘biggest shillings’ were the most intact and therefore heaviest ones. Wheatley (1990). Greep (1999: 173). Credland (1995: 5). Wheatley (1990: 77–90); <www.dorsetcoast.com/index.jsp?articleid=21507>. Levitan (1990); Nowakowski (2004); Johns et al. (2004: 113). Locker (1992); Dobney et al. (1996). Wheeler and Jones (1976); Jones and Scott (1985); Locker (1988, 1992). Coles and Funnell (1981). Rogerson (1976) and <www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk>; Wheeler and Jones (1976). Hedges et al. (2001); Gale (2000: 37). Gale (2000: 37). Morey (1968: 128–34). Butcher (1995). Williamson (2005: 134); Rose (2007: 159); Wheatley (1990: 68–70). Williams and Brown (1999: 23). Gale (2000: 40); Wheatley (1990: 44). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 73–84). Bone and Dawson (2007: 194); Rippon (2007: 175). Wheatley (1990: 121–4). Reynolds (2000: 15); Parkes (2000: 12, 16); Wheatley (1990: 129). Wheatley (1990: 166–70). Murphy et al. (2000: 41). Bjerck (2007). Drury and Lane (2004: 8). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 366). The massive factory of the Grimsby Ice Company Ltd still survives, but is derelict at the time of writing. Jones (1993); Morey (1968: 167–74); Van de Noort (2004: 130). Credland (1995: 5–7). Gale (2000: 42). Wheatley (1990: 40); Credland (1995). It is not so very long ago, in the 1940s, that whale meat was part of the English diet; and when I was an impoverished young archaeologist working at Trondheim, Norway, in the early 1970s it was the only meat I could afford to buy. One must consider past human behaviour within the context in which it occurred. Credland (1995: 45, 69). Williams and Brown (1999: 23). Jackson (1983: 33–42). Ibid. 15. Sidell et al. (2000); Brigham (1998); Milne 1985; Nixon et al. (2002). Bryant (1963: 17); Rose (2007: 75).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 0 – 1 0 2

166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188

189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206

207

227

Jackson (1983: 19–21). Ibid. 28. Wheatley (1990: 77–90). Rowley (2006: 114–16). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 47–59, 61–71,101–2). Gale (2000: 99–100). Bryant (1963: 110); Cope-Faulkner (2007); Gale (2000: 101); Wheatley (1990: 63). Spurrell (1987). Jackson (1983: 34). Rose (2007: 161–2). Williamson (2005). Morey (1968: 266–7). Wheatley (1990: 57–8, 68–70). Ibid. 94–6. Martin (2003). Gale (2000: 99). Cotton and Gathercole (1958); Gale (2000a). Hinton and Holdsworth (1980). Rose (2007: 87); Platt and Pallister (1967, 1968); Brown (2006). Wheatley (1990: 96–8). Wheatley (1990: 116–17). Rippon (2007: 173). His sang-froid in continuing with the game must have been underpinned by the knowledge that he would have to wait for the ebb tide before setting sail. After some dozen or so New World expeditions from Plymouth, in the 1580s and 1590s, Drake and Hawkins embarked from the port in 1595 for an invasion of Panama. Both perished on the voyage. Wheatley (1990: 119). Rippon (2007: 172). Parkes (2000: 2). Rippon (2007: 175). Rose (2007: 175). Wheatley (1990: 140–4). Brett (1996). Newman (2004a: 18). McNeil and Newman (2004: 20–2). Jackson (1983: 46–8). Wheatley (1990: 160–5). McNeil and Newman (2004). Padfield (2003: 370). See <www.whc.unesco.org>. McNeil and Newman (2004: 20–2). Wheatley (1990: 165–6). See, for example, Sussex Sea Fisheries (2007). Marsden (2003: 227). At the time of writing, a project to investigate the submerged site of Dunwich, using marine geophysical techniques, has been initiated by Stuart Bacon of Suffolk Underwater Studies and Professor David Sear of the University of Southampton. Crossan and Sims (2003). Some impression of the trade to and from small Essex wharves in the early modern period is given by a survey of the Manor of Woodham Ferrers of 1582

228

208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 2 – 1 1 2

(Emmison 1951). Two wharves at Woodham were used ‘for the transportinge and conveyance of billet, hostrye, fagott, talwood [all various types of constructional and fuel woods], butter, cheese, and corne to and from the cytie of London and els where, for bringing thether of chauke, fishe, baye, salte and other merchandises’. Mullin (2007: 13). Buglass and Brigham (2007). Jackson (1983: 14). Morey (1968: 101–3). Ibid. 105. Marine and Coastguard Agency, (n.d.). Morey (1968: 107); Padfield (2003: 353). Wheatley (1990: 121). Reynolds (2000: 17). Morey (1968: 109–11). Marine and Coastguard Agency (n.d.). Waugh (2003). Johns et al. (2004: 109); Parkes (2000: 49); Wheatley (1990: 50). Beal (2008). Wheatley (1990: 105). Marine and Coastguard Agency (n.d.); Gale (2000: 117–19). Rose (2007: 39–62). Trinity House (n.d.). Wheatley (1990: 113, 132). Gale (2000: 119); Trinity House (n.d.). Wheatley (1990: 50–1, 118, 132); Buglass and Brigham (2007: 55). Williamson (2005: 133–4); Parkes (2000: 36). Gale (2000: 126–30). Cooper (2006: 144). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 10). Crummy et al. (1982). Francis (2004: 99). Parkes (2000: 26–9). Muir Evans (n.d.: 35–7).

Notes to Chapter 4: England defended 1 Morey (1968). 2 Quoted by Bryant (1963: 284). 3 MacDougall (1982: 63–4). To see a tangible relic of this action you must visit the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the Royal Arms from the stern of the Royal Charles are still displayed. 4 Tomalin (2003: 189–90). 5 Bone and Dawson (2007). The rate of retrenchment in the Navy after the Second World War was startlingly rapid. By 1946, 840 ships had been decommissioned and orders for 727 in construction were cancelled. Some 700,000 of a total force of 880,000 officers and ratings left the Navy within two years of the war (Marr 2007: 15–17). 6 Renfrew (1974); see Cunliffe (2008: 481–2) for further discussion and references.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 2 – 1 2 5

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

229

Hodgson (1994); Jobey (1967). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 37–9); Oswald and Ashbee (2005). Fitzpatrick (2007: 152-–7); Herring (1994: 40–56). Albone et al. (2007: 73). Paul Sealey (personal communication). Handford, ed. (1951: 119–40). Frere (1973: 62). Rudling (2003). Lydden Valley Research Group (2006: 21). Philp (1957). Cunliffe (2001: 407–8). Philip Crummy, (personal communication); Murphy et al. (2000). Heather (2005: 209–11, 237–8). Frere (1967: 379); Heather (2005: 346–8). Carver (1998: 102). Malim (1997). Cunliffe (2001: 436–9; 2008: 430–2). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 195–6). Muir Evans (n.d.); Albone (2007: 104–8). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 47); Wilson (1989). Philpott (2004: 3–7); Oxford Archaeology North (2006). Rose (2007: 1–3). Carver (1998: 103–5, 134). Morey (1968: 38–9). Nixon et al. (2002: 46–9). Ayers (1997: 59). Hume (1965: 115). Hill (2005). Hume (1956). Webster (2007: 158). Hill (2005: 167); Cracknell (2005: 131–3). Ashley (1972: 195–7); Hegarty and Newsome (2007); Wheatley (1990: 68). Barrowman et al. (2007); Padel (1988). It includes a walled enclosure interpreted as a garden for the use of the ladies of the court, in ‘authentically’ Arthurian, or chivalric, style. Oswald and Ashbee (2006). Livingstone and Witzel (2005: 9–14). Lydden Valley Research Group (2006: 69). Bryant (1985); Martin (2003). Cruikshank (2001: 29). Bryant (1963: 491); Rose (2007: 117). Gale (2000: 74); Loader et al. (1999: 24). Parkes (2000: 14); Rippon (2007: 178). Gale (2000: 74); Williamson (2005: 145). Bryant (1963: 254–8). Richardson (2004: 25–31); Bryant (1963: 287). Brown (2003: 196). Cruikshank (2001: 40–1); Gale (2000: 74). Rigold (1978: 3–4).

230

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 5 – 1 3 1

54 Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 15); Williamson (2005: 145); Petts and Gerrard (2006: 106–7). 55 Parkes (2000: 2, 19). 56 Johns et al. (2004: 77); Fletcher et al. (2007). 57 Essex County Council Archaeology Section (1982); Ellen Heppell (personal communication). 58 Albone et al. (2007: 155–6); Robertson et al. (2005: 146). 59 Cruikshank (2001: 58–61). 60 Petts and Gerrard (2006: 106–7). 61 Brown (1988). 62 Reynolds (2000: 17). 63 Johns et al. (2004: 81); Bone and Dawson (2007: 221). 64 Bone and Dawson (2007: 222). 65 Morey (1968: 139–41). 66 Ibid. 177–8. 67 Jackson (1983: 23). 68 Morey (1968: 144). 69 Gilman et al. (1997: 69). 70 Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 16–17). 71 Knighton (2003: 101–3). 72 Gilman et al. (1997: 69). 73 Williamson (2005: 145). 74 Johns et al. (2004: 110). 75 MacDougall (1982: 112–19). 76 DCMS (2007: 40). 77 Coad (1990). Others have been demolished, or adapted for other uses. The Martello tower at St Osyth, Essex, for example, is now used as an arts and exhibition centre. 78 Gale (2000: 78); Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 18–19); Williamson (2005: 145). 79 Millward (2007, 2008). Their isolated locations, frequently directly on beaches, mean that several are now threatened with destruction by marine erosion, on coasts where coastal managers would not normally envisage maintenance or construction of sea defences. See also Chapter 6. 80 Wheatley (1990: 103). 81 Gale (2000: 78). 82 Consolvo (2005: 145). 83 Coad (1990). 84 Bryant (1944); Padfield (2003: 208). 85 Lydden Valley Research Group (2006: 73). 86 Padfield (2003: 205–6, 265–6, 279–92). 87 Ibid. 267. 88 Ibid. 113, 288. 89 Bryant (1944: 325). Geophysical and systematic metal detecting survey of such a vast camp could now be very informative in terms of defining its layout and organization. 90 Brown (2003: 191). 91 Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 21). 92 Gilman et al. (1997: 69). 93 Williamson (2005: 146). 94 Gale (2000: 79).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 1 – 1 3 7

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113 114 115

116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123 124 125

126 127

231

Hopkirk (1991: 514). Tuchman (1962: 317–18). Morey (1968: 230–7). Thompson (2005). Rowley (2006: 311). Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 26). Brigham et al. (207: 130–1). Bone and Dawson (2007: 226–8). Johns et al. (2004: 85). Rowley (2006: 314–15); Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 27–9). Bryan (2006); Hegarty and Newsome (2007: 33–4). Morey (1968: 240–3). Fleming (1957). Dickson and Crowther (2007: 70–1). Hegarty and Newsome (2007); Newsome (2003). For the English Heritage Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys, see <www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.18390>. See also Chapter 6. Williamson (2005: 148). Bone and Dawson (2007: 231). Williams and Brown (1999: 20–1). McNeil and Newman (2004: 22); Francis (2004: 91); Reynolds (2000: 45–6). Rowley (2006: 315–27). My late father Alfred William Murphy, a printer who had worked for the company Lamson Paragon in Bow, East London, but was then producing military maps in the Royal Engineers, told me his experiences of the main attack on the London Docks. So far as I can recall, among other things, he said: ‘I was at home on leave the night the docks went up and, believe me, I’d rather have been back in the army. It was as light as day – we were all heading for the shelter, but your grandmother fell in the duck pond, and we were floundering around getting her out with all this happening around us . . . [later] a Messerschmitt came straight down the street, machine-gunning as he came – I could see his face! I dived into a doorway and, if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here now’. Rowley (2006: 329). Wessex Archaeology (2006: 11). Stamp (2007). Williamson (2005: 149). Hegarty and Newsome (2007). Isle of Wight County Archaeological Unit (1999: 75). Williams and Brown (1999: 19–21). For more information on the Thames estuary defences, and those elsewhere in Essex, Kent and East Sussex, see also <www.fortifications.org>, <www.crossingthelines.com> and Smith (n.d.). Munby (1990). Rigold (1978). Although much of their armament faced north to oppose a possible landward assault on the Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth, the urban myth in the city that all their guns did, which led to them becoming known as ‘Palmerston’s Follies’, is incorrect: they were capable of directing fire towards the sea to the south. Coad (1989). MacDougall (1982).

232 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

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Ibid. 18–21. Ibid. 24–35. Milne et al. (1998: 6). MacDougall (1982: 36–66, 137–9). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 13). MacDougall (1982: 174–86). Tuchman (1962: 141–2). Ibid. 174–85. Smith (2008). MacDougall (1982: 11–15). Coad (1989: plates 59, 60). Rowley (2006: 312–13). Rose (2007: 106). Bryant (1963: 256–7); Martin (2003: 186). Morey (1968: 82–3). Rose (2007: 124–5). The name is derived from ‘Berber’. For a wider discussion of British captives overseas, see Colley (2002). Mansfield (1976: 127–31). Knighton (2003: 43–4). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2007). Mansfield (1976: 127). Rose (2007: 124). Wheatley (1990: 117). Nugent (2007). Killock and Meddens (2005); Meddens (2007).

Notes to Chapter 5: Bodies and souls 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Roberts and Parfitt (1999); Pope (2003). Scales (2007). Waddington (2007: 206–7); see also Chapter 1. Fitzpatrick (2002). Frere (1967: 71, 92). Wright and Richmond (1955). Carver (1998: 102). Chris Scull (personal communication; forthcoming). Rose (2007: 151). Morey (1968: 56–7). Marr (2007: 40–2). Wheatley (1990: 89). Rose (2007: 150–1). Atkin et al. (1985: 3–4, 96, 196). Wheatley (1990: 134–5). Padfield (2003: 370). Wheatley (1990: 160–5). Bryant (1963: 383); Wessex Archaeology (2004: 17).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 8 – 1 5 7

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

233

Rose (2007: 99–103). Hume (1956: 141–5). Platt and Palister (1967). Newman (2004a: 18). Hughes (1987: 28–41). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 314). Allen and Gardiner (2000: 78, 87). Johns et al. (2004: 79). Cottrell (1964: 38). Albone et al. (2007: 208–9). Quoted in Jackson (1983: 56). MacDougall (1982: 59–62). Wheatley (1990: 140). Stirland (1985: 53). Quinn (1974). Wheatley (1990: 160–5). McNeil and Newman (2004). Quoted by Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 313). Padfield (2003: 263–5). Ibid. English Heritage (2007). Whincop and White (1988: 23). Dawson and Bone (2007). MacDougall (1982: 100–3). MacDougall (1999: 13–14, 57–9). Ibid. 170. Quoted in Bush (1962: 70). Thompson (2005: 35). Rowley (2006: 168–70). Richards (2003). Milner et al. (2004). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939). Rose (2007: 152). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939). Ibid. Pasley was later amongst the first combatants in his flagship HMS Bellerophon at the Glorious First of June, 1794: Padfield (2003: 88–94). Padfield (2003: 210). Lind’s memorial, at St Mary’s, Portchester Castle, records his death in 1794, aged 78, and his 24 years’ service as physician at the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, with the text Non omnis moriar: very apt for one who saved so many lives. Ibid. Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 302–20). Bryant (1944: 142). Consolvo (2005: 146). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 60–2). Jackson (1758); Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 239, 342). Drummond and Wilbraham (1939: 515). Reynolds (2000: 9). Gale (2000).

234 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 5 7 – 1 6 6

Ibid. 53–8. Webster (2007: 175); Gale (2000: 57). Jones (1985). MacDougall (1999: 21). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 15). Johns et al. (2004: 140). Brown (1988). Ratcliffe (1997). Dobson (1998); Murphy and Brown (1999: 19). MacDougall (1982: 72). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 8). MacDougall (1999: 61–4). Anon. (n.d.). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 17). At Portsmouth: ‘1914–1918. 1939–1945. In honour of the Navy and to the abiding memory of those ranks and ratings of this port who laid down their lives in the defence of the Empire and have no other grave than the sea’ – below and around which are thousands of names, ordered by rank and cast on bronze plaques. At Dover: ‘To the glory of God and in everlasting remembrance of the Dover Patrol 1914–1919. They died that we might live. May we be worthy of their sacrifice.’ At Wells-Next-the-Sea: ‘In memory of eleven of the crew of the lifeboat “Eliza Adams” who lost their lives on duty in the disaster at Wells. October 29th 1880’, with the names appended. At the Camber, Portsmouth: ‘Wilhelmina J. 10th APRIL 1991. Jeff Alan Venters. Michael James Bell. Mark Warwick Fitz. Christopher Clifford Thomas. Guy Ransom Davies. Matthew James Hodge. Rest in peace’. And most simply of all, at Hastings: ‘In memory of Steve Weatherall. Fisherman. Lost at sea 21-3-2000. Aged 37.’ The resounding words ‘Navy’, ‘Empire’ and ‘God’ give way to simpler expressions of loss. Brodie and Winter (2007: 8–30). Wheatley (1990: 51). Brodie and Winter (2007: 93–121). Ibid. McNeil and Newman (2004: 9–10). Wheatley (1990: 165–6). Williamson (2005: 141–4). Brodie and Winter (2007). English Heritage (2007). Rowley (2006: 370). Brodie and Winter (2007: 62–92). Gale (2000: 92–4). Brodie and Winter (2007: 136–9). Wheatley (1990: 82). Gale (2000: 89–91). Rowley (2006: 209–12, 362–5). Scott Wilson Ltd (2006). Rowley (2006: 368). Ibid. 370. Gale (2000: 85–7). Reynolds (2000: 18); Parkes (2000: 23, 27). In an article by John Ayto (Times 2, 27 August 2007: 4–5).

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 6 6 – 1 7 5

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

134

235

Gormley’s figures have, on occasion, been embellished with clothes. Cunliffe (2001: 162–92). Cunliffe (2008: 159–67). Wessex Archaeology (2004: 16). Van de Noort (2004: 103); Brigham et al. (2007: 122). Petts and Gerrard (2006: 23). Brennand and Taylor (2003); Murphy (2003a); Murphy and Green (2003a). Waughman (2005: 24). Warren (1911). Allen and Gardiner (2000: 97–9, 206–10). Bradley and Gordon (1988). Wilkinson and Murphy (1995: 58, 132–5). Gonzalez and Cowell (2007). The writer found a socketed bronze axe on the foreshore at Sutton, Suffolk after almost treading on it: a corroded green bronze artefact, lying among angular flints covered with green algae, is not easily spotted. Parkes (2000: 8); Brett (1996). Lawrence (1929). Van de Noort (2004: 98); Pryor (1991). Hume (1956). Cunliffe (2001: 362). Fulford et al. (1997: 172–3). Carver (1998: 134, 140). Augustine’s reputed landing place on the Kent coast has the distinction of being one of the very few places marked on a modern Ordnance Survey map (battlefields excepted),where there is actually nothing to see. In 1884 the 2nd Earl of Granville, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, had a cross erected at Ebbsfleet (Celtic in style, curiously), with a Latin inscription translated as: ‘After many dangers and difficulties by land and sea Augustine landed at last on the shores of Richborough in the Isle Of Thanet. On this spot he met King Ethelbert and preached his first sermon to our countrymen. Thus he happily planted the Christian faith which spread with marvellous speed throughout the whole of England.’ Although the location plainly had a folk tradition behind it in general terms, the certainty and precision of the assertion ‘on this spot’, and the phrase ‘marvellous speed’, are both delightfully Victorian. For Lindisfarne, see Thompson (1986). Port (1989). Good and Plouviez (2007). Jennings and Wilmott (2008); Platt (1993). Francis (2004: 54–5). Reynolds (2000: 9); Parkes (2000: 10). Gale (2000a: 13). Bowden (2000). Rendell and Rendell (1993). Morey (1968: 105). Carver (1998: 148). Crozier (1948). Chidham, near Bosham, is the reputed birthplace of St Cuthman, whose legend also incorporates the theme of divine retribution for men who mocked the holy man – again by a driving rainstorm. Rose (2007: 153).

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135 Anyone who walks regularly in the countryside, and along the coast, will have encountered curious assemblages of wood, bones, shells and feathers, the significance of which is as impenetrable to me as are the prehistoric monuments discussed above. 136 Pryor (2002). 137 In another context, John Aubrey mentions the recording of memorials partly destroyed at old St Paul’s Cathedral in the Great Fire of London. He says, ‘Methinks it showeth a kind of piety’. The desire to learn about our predecessors’ lives, with respect, is surely ‘a kind of piety’. 138 Johns et al. (2004: 141). 139 Whitfield (1852: 23–4). 140 Barrowman et al. (2007: 3, 191–200). 141 Parkes (2000: 10). 142 Brown (1964: 19). 143 See <www.paranormaldatabase.com>. 144 Ashley (1972: 149, 198).

Notes to Chapter 6: What next? 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9

10 11

Heppell (2004). Ibid. Dixon (2007). Grieve (1959). I know of only one memorial to the dead, at Hunstanton, Norfolk, although no doubt there are others. It is almost as though there was a desire to expunge the disaster from the collective memory; or perhaps, so soon after the end of war, the population was sick of death and commemoration. The memorial reads: ‘This tablet records the names of those residents of the South-Beach who lost their lives in the great flood and tempest. 31st January 1953.’ It lists 15 local people, but fewer surnames, for there seem to be several married couples. The names of four women and/or girls of the Papworth family appear: Phyllis, Patricia, Jennifer and Susan. It also records that ‘The following were Citizens of the U.S.A. temporarily resident here’ – 16 of them, again including couples and family groups. Namely, the Habitats Directive (EC Directive 92/43), the Birds Directive (EC Directive 79/409), and the Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM: COM/00/547, 17.9.2000). Directive 85/337/EEC 1988 (as emended by 97/11/EC 1999), requires Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to determine the full environmental effects of major developments, and submission of an Environmental Statement to the planning authority (See DCLG 2000). See also the Habitats Regulations 1994. McInnes (2003: 39–41). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007). The final reports of the United Kingdom Climate Impact Panel (UKCIP 08) were due to be published in autumn 2008, but their release has now been postponed until spring 2009, too late for me to include their conclusions in this book. However, upwards revision of the rates of all trends seems probable. In particular, earlier scenarios presented by IPCC (2007) explicitly exclude the contribution of polar ice-sheet melting. Jenkins et al. (2007: 17–20). Pearce and Le Page (2008).

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12 See Chapter 2 and also Cracknell (2005). 13 See, for example, Vasseur and Hequette (2000). 14 UK Planning Policy Guidance includes PPG 15, Planning and the Historic Environment (1994), PPG 16, Archaeology and Planning (1990), and PPG 20, Coastal Planning (1992) from the former Department of the Environment, all of which will be revised to produce new Planning Policy Statements (PPS). PPS 25, Development and Flood Risk, from the Department of Communities and Local Government, is one of the ‘new generation’ of Planning Policy Statements. PPS 20, Development and Coastal Erosion, is at an early stage of preparation, but will involve controlling coastal developments to minimize risk, and making provision for ‘roll-back’ of existing coastal settlements threatened by erosion. There is also Flood and Coastal Defence Project Appraisal Guidance produced by the former MAFF (2000/1) with supplementary guidance from Defra (2003–6). These are also under revision. Shoreline Management Plans are produced by Operating Authorities (Local Authority Coastal Groups and the Environment Agency), with guidance and funding from Defra (Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs). Relevant national legislation includes the Coast Protection Act 1949, Conservation (Natural Habitats &c) Regulations 1994, Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, and National Heritage Act 2002; the latter three apply only if historic assets are present on the coast under consideration. Forthcoming domestic legislation comprises the Marine Bill and the Heritage Protection Bill. Both of these bills represent moves towards rationalizing a legislative and regulatory system that has developed over a long period in a piecemeal way. The Marine Bill proposes a new system of marine planning to inform the current sectoral regulations and legislation. I have already referred to EU Directives and Recommendations (note 6). Directives from the EU require member states to incorporate their provisions into domestic legislation; Recommendations have no such legal status. Other relevant EU Directives include the Water Framework Directive (2000) and Flood Risks Management Directive (2007/60/EC). There are also International Conventions: the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (Revised) (1992) and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001), as yet not ratified by the UK. 15 McInnes (2003: 50–61); Defra (2006). 16 From October 2008, Defra proposes that the Environment Agency will become the lead organisation for all flood risk management, though coastal erosion risk will be managed by a smaller number of Strategic CAGs with EA strategic overview, with an increased role for Regional Flood Defence Committees. 17 Defra (2006: 11). 18 Allen and Fulford (1992). 19 CoastNet (2007: 5). 20 Potts (1999). 21 Anglian Coastal Authorities Group (2006). 22 HR Wallingford et al. (2002). 23 Girling (2007: 84–95). 24 CoastNet (2007: 13–18); Kite and Gray (2007). 25 Aslet (2008), for example. 26 Welch (2008). 27 Brigham et al. (2007: 17–20); Lee and Pethick (2003). 28 Ottaway (2001). 29 Miller et al. (2008).

238 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

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Sheppard (1912). Millward (2008). Chapman et al. (2001). In archaeological terminology, mitigation means the recording of buildings (and perhaps, in some cases, their relocation) and the excavation and recording of archaeological sites. For example, for Norfolk, at <www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk>. See <www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.18390>. Truscoe (2007). As a result of the surveys, the numbers of known sites have been increased by around 100 to over 400 per cent in parts of the country, though this is in part due to the fact that some categories of site – for example Second World War military structures and hulks – were not routinely considered as part of the historic environment in earlier work. English Heritage (2006); Van de Noort and Ellis (2000). See <www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/826674/829803>. Tann (2004: 24–38); Wetland Vision Project (2008). Williamson (2005: 27–49). There are many memorials around the English coast to mariners lost at sea or in combat, but apparently only one for those who died during a major construction project. This is the Channel Tunnel memorial at Samphire Hoe near Dover, where the names of the 11 British and French men killed during the works are recorded. Dover Harbour Board (2007). Jackson (1983: 159). Firth (2006); English Heritage/BMAPA (2003). Girling (2007: 96–103). Fulford et al. (1997: 147). Pater and Murphy (2007). Rowley (2006: 347). IPCC (2007). COWRIE (2007). Sustainable Development Commission (2007). Girling (2007: 118). Ibid. 120–53. English Heritage (2007). Morey (1968: 273–4). Swinford and Wolf (2008). Man (2005). Abbott (2008). Purves (2008); Thompson (2005: 428–9). IPCC (2007); Jenkins et al. (2007). See also the UKCIP08 scenarios once they are released. Padfield (2003: 1–28). Leake (2007). Bryant (1940: 168). Pollard and Guy (2001). Though of course professionals have a duty to provide information in a well-publicized, accessible and comprehensible form.

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Notes to Appendix: The scientific basis 1 Though during violent storms in warm periods there has frequently been intense erosion, with coarse sediment transportation and deposition. 2 Brown (1997); Chambers (1991); Goldberg and Macphail (2006). 3 Goldberg and Macphail (2006); Macphail (1994). 4 Bell and Walker (1992); Evans and O’Connor (1999); English Heritage (2002). 5 Edwards and Horton (2000); Hill et al. (2007). 6 Richards et al. (2000). 7 Schoeller (1999). 8 Stephan (2000). 9 Bayliss (1998). 10 Duller (2008); Hillam (n.d.). 11 Wilson et al. (2000). 12 Ibid. 13 Bates and Bates (2000). 14 English Heritage/BMAPA (2003: 22). 15 Wessex Archaeology (2006a). 16 Gaffney et al. (2007). 17 See . 18 Ward et al. (2006). 19 Long and Roberts (1997). 20 Roberts and Parfitt (2000). 21 Shennan (1986); Shennan et al. (2000a, b). 22 For example, for the North Sea, in Ward et al. (2006: figures 2, 3). 23 Bates et al. (2007). 24 Bates (2001).

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WEBSITES <www.defra.gov.uk/funding/schemes/alsf.htm> provides information on the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. <www.dorsetcoast.com>/index.jsp?articleid=21507> discusses elephant tusks from off the Dorset coast. <www.english-heritage.org>.uk/server/show/nav.18390> gives the results from English Heritage Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys. <www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/826674/829803> presents the Environment Agency Flood Risk Maps. <www.fortifications.org> and <www.crossingthelines.com> are two websites that give information on fortifications on both sides of the North Sea and Channel coasts. <www.hwtma.org.uk/projects/HambleHLFReports.htm> presents the results of intertidal survey of hulks and other structures on the River Hamble, Hampshire. <www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/arf> includes the texts of chapters from the North West Archaeological Research Framework. <www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk> presents the Great Yarmouth archaeological deposit model, and provides a link to the Norfolk Historic Environment Record. <www.offshorewind.co.uk> gives an introduction to Offshore Wind Energy, and to the COWRIE Historic Environment Protocol. <www.paranormaldatabase.com> provides a fascinating insight into coastal myths and legends. <www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=607> gives information on proposed tidal power generation. <www.whc.unesco.org> lists the World Heritage Sites, including that at Liverpool. <www.wessexarch.co.uk> provides information on the sixteenth-century Prince’s Channel wreck, and on a wide range of coastal and maritime archaeological projects.

Index Note that there have been changes to English county and other local authority boundaries and names, most recently by the establishment of Unitary Authorities; and also, of course, to national European borders. Generally, English towns, cities and other geographical locations are placed here within their modern counties or other local authorities, but in some cases it seemed more informative to place them within historic administrative boundaries, better related to the reference in the text. Foreign towns, cities and places are described as being in the modern country within whose borders they now lie. 1703, Great Storm of 184 1953 East Coast Floods 95,163,181–2 Abolition of Slavery Bill 1807 99,152 Acheulian 3 acoustic sound mirrors 133 Adaptation Strategies 187 Aelfric, Bishop 66 aerial photography 41,132,136,168 Aethelred, King 66,120 Aetius 16 Africanus, Scipio 152 Agassiz, Louis 206 aggregates (gravel and sand) 10, 76–7,194, 208–9 Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund 194 Aidan of Iona 172 air-raids 134–5,139 Aitken, James (alias ‘Jack the Painter’) 128 Albert, Prince of Great Britain 159 Albizzi, Luca di Maso degli 147 Alde estuary, Suffolk 51, 56 Aldeburgh, Suffolk 5, 51, 86, 94, 125, 127, 161, 166 Alderton, Suffolk 108 Alfred, King of Wessex 119, 138 Algiers, North Africa 142 Allectus 115–6 Alnmouth, Northumberland 91 alum 72–3,109,156 Amble, Northumberland 77 Ambleteuse, France 129 American War of Independence 127–8, 149 Amesbury, Wiltshire 146 Amiens, Peace of 129 amino acid racemisation 9, 206 Ammianus Marcellinus 64 amphorae 61–5

Anglian Glacial Stage 5, Table 1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 111, 117 Annet, Scilly 29 anti-aircraft batteries 132, 134 anti-glider ditches 133–4 anti-tank blocks 133 Antibes, France 87 Antwerp, Belgium 71, 119 Arderne, Henry of 103 Armada, Spanish 125, 138, 153 Armstrong, ship builders 68 Arnold, Matthew 166 Arnside, Lancashire 160 Arrius 175 Arthur, King 122, 177–8 Arun, river 19 Atomic Weapons Research Establishment 136 Aubrey, John 83 Augustine, Saint 118, 172 Austen, Captain Francis 129 Avon, river, Somerset 60, 98 Avonmouth, Somerset 18, 99, 171, 192 Ayers, Brian 176 Bacton, Norfolk 78 Badbury, Dorset 116 Baiter, Poole, Dorset 158 ballast/ballastage 76, 157 Bamburgh, Northumberland 91 Bank Holidays Act 1871 160 Banks, Southport, Lancashire 17 Barbary pirates 125, 142, 151 Barber’s Point, Suffolk 48 barges, sailing 55, 67–8, 95, 157 Barking, Essex 65, 86 barley 44, 64, 74, see also malt Barmston, Yorkshire 189

266

INDEX

Barnstaple, Devon 97–8 barrow/s 60, 168–9, 190 Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria 68, 80, 100 Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire 70, 92 Basques 88 bathymetric survey 10, 209 Battle of the Atlantic 134 Bawdsey, Suffolk 129, 134–5 Bay Fleet 141 Bayonne, France 82 Bazalguette, Sir Joseph 157 Beacon Hill Fort, Essex 130 Beadnell, Northumberland 76, 112 Beatty, Admiral 198 Beblowe, Northumberland 125 Beckfoot, Cumbria 118 Beckton, Essex 157 Bede, Venerable 90, 173 Belfield, Rasselas 152 Bell, Martin 16–7 Bellamy, ‘Black Sam’ 143 bells of drowned churches 179 Bembridge, Isle of Wight 9, 74–5, 79 Benacre, Suffolk 57 Bergshenhoek, Netherlands 47 Berkeley, Sir Thomas 54 Bermondsey, London 67 Berrow, Somerset 34 Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland 125, 165, 189 Bestwall, Isle of Purbeck 60 Betteshanger, Kent 78 Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex 30, 161 Bideford, Devon 98 Bigbury Bay, Devon 63 Biggar Bank, Cumbria 54 Biodiversity Action Plan 183 biogenic sediments 210–2 Birch, Eugenius 162 Bishop Rock, Isles of Scilly 149 Bitterne, Hampshire 96 Black Arrow rocket 136 Black Death 45, 158 ‘Black Joye Forte’, Essex 126 Black Middens, Northumberland 108 Blackpool, Lancashire 160–1 Blackwall, Greater London 67, 91 Blackwater estuary, Essex 16, 26–9, 32, 37, 40–1, 48, 51, 53, 120 Blakeney, Norfolk 43, 79, 94 Blogg, Henry 108 Bloodhound missiles 136 Blount, James, 6th Lord Mountjoy 73

Blue Anchor, Somerset 47 Bluetown, Sheerness, Kent 152 Blumentritt, General Guenther 133 Blyth, Northumberland 77 Blyth estuary, Suffolk 56, 94–5 Blythburgh, Suffolk 86, 94 Boismier, Dr Bill 176 Bonaparte, Napoleon, Emperor of France 129, 152 Bonn, Germany 156 bombing/bombers 132, 134–5 Bordeaux, France 82 Boreham, Essex 115 Bosahan, Helford estuary 165 Boscastle, Cornwall 179 Bosham, Sussex 79, 173, 179 Boston, Lincolnshire 89, 92–3, 146 Bouldnor Cliff, Isle of Wight 21 Boulogne, France 114, 129 Bournemouth, Hampshire 160, 164 Bowness, Cumbria 118 Boxgrove, Sussex 1, 2, 8, 9, 145, 210, Table 1 Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex 48, 117, 136, 195 Brancaster, Norfolk 117 Brean Down, Somerset 30, 42, 84 Brennand, Mark 176 Brest, France 128 Breydon Water, Norfolk 51 brick-making 75–6 Bridgwater, Somerset 47, 105 Bridport, Dorset 69, 98 Bridlington, Yorkshire 92 Brigg, Lincolnshire 60–1 Bright, Henry 152 Brightlingsea, Essex 73, 95 Brighton, Sussex 160, 161–2, 164 briquetage 37, 39 Bristol Channel 60, 162, 174 pilgrim ships 148 pilots 106 port development 98–9 St Mary Redcliffe 88 soda-ash 41 shipyards 138 slaves 151–2 tobacco 83 warehouse fire 128 Britannia 34, 63, 115, 151, 165 British Nationality Act 1948 147 Britten, Benjamin 74, 166 Brixham, Devon 86 Broads, Norfolk and Suffolk 35, 184, 186–8

INDEX

Broadstairs, Kent 105, 123 Brompton, Chatham, Kent 152 Bronze Age 29–32, 37, 41–2, 45, 50, 60–1, 80, 84, 96, 102, 112, 146, 168–9, 171, 178, Table 2. Brooklands Estate, Jaywick, Essex 163 Brough-on-Humber, Humberside 109 Brown, Ford Madox 148 Brown Bank 14 Bruges, Belgium 70–1 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 99, 148 Bryant, Sir Arthur 198–9 Bryher, Isles of Scilly 45, 84 Bryhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex 119 Buckland Monachorum, Devon 178 Buckler’s Hard, Hampshire 67, 138 Bulverhythe, Sussex 30, 68, 121 Bure, river, Norfolk 84 Burgh Castle, Norfolk 117, 173 burgi 118 burhs 119, 121 Burnham, (Overy and Market), Norfolk 51, 55, 66, 94 Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex 181 Burntwick, Kent 42 Burrow Walls, Cumbria 118 Bursledon, Hampshire 68 Butley river, Suffolk 51 Butlin, Billy 163 cables, seafloor communication 132, 194, 208 Cabot, John 88, 99 Caedmon 173 Caen stone 74 Caesar, C. Julius 113 Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk 108 Calais, France 95, 129 Calder, Cumbria 40 California, Norfolk 164 Caligula, Gaius 63 Calshot, Hampshire 124, 132, 137 Cambridgeshire Dykes 116 Canewdon, Essex 61 Canterbury, Kent 44, 114 Canvey Island, Essex 42, 50, 65, 163 Carausius 115–6 caravan sites 164 Cardis Bay, Cornwall 179 Carisbrook Castle, Isle of Wight 74 Carson, Rachel 183 Carver, Professor Martin 118, 172 castle/castles 121–2 Castle Acre, Norfolk 51 Castle Dore, Cornwall 63

267

cereals 26, 64, see also grain Chaldon Herring, Dorset 168 Channel, English (Manche) 5, 8, 10, 18–9, 61, 128, 194, 208 Channel river 5, 11 Channel Tunnel 78, 192 Chapel St Leonards, Lincolnshire 55 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor 119 Charles I, King 126 Charles II, King 126, 164 Charlestown, Cornwall 77, 98 Chatham, Kent 112, 125, 127, 129, 131, 136–9, 150, 151–3, 158–9 Chaucer, Geoffrey 71 cheese 42, 154 Chelmsford, Essex 129 chemical industry 40, 81 Chesil, Dorset 83, 159 Chester, Cheshire 62, 89, 99 Chester-le-Street, County Durham 172 Chesterton, G. K. 175 Chichester, Sussex 75 Chichester Harbour, Sussex Bronze Age farming 42 early river 19 monastery at Bosham 173 Pleistocene sediments 9 Roman landing 114 salt production 40 shipbuilding 67 tide mills 79 Chigborough, Essex 41 China Clay 77, 98, 101 cholera 159 Christchurch, Hampshire 20, 109, 163 Christian, Admiral 159 Christianity/Christians 172–5 Churchill, Sir Winston 138, 182 Cinque Ports 36, 85, 95–6, 101–2, 124, 141 Citadel, Royal, Plymouth 125–6 Civil War, English 125–6 Clacton-on-Sea, Essex 3, 9, 163 Clactonian 3 Classicianus, C. Julius Alpinus 75, 146 Claudius, Emperor 113–4 Clavel, Sir William 73 Clavell, John Richards, Rev. 191 clay 77 Clementsgreen Creek, Essex 32 Clenchwarton, Norfolk 55 Clevedon, Avon 162 Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk 94, 126 cliff castles 113, 171

268

INDEX

Cliffe, Kent 136 climate future change 183–4 Quaternary 1–15, 18–9, 206–8, Tables 1–2 cloth 71, 90, 103, see also textiles Cnut, King 120, 174 coal decline of industry 81 exemption from duties 92 fuel for iron smelting 79–80 fuel for lime-kilns 76 fuel for salt industry 40 fuel for tin smelting 81 medieval and later mining and export 77–8 trade in 94, 100–1 Coalhouse Fort, Essex 130 Coast Guard 105–6 Coastal Authorities Groups 185–6 Coatham, Teeside 38, 40 coble 86 Cockersand, Cumbria 40 Cockham Wood, Kent 136 Cod Wars 86–7, 196 coffee 82–3 Coggeshall, Ralph of 178 Colchester, Essex 37, 41, 50–1, 64, 76, 84, 115, 126, 146 Cold War 135–6, 198 Coles, Bryony 21 collieries, coastal 77 colliers (vessels) 67, 76–7, 88 Collins Creek, Essex 48 Colne, river, Essex 51, 136 Colquhoun, Patrick 150 Commissioners of Sewers 54, 56–7 Conrad, Joseph 59, 100 Constantine, Cornwall 75 Constantine III, Emperor 115 Constantius Chlorus 115 Continental Shelf Act 1964 78 Continental System 129 Cooling, Kent 136 Copenhagen, Battle of 67, 159 copper 60, 62, 80–1, 146 copperas 72–3, 156 Corbyn Head, Devon 75 Corn Law 1815 73 Cornwallis, Admiral 128 cotton 72, 83 Coutts, John, shipbuilder 68 Covehithe, Suffolk Frontispiece, 35 Coventry, West Midlands 135 Cowbit, Lincolnshire 37–8

Cowes, Isle of Wight 70, 124, 164 Cox, James 153 Crabbe, George 166 crabs, Cromer 51 Cracknell, Basil 34 Cranfelt, Simon de 125 Crantock, Cornwall 34 Craster, Northumberland 75, 86 Crecy, France 124 Cresswell, Northumberland 31, 112 Cromarty, Scotland 131 Cromer, Norfolk 35, 51, 108, 179 Cromer Forest Bed Formation 5, Table 1 Cromerian Complex 11 Crosby, Lancashire 166 Crossness, Kent 157 Crouch estuary, Essex 16, 53, 109, 170, 181 Crown Estate 194 Cudmore Grove, Essex 125 Cugoano, Ottabah 152 Culverwell, Isle of Portland 50 Cumberworth, Lincolnshire 45 Cunard, Samuel 100, 148 Cunliffe, Professor Sir Barry 60–1, 167–8 Cunningham, Joseph 162 Customs and Excise 71, 103–6 Customs Houses 93, 103–5 Cuthbert, Saint 172 cutters, Revenue 104–5, 159 D-Day 134 Dagnam saltings, Kent 37 Danbury, Essex 120 Danelaw 49, 119 Dane’s Dyke, Yorkshire 112, 120 Danzig (Gdansk), Poland 69 Darenth, Kent 32, 135 Darling, Grace 108 Dartford, Kent 75 Dartmouth, Devon 97, 123, 134, 143 de Burgh, Sir Hubert 96, 121 de Godeston, Walter 107 de Gomme, Sir Bernard 127, 136 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea 161, Figure 14 De Ruyter, Admiral 111 Deal, Kent 56, 104, 124, 130, 162 Deben estuary, Suffolk 118, 172 decoy sites (military) 134 decoys (wildfowl) 45–6 Dee estuary, Cheshire 32, 189 Deeping St Nicholas, Lincolnshire 50 Defoe, Daniel 94, 159

INDEX

Defra (Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs) 185, 187 Dendrochronology 33, 55, 65, 69, 79, 102, 169, 205 Denge, Kent 133 Dennis Fort, Cornwall 126 Department for Culture, Media and Sport 197 Deptford, Greater London 67, 73, 91, 138, 153 Devensian 3, 14, 29, 208–10, Tables 1–2 Devonport, Plymouth 98, 127, 137–40, 198 diatom analysis 90, 203. Dickens, Charles 51, 166 Dieppe, France 141 diet 64, 154–6 Diocletian, Emperor 174 Diodorus Siculus 62 disease 157–9 disasters 159 Diver batteries 134 Docklands, London 67, 91, 192 Dogger Bank 19 Dogger Bank Incident 131 Dogger Hills 19 Dolfinby, Robin 86 Domesday 39, 93, 96, 174 Dorestadt, Netherlands 119 Dour, river, Kent 96 Dover, Kent Admiralty Pier 74 Beach, poem of Matthew Arnold 166 Bronze Age boat 60–1 Castle 121 Cold War 135 Cinque port 95–6, 124 harbour 36, 91 marina 164 Patrol memorial 159 piers 89 pilots 106 port expansion 192 Roman lighthouse and naval base 107, 114 tide mill 79 World Wars 131, 134 dragons’ teeth 133 Drake, Sir Francis 98, 143, 178 Dreadnought, HMS, and dreadnoughts 68, 131, 139 drift nets 85 Droitwich, Hereford and Worcester 62 Dublin 47, 99 Duchy of Cornwall 80 dug out boats 170, see also logboats Dunkirk, Belgium 129, 178

269

Dunkley, Mark 209 Dungeness, Kent 31, 195 Dunstanburgh, Northumberland 112, 122 Dunwich, Suffolk 35, 86, 94, 102, 123, 154, 173, 179 Durham 172 Dutch Wars 126–7, 138 Duty, Excise 71, 83, 103–4 dyes 66, 70, 72–3 Dymchurch, Kent 128 Eadred, Abbot 172 Eardwulf, Bishop 172 Early Medieval Warm Period 33 Easington, Durham 77 Easington, Yorkshire 31, 78, 168 East India Company shipyards 67, 91 silk trade 72 spice trade 82 East Tilbury, Essex 130, 136–7 Eastbourne, Sussex 30 Eastney, Hampshire 157 Easton Bavents, Suffolk 35 Ecgbert, King of Wessex 116 Eddystone lighthouse 108, 184 Edward, King of West Saxons 121 Edward the Confessor, King 95, 120 Edward the Elder, King 119 Edward I, King 56, 71, 92, 96, 103 Edward III, King 77, 85, 98, 103, 121, 123 Edward IV, King 123 Elbing, Germany 90 Eligius, Saint 174 Elizabeth I, Queen 82, 103, 136, 143, 156 Elmley Reach, Kent 37 Elmore, Gloucestershire 53, 190 Emden, Germany 90 emigrants 147–8 Emsworth, Hampshire 52, 79 energy 77–9 English Heritage 189 Environment Agency 181, 185–6, 188, 191, 200 Environmental Impact Assessments 10, 194, 196, 208 Environmentally Sensitive Areas 192 Equiano, Olauda 152 Erith, Kent 32 Esk estuary, Cumbria 17 Etaples, France 129 Ethelred, King 103 Ethy Wood, Cornwall 105 Exeter, Devon 89, 98

270

INDEX

Exmouth, Lord 142 exploitation of coastal wetlands 36–52 Fairey Aviation 70 Fairlight, Sussex 130 Fal estuary, Cornwall 76, 79–80 Falklands War 139, 178 Falmouth, Cornwall 98, 134 Fambridge, Essex 109 Farlington, Hampshire 159 farming, arable, coastal 28, 44–6 Farne Islands, Northumberland 108 Felixstowe, Suffolk 91, 94–5, 127, 132, 173, 192 Fengate, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire 171 Fenn Creek, Essex 37, 170 Fenne, John 95 Ferriby, (North and South), Humberside 60–1, 63 ferry/ferries 96, 109 Field, Patricia 85 Filey, Yorkshire 92, 117, 188 Finnisterre, Cape 60 fish fish cellars, Cornish 87 fish-days 155–6 fish-traps (weirs) 18, 46–9, 190 in naval rations 154–5 Neolithic 154 trade in 87, 90, 92–3, 98 fishing 31, 84–8, 102, 196 Fishbourne, Hampshire 74 Fishbourne, Isle of Wight 38, 67 Folkestone Beds 75 Flamborough Head, Yorkshire, Battle of 128 erosion 188 offshore survey 11, 20 Flandrian 3, 25, 207, Tables 1–2, see also Holocene Fleet, Dorset 17 Fleetwood, Lancashire 87, 160 Fleming/s 147 Flemming, Professor Nic 21 Flixborough, Humberside 88 floods 34–6, 44, 181, 185 Florence, Italy 70, 73, 147 Flushing, Netherlands 10, 129 Folkestone, Kent 96, 119, 129 Folly Lane, St Albans, Hertfordshire 61, 83 footprints, prehistoric 17–8, 41–2, 145 Foraminifera 34, 44, 55, 203, 207 Ford, Captain William 128 Fordwich, Kent 65

Forkbeard, Sven 119–20 Formby, Lancashire 17 Forrabury, Devon 179 Forts Clarence, Amherst and Pitt (Medway) 136 Forts Cumberland, Monckton, Wallington, Elson & Gomer (Portsmouth and Gosport) 137, 149 Foulness, Essex 55, 109 Fowey, Cornwall 63, 76, 80–1, 98, 109, 123, 165, 170, 178 Fowles, John 166 Frampton, Gloucestershire 54 French Revolution 130 Friskney, Lincolnshire 39 Frobisher, Martin 88 Frodington, Lincolnshire 80 Frome, river, Somerset 98 Funk, Casimir 156 Furness Abbey, Cumbria 40, 54, 174 Fursa, Saint 173 fyrd 120 Gallibury Down, Isle of Wight 60 gas 78 Gavill, John 89 General Seawater Bathing Infirmary 160 Genoa/Genoese 70, 73, 147 geophysics 5, 10, 21, 208–10 George III, King 149 Gerontius, King of Dumnonia 116 Giant’s Castle, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly 113 Gildas 116 Gilstone Rocks, Isles of Scilly 160 Glacial 2, 3, 18, 201, 204, 207 glass 41, 63–4, 78, 81, 173 Glendurgan, Helford estuary 165 Gloucester 41 Gloucester, Duke of 160 Godeston, Walter de 107 Godwin, Earl 174 Godwin and Green Batteries, Spurn Head 132 Goldcliff, Wales 17, 47, 145 Goldsborough, Yorkshire 117 golf 165 Goodwin Sands 107, 114 Gormley, Antony 166 Gosport, Hampshire 131, 137–8 grab sampling 10, 209 Grace Dieu 68 graffiti 149–50 grain 64, 73–4, 115, see also cereals Grain, Isle of, Kent 132 Grange Pill, Severn estuary 102, 174

INDEX

granite 60, 74–5 Gravelines, France 129 Gravesend, Kent 123, 136, 147, 162 Grays, Essex 76 grazing 29, 31, 36, 41–4, 191–2 Great Britain, SS 148 Great Holt’s Farm, Boreham, Essex 64 ‘Great Stink’, 1858 157 Great Yarmouth, Norfolk ballast quay 76 bombarded in 1914 131 bombing, 1940–1 134 fishing 84–5 flood warning in 2007 185 hand axes dredged from off 10 mussel beds near 51 Nelson memorial 159, 165 offshore hydrocarbon industry 78 shallow marine deposits 11 shipping attacked 123, 141 shipping tonnage in 1582 90–1 town walls 123 wharves owned by Quarr Abbey 174 Yarmouth Roads 14 Great Wigborough, Essex 102, 157 Greenland ice cores 33 Norse settlement of 33 right whale 88 trade 99 Greenland Dock, London 89 Greenwich, London 153 Gregory, Pope 151, 172 Gresham, Sir Thomas 79 Grey, Sir Edward 139 Grimsby, Lincolnshire fish docks 193 fishing 85–6, 196 imported timber 69 Groeningen, Netherlands 78 Grote Mandrenke, De 36 guano 92 Guisborough, Yorkshire 73 Gunton, Norfolk 84 Gwithian, Cornwall 17, 30, 84 habitat creation 182 Hadleigh, Essex 121, 136 Hadrian’s Wall 115 Haesten 113 Halangy Down, Scilly 29, 84 Halesworth, Suffolk 95 Hallen, Gloucestershire 42

271

Hallsands, Devon 194 Halvergate Marshes, Norfolk 52 Hamble, river, Hampshire 67, 70 Hambling, Maggi 166 hand axes 3, 9, 10, 145, Figure 1 Hanseatic League (Hanse) 69, 90, 92–3, 141, 146 Happisburgh, Norfolk burials 159 Palaeolithic site 2, 5, 10 pill-box 133 Shoreline Management Plan 187 Harald Fairhair, King of Denmark 119 Hardy, Thomas 130, 166, 191 Harold Godwinson, King 120, 174 Harrison, William 156 Harry’s Walls, Isles of Scilly 125 Hart, County Durham 16 Hartlepool Abbey 173 bombarded in 1914 131–2 fishing 86 Neolithic burial 169 Neolithic wattle panel 47 port 92 submerged forest 31 town walls 123 Trincomalee, HMS 193 Harwich, Essex Bathside Bay container port development 192 Beacon Hill Fort 130 copperas 73 destroyer base 131 dockyard 138 Haven 125 port and packet service 95, 130 Hastings, Sussex 36, 95, 121, 123–4, 174 Hauxley, Northumberland 31 Hawkcombe Head, Porlock, Somerset 17 Hawkins, Sir John 98, 153 Hawley, John 143 Hayle, estuary, Cornwall 80 Hayling Island, Hampshire 42, 109, 134, 179 Heacham, Norfolk 51 Helford, Cornwall 51, 60, 74, 126, 134, 165, 174 Helston, Cornwall 75, 104, Hemsby, Norfolk 164 Henbury, Bristol 152 henge/s 167–8 Hengistbury Head, Dorset 14, 17, 62–3 Henry II, King 40, 94, 121–2, 178

272

INDEX

Henry III, King 69, 98 Henry VI, King 107 Henry VII, King 138 Henry VIII, King 56, 103, 106, 124–5, 134, 137–8, 140 Heritage Lottery Fund 191 hermits/hermitages 107, 174 Herodotus 63 High Boston, Lincolnshire 92 High Lodge, Mildenhall, Suffolk 11 Higham, Kent 136 Hilda, Saint 173 Hilsea Lines, Portsea, Hampshire 137 Historic Environment Records 189–90 Hitler, Adolph 133 Hogarth, William 156 Holbrook Bay, Suffolk 48–9 Holkham, Norfolk 113 Hollesley Bay, Suffolk 129 holiday camps 163 Holidays with Pay Act 1938 160 Holme-next-the Sea, Norfolk 41, 48, 88, 169, 175–7 Holocene 2, 3, 19, 25, 31–3, 145, 206–7, 209–10, Tables 1–2, see also Flandrian Holton Heath, Dorset 140 hominins 1, 9, 10, 15 Homo heidelbergensis 1, 3, 9 Homo neanderthalis 3, see also Neanderthal Homo sapiens 1, 3, 4, 14 Honfleur, Petit Jehan de 141 Honorius, Emperor 116, 177 Hoo Flats, Medway, Kent 27 Hoo Fort, Kent 68 Hopton, Suffolk 86 Hornsea, Yorkshire 31 Horse Sand Fort, Portsmouth 130 Howick, Northumberland 16, 22–3, 112 Hoxnian 9, Table 1 Hugh Town, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly 125 Huguenots 72, 147 hulks 55, 68–9, 149, 165 Hull, see Kingston-upon-Hull Hullbridge, Essex 16–7, 109 hullies 51 Humber, estuary 42, 57, 60–1, 86, 132–3, 171 Hundred Years’ War 122–4 Hunstanton, Norfolk 50, 88 Hunt, William Holman 130 Huntcliff, Yorkshire 117 Hurst Castle, Hampshire 137 Hythe, Kent 31, 95, 124, 129

ice 68, 86–8 Ice Age 2, 3, 206 ice cores 33, 207 Iceland 86–7, 99, 142, 196 Immigrants 145–7 industrial housing 152–4 influenza 156 Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire 31, 37 Innocent III, Pope 179 interglacials 2, 3, 207 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 198 invasion/invaders 111–2 Ipswich, Suffolk Anglo-Saxon cemeteries 146 bombing 135 imported timber 69 port 94–5 shipbuilding 67 wic 65 Ipswichian 11, Table 1 Ireland/Irish 74, 78, 98–9, 147, 151 iron 79–80, 173 Iron Age 29, 37–8, 42, 61–3, 73, 84, 112–3 isolation hospitals 158 Isolda (Iseult) 122, 178 isotopic analysis 146, see also oxygen isotopes, and stable isotopes Itchen, river, Hampshire 19, 96 Itchenor, Hampshire 67, 134 ivory 83–4, 91 ‘Jack Nasty-Face’ 153 Jack the Painter 128 Jackson, Gordon 193 Jade Bay, Niedersachsen, Germany 36, 184 James I, King 153 James, P. D. 191 James Watt & Co. 157 Jarrow, Tyne and Wear 81, 86 Jarvis, Sir John 81 Jaywick, Essex 29, 163 Jellicoe, Sir John, Admiral 131 jet 75, 92 Jews 126, 147 John, King 80, 93, 99, 121, 138, 179 Johnson, J. M 130 Johnson, Dr. Samuel 51 Jones, Inigo 74 Jones, John Paul 128

INDEX

Keigwyn, Jenkin 126 Keith, Admiral Lord 128 Kelling, Norfolk 186 kelp 41 Kent’s Cavern, Devon 9, 15 Kentish Knock 127 Kentish ragstone 63, 74 Kessingland, Suffolk 86 Kettleness, Yorkshire 73 Kilmigrol, Lancashire 179 Kimmeridge, Dorset 73, 75, 79, 191 King’s Lynn, Norfolk Bembridge mortars 75 Customs House 103 Hanseatic League 69, 93, 146 North Lynn Farm prisoner of war camp 150 port 89, 93 Kingsgate, Kent 105 Kingston-upon-Hull, Humberside fishing 85–6 planned town 92 Romano-British field systems 33 Trinity House 106 trawlers 131 whaling 88–9 Kinsale, Ireland 138 Kilnsea, Yorkshire 60–1 Kirkhead Cave, Lancashire 15 Kirkley, Suffolk 85 La Coruna (Corunna) 120, 148 La Rochelle, France 82 laeti 116 Lamorna Cove, Cornwall 74 Land Drainage Act 1551 56 Landguard Fort, Suffolk 125, 127, 130 Landmark Trust 191 Lands End, Cornwall 29 Langdon Bay, Kent 60 Langley, Walter 166 Langstone Harbour, Hampshire 19, 20, 30–2, 38, 40, 52, 149–50, 165, 169 Last Glacial Maximum 14, Tables 1–2. Late Glacial Stadial 18 Le Havre, France 131 lead 63, 173 legends 177–9 Lehrer, Tom 198 Leicester, Richard of 97 Leiston Abbey, Suffolk 108 Leland, John 35 lepers/leprosy 158–9 Lerryn, river, Cornwall 105

273

Levallois 4 Levan, Saint 174 Lever Brothers 81, 154 Levington Heath, Suffolk 132 Lewes, Sussex 123 Lexden, Essex 61 LiDAR 188, 190 lidos 161 lifeboats 108 lighthouses 107–8, 114, 184 Lincoln 62, 84, 92 Lind, Dr. James 155 Lindisfarne, Northumberland 86, 111, 118, 125, 172–3 Limehouse, London 143 Little Ice Age 33 Little Optimum 33, see also Early Medieval Warm Period Liverpool, Merseyside cotton warehouses 72 decoy sites 134 port development 99–100 shipping tonnage in 1582 91 slaves 151–2 tobacco 83 triangular trade 99–100 Lizard, Cornwall 80 Lobb, Harry 52 Looe, estuary, Cornwall 80 Lofoten, Norway 87 logboats 60–1, see also dug-out boats London Admiralty 129 airports 197 bomb damage 134 Bay Fleet salt 141 Bronze Age swords from 171 Classicianus, tomb of 146 coal imports 77 Cumberland Market 87 docks 83, 89, 91, 193 Docklands 67, 91, 193 Gateway Port 192 legal quays 103 Lundenwic 119–20 Medieval wool trade 71 Nelson memorial 159 pilgrim badges 149 Pool of 91 port development 89–91, 102 port in Second World War 133 Roman road from Dover to 114 shipwrecks/hulks 68

274 London (continued) Steelyard 90 stone for construction 63, 74 Tower of 121, 136, 138 Viking weapons from 120 walls 136 Longinus 146 Longships lighthouse, Cornwall 108 Longstone lighthouse, Farne Islands 108 Lostwithiel, Cornwall 80, 98, 101 Louis, Prince of France 121 Lower Hauxley, Northumberland 169 Lowestoft, Suffolk bombarded in 1915 131 Dutch Wars 127 fishing 85–6 lighthouse 107 offshore hydrocarbon industry 78 shipbuilding 67 steam drifters 68 Shoreline Management Plan 186 Lübeck, Germany 90 luggers 87, 104 Lydden Valley, Kent 56, 78 Lyell, Sir Charles 2, 206 Lyme Regis, Dorset 84, 98 Lymington, Hampshire 40 148 Lyonesse 177–8 Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire 31, 39, 88 Maen Castle, Cornwall 113 Magnus Maximus 115 malaria 159 Maldon, Essex Battle of, 991 119–10 Sea-Salt Company 40 Malmsbury, William of 158 malt/maltings 74, 95 Maltby-le-Marsh, Lincolnshire 44 Man, Isle of 163 managed realignment 182, 185, 193 Manchester Ship Canal 72 Mansel, Robert, Treasurer of the Navy 153 Maplin Sands, Essex 109, 197 Marden, Hereford and Worcester 179 Margate, Kent 160, 162 Marham, Norfolk 16 marinas 164 Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 2, 207, Table 1 Mark, King 122, 178 Marseilles, France 62 Marshchapel, Lincolnshire 37, 39 Martello Towers 128–9, 136, 163, 165, 189

INDEX

Marvell, Andrew 158 Mary Rose 138, 140 Mary Tudor, Queen 125 Maryport, Cumbria 78, 80, 83, 118 Maunsell Forts 134, 137 Maylandsea, Essex 16 Meaux Abbey 92 Medici, Lorenzo di 73 Medina river, Isle of Wight 137 Medway estuary, Kent 27, 52, 68, 75, 111, 121, 125, 127, 134, 136–8, 167 megalithic, tombs and structures 167 Melcombe Regis, Dorset 123, 158 memorials 159–60 Menabilly, Fowey estuary 165 Meols, Wirral 63, 65, 149 Merchant of Prato (Francesco di Marco Datini) 71 Merlin 177 Mersea Island, Essex 51, 109, 125 Mersey estuary 32 Mesolithic 4, 11, 15–23, 29, 31, 45–7, 49–50, 145, 154, 194, 199, 207, Tables 1–2 microliths 4, 18 micromorphology 27, 202 middens 18, 49–50, 203 Middlesbrough, Teeside 80 Middleton, Norfolk 37–8 Midlen, Alex 186 migrations of population 21–2, 197 Milan 71 Miles, David 176 mills, see tide mills millstones 75 minefields 133–4, 137 Minehead, Somerset 18, 32, 47, 133 minerogenic sediments 201–2 Minster, Kent 134 Mistley, Essex 74 Mixtow Quay, Cornwall 170 modernist/modernism 135, 161 monasteries 49, 172–4 Monck, General 127 Monmouth, Geoffrey of 122, 177 Montagu, Earl of Sandwich Montrose, Scotland 104 Moor Sand, Salcombe, Devon 60 Moore, Sir John 129 Mordred 177 Morecambe, Lancashire 15, 160 Moresby, Cumbria 118 Morewellham, Devon 81 Morey, George 111, 141

INDEX

Morton Fen, Lincolnshire 38 Mount Batten, Plymouth, Devon 62–3, 126, 158 Mousehole, Cornwall 98, 126 Mulberry Harbours 134 Muscovy Company 88 Myrtilla 152 Myths 177–9 Napoleonic Wars 57, 85, 105, 128–130, 138, 150, 168 National Mapping Programme 134 National Maritime Museum 153 National Monuments Record 189–90 National Trust 164–5 Natural England 188, 192 navigation 106–8 Navigation Acts 85, 127 Neanderthal 1, 14 Needles, Isle of Wight 20, 136 Nelson, Horatio, Admiral Lord 67, 140, 159, 165, 178 Neolithic 15, 27–33, 41, 47, 50, 59–60, 88, 154, 169–70, Table 2. New Brighton, Lancashire 161 New Needles Battery, Isle of Wight 136 New Romney, Kent 36, 184 Newcastle-upon-Tyne city walls 123, 126 coal exports 77 medieval fishing 86 Pons Aelius 91 shipbuilding 68 shipping tonnage, 1582 90–1 ships impressed from 124 Trinity House 106 Newfoundland 40, 88, 196 Newlyn, Cornwall 166–7 Newquay, Cornwall 166 Newtown, Cornwall 178 Nicholas, Saint 174 Nichols, Eliza Bright 191 Nieuwpoort, Belgium 129 Nordelph, Norfolk 34, 38 North Elmham, Norfolk 151 North Foreland, Kent 107, 114, 129, 189 North Sea coastal shipping attacked 133 collieries beneath 77 fisheries 85, 196 Dogger Bank Incident 131 Dutch Wars 127 Mesolithic 15, 18–23, 145, 199 middens around 50

275

Napoleonic Wars 128 oil and gas fields 78, 194–5 Palaeolandscapes Project 20, Figure 3 Pleistocene 5, 10, 11, Figure 2 prehistoric trade 61 Quaternary sediments 207 storm surge of 1953 submerged prehistory 194, 208–9 North Shields, Northumberland 126 North Shoebury, Essex 50 Northey Island, Essex 120 Northfleet, Kent 75–6 Nournour, Isles of Scilly 29, 171 Norwich, Norfolk 51, 85, 119, 147, 151, 179, 188 nuclear power 78, 195 Olaf, Saint 120 Old Harry Rocks, Dorset 20 Old Winchelsea, Kent 36, 96, 184 Oldbury, Severn estuary 29–30, 41, 186 Olelyst, Denmark 47 Operation Sea Lion 133 Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) 11, 55, 205, 210 Ordnance, Board of 189 Ore, river, Suffolk 51 Orford, Suffolk 35, 40, 51, 56, 94, 108, 122, 136, 178 Oronsay, Scotland 154 Orwell, estuary, Suffolk 65, 67 Orwell Haven 95 Osea Island, Essex 27, 131, 159 Ostend, Belgium 129 Oswald, Saint 172 Oswy, King of Northumbria 173 Oulton Broad, Suffolk 68 Ouse, river, Norfolk 179 Outer Silver Pit 20 Overstrand, Norfolk 187 Ower, Dorset 38 Owthorpe, Yorkshire 31 oxygen isotopes 2, 33, 146, 203, 207, see also stable isotopes oysters 50–2 packets 95, 130, 148, 162 Padfield, Peter 198 Padstow, Cornwall 98 pagans, modern 175–7 Page, Harry 141 Pakefield, Suffolk 1, 5, 10 Palaeo-Arun 19, 21 palaeoecology 10, 202–4

276 palaeomagnetism 5, 205 palaeosols 27, 202 Palaeolithic 3–16, 49, 194, 206–7 Palmer, Charles, shipbuilder 68, 79 palynology 2, 202–3, see also pollen Parkstone, near Poole, Dorset 73 Parret, river, Somerset 105 Parsons, George, shipbuilder 67 Pasley, Sir Thomas, Admiral 155 Paston, Margaret 141 Peacehaven Down, Sussex 169 Peel, Lancashire 17 Pembroke, Wales 139 Pencarrow Head, Cornwall 43 Pendeen, Cornwall 107 Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) 97, 148 Pendennis, Cornwall 125 Penpol, Cornwall 79 Penryn, Cornwall 179 Penzance, Cornwall 142 Pepys, Samuel 82, 111, 127, 138, 142, 150 Peterstone, Severn estuary 30 Pett, Peter 112, 150 Pevensey, Sussex 117, 121 Philip II of Spain 143 placed deposition 30, 169–171, 175 Planning Policy Guidance Note 16 (PPG 16) 135, 190 Planning Policy Statement 20 (PPS 20) 187 Plomleigh, John 143 piers 161–3 pilgrims/pilgrimage 148–9 Pilgrim Fathers 98, 148 Pilkington Glass 81 pillboxes 132–3 Pin Mill, Suffolk 67 pirate/pirates/piracy 98, 123, 141–3, 197–8 plague 158 plotlands 163 Plumstead Marshes, Kent 140 Plym estuary, Devon 80, 98 Plymouth, Devon burnt in 1377 123 bomb damage 135 Citadel, Royal 125–6 Drake’s drum 178 Naval Dockyard 98, 131, 137–140, 198, see also Devonport pilgrim ships 148 port 97 quarries 76 RN Command Centre 134

INDEX

semaphore 129 Sutton Harbour 86 Pocahontas 147 polished stone axes 29, 59 polite landscapes 165 pollen analysis 14, 15, 19, 27, 31, 202, see also palynology Polruan, Cornwall 108, 123, 143 Pontin, Fred 163 Poole, Dorset 40, 72, 98, 103, 105, 123, 164 Poole Harbour 19–20, 38, 62 Porlock, Somerset 18, 32, 46 Port Mulgrave, Yorkshire 80 Port Sunlight, Merseyside 81, 154 Portchester, Hampshire 74, 117, 121, 124, 150 Porth Hellick, Isles of Scilly 160 Porth Mellon, St Mary’s, Cornwall 132 Porthcurno, Cornwall 132, 194 Porthleven, Cornwall 98 Portland, Dorset cement 76 Henrician defences 125, 134 Mesolithic site 17 Naval Base 138–9 RN Command Centre 134 Stone 74, 131 ports, mercantile 89–102 Portsdown, Hampshire 137, 165 Portsea, Hampshire 124, 137, 152, 157 Portsmouth, Hampshire burnt in 1377 123 dockyard wall 150 fire 128 Harbour 19, 137 M27 165 Navy memorial 159 Old Portsmouth 153 packets 162 pilgrim ships 148 residents attended ‘Barber of Seville’ 150 Royal Naval Dockyard 127, 137–140, 198 semaphore 129 sewage 157 Spithead 130 Walcheren Expedition 130 warehouses owned by Quarr Abbey 174 water supply 159 World Wars 131, 135 Postumus 115 potato blight 74 Poulton-le-Fyld, Lancashire 15 Preseli Mountains, Wales 60, 168

INDEX

Preston, Lancashire 170 Preventive Waterguard 105–6 Prince’s Channel, Thames estuary 79 Priory Bay, Isle of Wight 9 prisoners of war 130, 150 privateers 141–2 Promehill, Kent 36, 184 promontory forts 112 prostitutes 153 Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 142, 209 Pryor, Francis 175–6 Ptolemy 38 Pudding Pan Sand, Kent 63 Purbeck, Isle of 38, 60, 168 Purbeck Marble 75 Purfleet, Essex 29, 32, 59, 76 Purnell, James 197 Purton, Gloucestershire 55 putchers 47–8 Pytheas of Massilia 63 Quarr, Isle of Wight 38 Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight 74, 123, 174 Quaternary 2, 3, 5, 206–8, Tables 1–2 Queenborough, Kent 73, 136 querns 60, 66, 75 rabbits 43, 174 Rackham, Oliver 35 Radar 133–7 radiocarbon 14, 15, 29, 55, 61, 116, 172, 204–5, 210 Raedwald, King of East Anglia 65, 118 Rainsford, Cheshire 99 raised beaches 8, 9, 210–11 Raleigh, Sir Walter 83, 98, 148 Ramsey, Essex 73 Ramsar sites 183 Ramsay, Vice Admiral 134–5 Ramsgate, Kent 89, 96 Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys 189–90 Rashleigh, Charles 77 Ravenscar, Yorkshire 73, 117 Ravenglass, Cumbria 118 Ravenser Odd, Yorkshire 34, 92, 184 reclamation 25, 44, 54–7, see also transformation Reculver, Kent 108, 114, 117, 136 Red Hills 37–8, 181 Red Sands Towers, Kent 134, 137 Redcliff, Humberside 63 Redwick, Severn estuary 42 Regional Seats of Government 135

277

Relative Sea Level (RSL) 18, 26, 29, 31, 33, 49, 184, 210, see also sea level Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) 29 Reid, Clement 2, 31 Rhine, river 5 Ribble estuary 17, 170 Richard II, King 71 Richard, Earl of Cornwall 122 Richborough, Kent 114, 117, 140 ridge-and-furrow 45, 165, 186, 190 Rippon, Stephen 36, 44, 53 risk assessment 199 Roach, estuary, Essex 181 Roanoke, North Carolina 148 Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire 105, 188 Rochefort, France 128 Rochester, Kent 114, 121, 136 rock-salt 40 roddons 44, 54 Rolfe, John 147 Roman (Romano-British) 29, 33–4, 37–9, 41–2, 47, 50–1, 53, 59, 61–5, 74–6, 80, 82–4, 87, 90–1, 101, 107, 113–8, 136–7, 146, 151, 171–2, 188–9, 197, Table 2 Roman Bank, Lincolnshire 55 Rome 66, 151 Romney, Kent 95, 124, 159 Romney Marsh, Kent 35, 44, 54 rope 69–70, 127 Rosyth, Scotland 131, 139 Rother, river, East Sussex 75 Rotherhithe, London 67 Rotterdam, Netherlands 185 Rowley, Trevor 164 Royal Air Force Bawdsey, Suffolk 135 Royal Arsenal 140 Royal Commission Forts 130–1 Royal Flying Corps 132 Royal Military Canal 129 Royal National Lifeboat Association 108 Royal Naval Air Service 132 Royal Naval Cordite Factory 140 Royal Naval Dockyards 67, 89, 125, 137–140, 150, 152, 158–9 Royal Observer Corps 136 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) 176 Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes, Isle of Wight 164 Runcorn, Cheshire 81 Rungholt, Friesland 35, 184 Runswick Bay, Yorkshire 73 rutways 73, 109

278

INDEX

Ryde, Isle of Wight 74, 162 Rye, Kent 31, 81, 95, 105, 123, 124, 129 St Agnes, Isles of Scilly 29, 50 St Anne’s, Lancashire 160, 179 St Anthony, Cornwall 174 St Bees, Cumbria 174 St Catherine’s Castle, Cornwall 125 St Catherine’s Hill, Isle of Wight 107 St Catherine’s Point, Cornwall 63 St Helen’s, Isles of Scilly 158, 174 St. Ives, Cornwall 32, 34, 167 St Katharine’s Dock, London 162, 193 St Martin’s, Scilly 29 St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, defences 126 Garrison 125, 127 Giant’s Castle 113 Iron Age settlement sites 29 middens 84 ship timbers 69 St Mawes, Cornwall 125 St Mawgan, Cornwall 174 St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall 63–4, 98 St Omer, France 71 St Vincent, Admiral Lord 128 salt 36–40, 78, 100 salt domes 20–1 Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Redcar and Cleveland 161 Saltdean, Sussex 161 saltern mounds 39–40 Saltash, Cornwall 98 Saltom, Cumbria 40 Sambo 152 Sandown, Kent 124, 129 Sandwich, Kent 56, 71–2, 95, 114, 117, 119, 123–4 Sandwich, Earl of, Edward Montagu 127, 142 Santiago de Compostella, Spain 148–9 Saxon Shore, Roman forts of the 117, 136–7, 173 Scapa Flow 131 Scarborough, Yorkshire 77, 80, 86, 92, 117, 123, 131, 173, 188 scientific dating 4, 204–5 Scilly, Isles of cliff castles 113 coastal survey 189 defences 125 entrance graves 168 felons 149 fishing 84 hermitage 174

kelp-burning 41 legend of King Arthur 177 memorial to Sir Cloudesley Shovell 160 pest house on St Helen’s 158 prehistory 29 Roman shrine 171 shipwrecks 69 smuggling 105 wildfowl 45 Scipio, Philip 152 Scole, Norfolk 115 Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire 80 scurvy 155 Sea Bank, fenland 44, 52, 55 Sea Fisheries Act 1868 52 Sea Fencibles 129 sea forts 130, 132, 134 sea level in Mesolithic and later prehistory 18–23, 26, 145 Pleistocene 2, 8, 11 Tables 1–2 study of 208–11 in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 183–4, 195, see also, Relative Sea Level (RSL) Sea Palling, Norfolk 31, 132 Seaburn, Northumberland 31 Seaham, Northumberland 77 ‘Seahenge’ 169, 175–7 seals 14, 22, 49, 203 Sealey, Paul 113 Seamer Carr, Yorkshire 15 seaplane/s 70, 132 seaside resorts 160–2, 197 Seaton Carew, Hartlepool 51, 81, 169 Seaton Sluice, Northumberland 77 seaweed 36, 41 seaside resorts 160–3 secret agents 130 Sefton, Lancashire 17 Seine, river, France 5 seine net 87 seismic survey 10, 20, 209, Figure 3 Selsey Bill, Sussex 30, 63, 128 Senhouse, Humphrey 78 Seven Years’ War 150 Severn estuary 18, 20, 26, 29–31, 38, 41–3, 47–8, 53, 175, 186, 189, 196 Sewerby, Yorkshire 9 sewage 157 sewn-plank boats 60–1 Shakespeare, William 111 Sheepstall, Cornwall 158

INDEX

Sheerness, Kent 96, 111, 127, 129, 131, 136–140, 159, 192 shell pictures 167 shellfish 18, 22, 31, 36, 49–52, 93, 154 Shellhaven, Essex 91, 102, 192 Shellness, Kent 48 Sheppey, Isle of, Kent 132, 163 Sheringham, Norfolk 94 Shinewater Park, Sussex 30 Shingle Street, Suffolk 129 Shoreline Management Plans 185–8, 189–90 shipbuilding 66–70, 81, 90, 138 Shipman Head, Bryher, Isles of Scilly 113 Shippea Hill, Cambridgeshire 16 Shoeburyness, Essex 112–3 Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex 36 Shornecliffe Camp, Kent 129 Shornemead, Kent 48, 136 Shotley Point, Suffolk 130 Shovell, Admiral Sir Cloudesley 160 Siggurdson, Harald 120 signal stations 92, 117, 173, 188 Silchester, Hampshire 62 silk 72 Sittingbourne, Kent 75 Sizewell, Suffolk 195 Skegness, Lincolnshire 31, 35, 92, 163 Skipsea Withow Mere, Holderness 16, 32 skulls 151, 170 slaves 83, 99–100, 142, 151–2 Slaughden, Suffolk 95, 128 Slimbridge, Gloucestershire 46, 54 small mammal remains 5, 9, 206 Smith, Corporal C. 149 Smith, Captain John 147 smugglers/smuggling 103–6 Snape, Suffolk 74, 95, 104–5, 166 Snelling, Joss 105 Snettisham, Norfolk 42 Snilling, Ulfkell 120 soap 41, 81, 154 Society of Merchant Venturers 99 Sole Bay, Suffolk 127 Solent formation of 20 fortifications 135–7 French forces in 1545 124 graffito illustration 150 pot from Finisterrre 60 river 5, 9, 19 salt production 40 stone axe from 59 tide mills 79

279

Solway Firth, Cumbria 53, 189 Somerset Levels 30 Somme, river 5 sonar 10, 209 South of England Oyster Fishery 52 South Ferriby, Humberside 34 South Shields, South Tyneside Iron Age 112 Roman supply base 91 salt mounds 40 shipbuilding 68, 79 Southampton, Hampshire Bay Fleet 141 bombing 135 city walls 74, 123 Clausentum (Bitterne) 96 coastal development 164 French raid, 1337 111 Hamwic 65, 96 Italian seamen 147 medieval and later port 97 medieval wool and dye trade 71, 73 Ocean Village 164 pilgrim badges 149 raid by ships of Winchelsea 141 wine trade 82 wool house 150 Southampton Water, Hampshire 26 Southbourne, Dorset 17 Southchurch, Essex 50 Southend-on-Sea, Essex 162 Southport, Lancashire 160 Southsea, Hampshire 124, 137, 167 Southwark, London 90 Southwick, Richard of 97 Southwold, Suffolk 35, 40, 86, 94, 125, 127, 161 spas 160 Spalding, Lincolnshire 92 Special Areas of Conservation 183, 193 Special Protection Areas 183, 193 spices 82, 92 Spit Sand Fort, Solent 137 Spithead, Portsmouth 130, 153, 155 Spurn Head/Point, Yorkshire 35, 57, 107, 132, 184, 189 stable isotopes 30, 154, 203, see also oxygen isotopes Staithes, Yorkshire 80 Stamford Fort, Plymouth 126 Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire 120 Staple 71–2, 95 Star Castle, Isles of Scilly 125–6 Starr Carr, Yorkshire 15

280 steam drifters 68 Stedman, F. C. 163 Steepholm, Bristol Channel 174 Stilicho 115 Stoborough, Dorset 109 stone 74–5 Stonea, Cambridgeshire 113 Stonehenge 15, 60, 167 storms 33–6, 94, 102, 109, 184–5, 198 Stour, river, Suffolk 26 Strabo 62, 64 Stratford-upon-Avon, Worcestershire 152 submerged forests 18, 30–3 submerged Neolithic landscapes 26–9 sugar 82–3, 99, 151–2, 155–6 Sunderland, Tyne and Wear 68, 70, 91, 152 Sunk Island, Humberside 57 surfing 165–6 sustainability 183, 195–6 Sutton Hoo, Suffolk 65, 118, 134, 172, 174 Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire 108 Sutton-on-Sea, Lincolnshire 31 Swann Hunter, shipbuilders 68 Swanscombe, Kent 76 Synod of Whitby 664 173 Taylor, Maisie 176 tea 82–3, 104–5, 155–6 Tean, Isles of Scilly 41 Tees, river 62, 80–1, 91 Teeside 40, 81 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 120, 178 terpen 54 Terrington Beds 34 Terrington St Clement, Norfolk 44 Test, river, Hampshire 19, 97 Tetney Lock, Lincolnshire 37 textiles 70–2 Thames ballast dredging 76 Barrier 182, 185 Bronze Age farming around 41–2 Danish Camp 112 fishing 50, 86 fortifications 121, 136–7 grazing marsh 191 ‘Great Expectations’ 166 Holocene sediments 26 oysters 52 pilgrim badges from 149 Pleistocene 2, 5, 9 Roman period 114 sea forts (Maunsell Forts) 134

INDEX

shipbuilding/shipbreaking 67 submerged forests 32–3 trade 59 wrecks 63, 79 Thanet, Isle of, Kent 117, 164 Thatcher, Margaret, Prime Minister 183 The Rumps, Cornwall 113 The Stumble, Blackwater estuary, Essex 27–9 Theodosius, Count 115 Thomas, Earl of Lancaster 122 Thorgil Skarthi 92 Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire 54 Thorpe Haven, Suffolk 94 Thurrock, Essex 75 tidal energy 196 tide mills 79 Tidenham, Gloucestershire 47–8 Tilbury, Essex 26, 91, 136 timber 48, 69, 90, 92, 127 tin 62–3, 80–1, 98, 157, Tintagel, Cornwall Castle 122 legends 177 Post-Roman Elite centre 64–5 Ware 64 Tintern Abbey, Wales 102, 174 Titanic, SS 97 Titchwell, Norfolk 14, 31 tobacco 83, 99–100, 104 tombstoning 166 Tomline, Colonel George 95 Topsham, Devon 138 Tostig 120 Town and Country Planning Act 1947 163 Trafalgar, Battle of 155 transformation of coastal wetlands 52–7, see also reclamation transportation 149 trawling/trawlers 85, 86, 131, 208 treasure 143, 179 Trebah, Helford estuary 165 tree ring dating, see dendrochronology Tresco, Isles of Scilly 126, 132 Trevelgue Head, Cornwall 113 Triangular Trade 83, 99, 151–2 Trier, Germany 146 Trinity House 76, 106–7 Tristan, legendary Prince of Lyonesse 122, 178 Trotman, Robert 104 Tryggvason, Olaf 119 typhoid 158–9 Turner, J. M. W. 166 Tyne, river

INDEX

coal exports 40 colliers 76 docks 91 iron ore 80 lifeboat 108 shipbuilding 67 Turkish ships requisitioned 139 Tynemouth Priory 77, 112 Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade 108 Tweed, river, Northumberland 91 U-boats 132, 156 United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) 198 United Kingdom Hydrographic Office 209 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea 1958 78 United Nations Climate Change Summit, Bali 198 Upnor Castle, Kent 125 Van de Noort, Robert 61, 171 Vaughan-Williams, Sir Ralph 166 Venice/Venetian 71, 82, 97, 147–8 Verica, King 114 vibrocores 10, 209 vici 117 Victoria, Queen 105 Victory, HMS 140 Vikings 90, 118–121, 172, 179 Villeneuve, Admiral of French Fleet 155 Vire, Bernard of 97 Virginia 83, 99, 151 Visconti, Caterina 71 Vortigern 116 Voles, see small mammals Waddington, Clive 22 Wainfleet, Lincolnshire 92 Walberswick, Suffolk 86 Walbrook, London 90 Walcheren Expedition 130 Wales, Prince of 160 Walker, Philip 176 Wallasea Island, Essex 181–2 Walloon 147 Wallsend, Northumberland 68 Walmer, Kent 114, 124 Walpole St Andrew, Norfolk 44 Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex 169, 179 Walton Castle, near Felixstowe, Suffolk 117, 173 Wantsum Channel, Kent 114, 117 War of Austrian Succession 127

281

Wareham, Dorset 109, 121 warehouses 72, 83, 100, 141 Warner, Captain Harry 163 Warrington 81 Wash, The 16, 51, 197 Waste management 156–7 Water Framework Directive (EU) 157 water supply 159 Watergeuzen (Sea Beggars) 143 Watson-Watt, Sir Robert 134 Watt, James 157 Waveney, river, Norfolk/Suffolk 84–5 Waverley, Lord 182 Waxham, Norfolk 46 Weald, Kent 79 Weald-Artois anticline 5, 8, Figure 2 Wear, river 67, 91 Wells-next-the Sea, Norfolk 94, 159 Wellstream, Norfolk 179 Wendover, Roger of 179 Werrington, Cornwall 152 West Bay, Dorset 98 West Indies 83, 99, 100, 151–2 West Tilbury, Essex 136 West Walton, Norfolk 44 West Wittering, Sussex 134 Westminster, London 90 Westward Ho!, Devon 49 Wey, William 148 Weybourne, Norfolk 133 Weymouth, Dorset 83, 86, 98, 109, 148, 158–9, 172 whales 14, 49, 170 whaling 85, 88–9, 92, 102 wherries 95 Wheal Jane, Cornwall 81 Whickham, William Whitby, Yorkshire Abbey and Synod of 173 bombarded in 1914 131 erosion 188 fishing 92 jet 75 shipbuilding 77 whaling 88 White Star Line 97, 100 Whitehaven, Cumbria 78, 80, 99–100, 128, 151 Whitewall Creek, Kent, Whiting, William 25 Whitstable, Kent 51 wics 65–6, 103, 146 Wick Ferry, Christchurch, Hampshire 109 Wickham, William 130

282

INDEX

Widnes, Merseyside 81 wildfowling 18, 36, 45–6 Wight, Isle of 9, 32, 38, 45, 47, 60, 67, 70, 74, 79, 107, 123–4, 137, 174, 189 Wilfred, Saint 173 William I of Normandy, King 120–1, 172 William I of Orange 143 William III, King 138 Willingdon Levels, Sussex 30 Wills, W. D. and H. O. 83 Wilmott, Tony 114 Wilson, Pete 117 Wiltshire, Patricia 202 Winchelsea, Kent 81, 95–6, 123–4, 141 Winchester, Bishop of 121 wind farms 195–6, 208 windmills 57 Windmill Cave, Devon 9 Wine 61–2, 64–5, 82, 90, 92, 98, 101, 103 Winnington, Robert 141 Winstanley, Henry 108, 184 Winteringham, Humberside 63 Wisant, France 129 Witham, river, Lincolnshire 93 Wolfe, Charles 120 Wolstonian Stage 11, Table 1 Woodbridge, Suffolk 79, 94 wool 43, 70–2, 91–2, 94, 98, 103–4, 123, 150 Woolaston, Gloucestershire 102, 174

Woolwich, Greater London 138–140, 149, 153 Wootton-Quarr beach, Isle of Wight 32, 45, 47, 74 Workington, Cumbria 78 World Heritage Sites 81, 100, 140 World War 1 85, 131–2, 137, 139, 194, 196 World War 2 85, 132–5, 137, 161, 168, 182, 196 Worsley, Richard 124 Worth, Kent 78 Worthing, Sussex 30 Wrangle, Lincolnshire 39, 55, 92 wrecks, ship 68–9 Wren, Sir Christopher 74 Wroxham Crag Formation 11 Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester 151 wurten 54 Wyke, Humberside 92 Wyke Regis, Dorset 159 Wymer, John 1 Wytch Farm Oil Field, Arne, Dorset 79 yachts/yachting 164 Yare, river, Norfolk 84–5 Yarmouth, Isle of Wight 79, 125, 137 York 66, 119 Zeppelins 132 Zuider Zee, Netherlands 184