Reculver
Reculver is a village and coastal resort about east of Herne Bay on the north coast of Kent in south-east England.
It is in the ward of the same name, in the City of Canterbury district of Kent.
Reculver once occupied a strategic location at the north-western end of the Wantsum Channel, a sea lane that separated the Isle of Thanet and the Kent mainland until the late Middle Ages. This led the Romans to build a small fort there at the time of their conquest of Britain in 43 AD, and, starting late in the 2nd century, they built a larger fort, or castrum, called Regulbium, which later became one of the chain of Saxon Shore forts. Following the end of Roman administration of Britain in the early fifth century the Britons again took control of the region until the Anglo-Saxon invasions shortly afterward.
By the 7th century Reculver had become a landed estate of the Anglo-Saxon kings of Kent. The site of the Roman fort was given over for the establishment of a monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary in 669 AD, and King Eadberht II of Kent was buried there in the 760s. During the Middle Ages Reculver was a thriving township with a weekly market and a yearly fair, and was part of the Cinque Port of Sandwich. The settlement declined, however, as the Wantsum Channel silted up, and coastal erosion claimed many buildings constructed on the soft sandy cliffs. The village was largely abandoned in the late 18th century, and most of St Mary's Church was demolished in the early 19th century. Protecting the ruins and the rest of Reculver from erosion is an ongoing challenge.
The 20th century saw a revival as local tourism developed and there are now two caravan parks. The 2021 census recorded about 4,400 people in the Reculver area. The Reculver coastline is within a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Protection Area and a Ramsar site, including most of Reculver Country Park, which itself includes much of Bishopstone Cliffs local nature reserve. While nationally scarce plants and insects are found there, the location is also important for migrating birds and is of significant geological interest.
History
Toponymy
The earliest recorded form of the name, Regulbium, is in Latin and dates from the early 5th century or before, but it had its origin in a Common Brittonic word meaning "at the promontory" or "great headland". In Old English this became corrupted to Raculf, sometimes given as Raculfceastre, giving rise to the modern "Reculver". The form "Raculfceastre" includes the Old English place-name element "ceaster", which frequently relates to "a city or walled town".Prehistoric and Roman
tools have been washed out from the cliffs to the west of Reculver, and a Mesolithic tranchet axe was found near the centre of the Roman fort in 1960. This was probably an accidental loss, rather than suggesting a human settlement, evidence for which begins with late Bronze Age and Iron Age ditches. These indicate an extensive settlement, where a Bronze Age palstave and Iron Age gold coins have been found. This was followed by a "fortlet" built by the Romans during their conquest of Britain, which began in 43 AD, and the existence of a Roman road leading to Canterbury, about to the south-west, indicates a Roman presence at Reculver from then onwards. A full-size fort, or castrum, was started late in the 2nd century. This date is derived in part from a reconstruction of a uniquely detailed plaque, fragments of which were found by archaeologists in the 1960s. The plaque effectively records the establishment of the fort, since it commemorates the construction of two of its principal features, the basilica and the sacellum, or shrine, both being parts of the headquarters building, or principia:These structures were found by archaeologists, together with probable officers' quarters, barracks and a bath house. A Roman oven found south-east of the fort was probably used for drying food such as corn and fish; its main chamber measured about 16 feet by 15 feet overall.
The fort was located on a low hill, beyond which a long promontory then projected north-eastwards into the sea and formed the north-eastern extremity of mainland Kent: thus it offered observation on all sides, including both the Thames Estuary and the sea lane later known as the Wantsum Channel, which lay between it and the Isle of Thanet. It was probably built by soldiers of the Cohors I Baetasiorum, originally from Lower Germany, who had previously served at the Roman fort of Alauna at Maryport in Cumbria at least until the early 180s, since tiles recovered from the fort are stamped "CIB". The Notitia Dignitatum, a Roman administrative document from the early 5th century, also records the presence of the Cohors I Baetasiorum at Reculver, then known as Regulbium. There must also have been a harbour nearby in Roman times, and, though this has not yet been found, it was probably near to the fort's southern or eastern side.
The walls of the fort originally stood about high and were thick at their base, reducing to at the top; they were reinforced internally by an earthen bank. The entrance to the fort's headquarters building faced north, indicating that the main gate was on the north side, facing the eponymous promontory and the sea. The north wall has been lost to the sea, along with the adjoining part of the east wall and most of the west wall; the east wall is most complete and includes the remains of the eastern gateway and guard post. Parts of the surviving walls are all that remains of the fort above ground, and all have suffered from stone-robbing, especially near the south-western corner. The walls were originally faced with ragstone, but very little of this remains: otherwise only the cores of the walls are visible, consisting mostly of flint and concrete and standing only high at their highest.
Roman forts were normally accompanied by a civilian settlement, or vicus: at Reculver this lay outside the north and west sides of the fort, much of it in areas now lost to the sea, and was extensive, perhaps covering "some ten hectares in all." In 1936 R.F. Jessup noted that "a Roman building with a hypocaust and tesselated stood considerably to the northward of the fort": this structure had been observed by the 18th-century antiquarian John Battely, and was probably "an external bath relating to the fort." In the same area Battely described "several cisterns" between 10 and 12 feet square, lined with oak planks and sealed at the bottom with puddled clay. He believed that these were for storing rainwater, and noted that a Roman strigil, which would have been used in a bath house, had been found in a similar cistern at Reculver; he also observed that "such a multitude has been discovered, almost in our memory, as proves that the ancient inhabitants of the place were very numerous." In the 20th century twelve wells of the Roman period were identified to the west of the fort, ten of which were square; all were cut into the hard layer of sandstone below the soft sandstone of the Thanet Beds, thus tapping into the water table. These and other 20th-century finds from the Roman period extend to west of the fort, and date to a period between 170 and 360, roughly coinciding with the period of occupation at the fort itself.
At least 10 infant burials have been found within the fort, all of babies, of which six were associated with Roman buildings: five sets of infant remains were found within the foundations and walls of buildings, as were coins dating from 270 to 300 AD. It was suspected that more such burials might be found in the walls of a building in the south-western area of the fort if it were excavated further. A baby's feeding bottle was also found in an excavated floor within of one of the infant skeletons, though it may have been unconnected with the burials. The babies were probably buried in the buildings as ritual sacrifices, but it is unknown whether they were selected for burial because they were already dead, perhaps stillborn, or if they were buried alive or killed for the purpose. A local tale subsequently developed that the grounds of the fort were haunted by the sound of a crying baby.
Towards the end of the 3rd century a Roman naval commander named Carausius, who later declared himself emperor in Britain, was given the task of clearing pirates from the sea between Britain and the European mainland. In so doing he established a new chain of command, the British part of which was later to pass under the control of a Count of the Saxon Shore. The Notitia Dignitatum shows that the fort at Reculver became part of this arrangement, and its location meant that it lay at the "main point of contact in the system ". Archaeological evidence indicates that it was abandoned in the 370s.
Medieval
By the 7th century Reculver was part of a landed estate of the Anglo-Saxon kings of Kent, possibly with a royal toll-station or a "significant coastal trading settlement," given the types and large quantity of coins found there. Other early Anglo-Saxon finds include a fragment of a gilt bronze brooch, or fibula, which was originally circular and set with coloured stones or glass, a claw beaker and pottery. Antiquarians such as the 18th-century clergyman John Duncombe believed that King Æthelberht of Kent moved his royal court there from Canterbury in about 597, and built a palace on the site of the Roman ruins. However, archaeological excavation has shown no evidence of this; Æthelberht's household would have been peripatetic, and the story has been described as probably a "pious legend". A church was built on the site of the Roman fort in about 669, when King Ecgberht of Kent granted land for the foundation of a monastery, which was dedicated to St Mary.The monastery developed as the centre of a "large estate, a manor and a parish", and, by the early 9th century, it had become "extremely wealthy", but it then fell under the control of the archbishops of Canterbury. In 811 Archbishop Wulfred is recorded as having deprived the monastery of some of its land, and soon after it featured in a "monumental showdown" between Wulfred and King Coenwulf of Mercia over the control of monasteries. In 838 control of all monasteries under Canterbury's authority was passed to the kings of Wessex, by the agreement of Archbishop Ceolnoth in exchange for protection from Viking attacks. By the 10th century the monastery at Reculver and its estate were both royal property: they were given back to the archbishops of Canterbury in 949 by King Eadred of England, at which time the estate included Hoath and Herne, and land at Chilmington, about to the south-west, and in the west of the Isle of Thanet.
By 1066 the monastery had become a parish church. However, in 1086 Reculver was named in the Domesday Book of 1086 as a hundred, and the manor was valued at £42.7s.. Included in the Domesday account for the manor, as well as the church, farmland, a mill, salt pans and a fishery, are 90 villeins and 25 bordars: these numbers can be multiplied four or five times to account for dependents, as they only represent "adult male heads of households". At that time, although Domesday Book records that Reculver belonged to the archbishop of Canterbury in both 1066 and 1086, in reality it must again have been lost to him, since William the Conqueror is recorded as having returned it, among other churches and properties, to the archbishop at his death. In the 13th century Reculver was a parish of "exceptional wealth", and the considerable enlargement of the church building during the Middle Ages indicates that the settlement had become a "thriving township", with "dozens of houses". In 1310 Archbishop Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury noted that the population of the whole parish in the time of his predecessor John Peckham had numbered more than 3,000. For this reason, and because the parish was also large geographically, he converted chapelries at Herne and, on the Isle of Thanet, St Nicholas-at-Wade and Shuart into parishes, though the church at Hoath remained a perpetual curacy belonging to Reculver parish until 1960. Records for the poll tax of 1377 show that there were then 364 individuals of 14 years and above, not including "honest beggars", in the reduced parish of Reculver, who paid a total of £6.1s.4d. towards the tax.