Rory Walsh visits an unusual Kent church on the Romney Marsh
Discovering Britain
View • Rural • South East England • Web Guide
Charles Dickens’ classic Victorian novel Great Expectations begins in a churchyard on the Kent marshes. To the narrator, young orphan Pip, it’s a ‘bleak place’ surrounded by ‘dark flat wilderness.’ The hundred square miles of Romney Marsh can still feel remote. Vast skies loom above huge windswept fields, with only the bleats of distant sheep for company. West of the village of Brookland, a narrow winding road passes an especially lonely sight.
Isolated in the middle of a field stands St Thomas à Becket Church. There’s no vicarage or graveyard, not even a fence to stop sheep nuzzling the church walls. Legends attribute this place of worship to a successful prayer. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was apparently crossing the marsh when he fell into a bog and began to drown. After praying for help, a farmer pulled him to safety. To show his gratitude, Becket ordered a church be built at the spot.
The church’s location reveals a mystery rather than a miracle, however. St Thomas à Becket is one of 14 medieval churches dotted across Romney Marsh. It was built from around 1200 in the village of Fairfield. Fairfield no longer exists; only the church remains. Villages vanish for various reasons. Thousands have gone throughout Britain, including at least 11 on Romney Marsh. Fairfield’s fate reflects the development of this unique landscape.
Between Rye and Dymchurch the Kent coast resembles the flap of a stingray’s wing. This sweeping shape originates from a large gravel spit, formed by longshore drift around 10,000 years ago. The spit provided a barrier for tidal saltwater lagoons. Over millennia, these lagoons silted up to form saltmarsh. Fairfield village, including the church, stood on land reclaimed from the sea.
Reclaimed land is vulnerable to flooding. St Thomas à Becket Church is surrounded by ‘sewers’, ditches cut to drain the land for farming. In winter months these often left the church accessible only by boat. The low-lying marshes were also exposed to storms. A severe one in 1287 destroyed the original port of Winchelsea. And like many remote rural areas, Romney Marsh was devastated by the Plague.
Furthermore, marshland attracted undesirable residents. The large open fields lined with brackish water made ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Malaria was so prevalent locally that it was called ‘marsh fever’. Malaria, plague, storms or floods could wipe out or wash away a medieval village, leaving their churches to watch over flocks of sheep, or just mosquitoes.
Go to the Discovering Britain website to find more hikes, short walks, or viewing points. Every landscape has a story to tell!
