A little of Thanet's History

Every so often in the bookshop where I work the question why the Isle of Thanet comes up, what people are getting at here is why is this part of England called an Island when it obviously isn't.

The oldest map of Thanet was drawn in around 1400 for Thomas Elmham's Historia Monasterii S Augustini Cantuariensis 
click here to read it
sorry about the latin the victorian edition and so on.

On the whole I think most people agree that Thanet was an island in 1400.

this navigational chart for 1590 shows the Wantsum Channel between Thanet and the rest of Kent silted up.

Back in Roman times I think Thanet was definitely an Island and probably still one in 1400

About 10 years ago I had a crack at a rough map of it as an island

Mostly based on this 1830 map with shaded levels, missed Stonar Spit, but there you go.

This is the title vignette from Lewis which was probably drawn in the early 1700s to depict an earlier Thanet.

A problem with history is that the more you know the more you realise how much you don't know. Anyway I am working up to revising my understanding of the early history of Thanet.

A busy day at work in the bookshop

Link to the books we put out for sale


finally this fragment that came up during my reserch This man in behalfe of himselfe and his Covent appealed * to the then Comissary of Cant. for Justice against a certaine foule mouthed abusive fellow, who (as he stands charged upon record) anno 1452. had called them Whoresons and farting Monks. He lyeth buried in the Lady-Chapell, but the brasse is almost all torne from his monument. Iohn Stone a most pious Monk of the place was contemporary with this Prior

Went Home and the business of Thanet as an Island, some very difficult local history! + some old local pictures

First some old pictures of Ramsgate and Margate, these should expand if you click on them.

Don’t bother to read the rest of today’s post unless you are interested in the early history of the Isle of Thanet, it’s a difficult convoluted and confusing business which has produced problems for many historians.

I think the first issue to consider occurred around 300 years ago when John Lewis was putting together the first history of the Isle of Thanet, this was published in 1723.

So back in around 1718 John Lewis would have had a considerable personal library in his rectory at Minster – in – Thanet and so he started with the same problem we have today, when was Thanet a proper Island and when was the Wantsum navigable?

So, domesticus transitus – Went Home or home passage and maybe eventually Wantsum or Tenet, Tened, Tanet, Fire or Thanet.

So what John Lewis does is to write down what previous writers have said about Thanet and the Wantsum, English, Latin, marginal notes * symbol indicating large notes at the bottom of pages. 

The trouble really starts when later historians read something in Lewis that was published in the early 1700s and make the assumption that the bit of text or even the map that Lewis has included relates to the early 1700s.

Although the trouble for John Lewis started when his book first came out, the following are some of the things other historians said about it.

"it has only an indifferent character and is a poor performance." Heame refers to "that vile, silly Pimp, that vile wretch, Lewis the Pyrate, the same poor writer that drew up and published Wicliffs Life. He is a Wiclivist, Calvinist, Puritan & Republican, and hath wrote and published divers other things of no manner of Esteem among honest learned men. Lewis has the character of a rogue and a villain."

Lewis went on to produce a much larger revised second edition published in 1736, and you can of course come into the bookshop here in Ramsgate and browse it.  

For the most part there is very little written down about Thanet before Lewis's history, so I am having a reread as part of pretending to work.

Links for this post, which is historical research in progress

The first few pages of Lewis http://www.thanetonline.com/iot/index.htm

Map of Thanet from about 1830, so cartographically accurate but the levels are shaded giving a reasonable idea of the lower levels and the extent of the Wantsum around say 500 AD http://www.thanetonline.com/iot/id2.htm

The Biblioteca Cantina entry for Lewis, which gives some biographical notes as well as the collations http://www.thanetonline.com/iot/id4.htm

If you have got this far then any help would be appreciated, as I said a work in progress, so I will add to it.

Bookshop, workwise, here is the link to what went out pictures http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/reggae-explosion-in-bookshop.html

Having replaced my laptop I am still getting used to the new one, so the link to the test page of photos publishing to the web http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/4818l/

I hope this works ok it’s a funny old world, so few people seem to publish directly to their own website, so presumably they don’t even know, in many cases, who their work actually belongs to. 

RSP have submitted their DCO application, this is the link to their press release

Wansum more, a blast from the past.

Having written the last few posts on the early history of Thanet, with surprisingly little criticism or corrections from other historians I decided it was time to reread my source material.

The bloke in the picture above is Thanet’s first historian John Lewis who was writhing at the end of the 1600s and the beginning of the 1700s his book “The History and Antiquities as well Ecclesiastical as Civil of the Isle of Tenet, in Kent”, the Second Edition, With Additions published in 1736 being the best and most sought after edition available from me in a cheap reprint click on the link to buy it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/the_history_and_antiquities_as_well_ecclesiastical_as_civil_of_the_isle_of_tenet.htm describes what I have been trying to describe on about 7 pages.

I have scanned the relevant pages from my copy in case you haven’t got one handy click on the link to read http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts10/id18.htm so you can read it and see what you think.

The Isle of Thanet and the island thing, reflections on prehistoric times.

In a Christian country and even if Britain’s status as such now is debatable, it certainly was a Christian country when most of Thanet’s best know historians were writing.

John Mockett writing in Thanet in 1836 states that the world was created in 4004 BC, to put this in the perspective of the view of the modern archaeologist this is about the time that farming replaced hunter gathering in Britain.

So if you like, either god created the world in 4004 BC and had a bit of a joke with modern archaeologists, by creating it with lots of fossils, flint tools and strange rock strata or the bible is wrong.

Here in Thanet there is very little evidence of human occupation before 4004 BC so it would be an easy cop out to start my history of Thanet then.

The latest and probably most accurate information on prehistoric Thanet is to be found in Gerald Moody’s excellent book “ The isle of Thanet from Prehistory to the Norman Conquest” I have it in stock priced £17.99.

It goes into the history of this period in depth and should you wish to do so it’s an absolute must read.

The history of the Wantsum channel that once divided The Isle of Thanet from the mainland is the subject of scholarly debate even now there are uncertainties as to how and when it was formed and to when it silted up or was filled in.

I am assuming here that those of you that wish to consider the formation of the world’s continents from 4,000,000,000 BC and the emergence of man between about 2,000,000 BC and 12,000 BC will look elsewhere.

Anyway I am going to commit the heresy of starting my history of Thanet around 12,000 BC around the end of the last ice age.

At this time Britain was still part of the continent of Europe and Thanet was part of the whole landmass, during the great melt down the sea rose by about 1,000 feet.

It would be nice to consider this a gradual event, with people and animals getting out of the way, such historical documentation that exists relating to the sea regaining landmasses in this part of the world in more modern times, suggests that every 50 years or so there would have been a huge storm combined with a tidal surge, taking a large area of land and drowning a great many people and animals.

Putting together the conjectures of such scholars I have read it seems likely that somewhere around 4,000 BC Thanet became an island. The shape of that island would have been due to a mixture of three things, the height of the existing land (hills and valleys), the rising sea level and the action of costal erosion.

Scholarly conjecture puts the size of The isle of Thanet at this time at about three times today’s size, with most of the extra landmass being to the north and east. I will refrain from attempting to draw a map, I have been looking at some others have drawn recently based on scholarly conjecture rather than topographical information and will refrain from comment.

You can try a guess the date of the map above it comes from Lewis published in 1736 and obviously shows Thanet at a much earlier time, did Lewis copy it from an early source, or did he just make it up?

Thanet and the Roman invasions.

Thanet in ancient times was very much the gateway to the United Kingdom and if nothing else the Roman forts of Richborough and Reculver show this areas importance to the Romans.

So when, why and where were the Roman invasions.

During the first and second centuries BC there was a fair amount of cross channel contact there are few remaining roman accounts of anything to do with Britain and nothing else written down at all from this period.

About 50 AD the Roman Julius Solinus wrote about Britain, he described the inhabitants as savage and warlike staining their faces with the blood of their enemies after battle. Our boats he describes as being covered in the hides of oxen.

However of the Isle of Thanet he says it is rich in cornfields and luxuriant glebe.

Caesar wrote an account of his invasion of Britain, I was going to scan my own copy in for you to read but it’s already on the web you want pages 1 to 72 click here for it.

He probably landed somewhere between Thanet and Dover and got routed by the locals who were probably used to invasions, if you read the 72 pages in Latin with the English translation underneath, (somehow it is the only way, as the rough paraphrase allows much more space for the readers imagination) when Latin was taught as a major school subject this was normally the book pupils started with.

Every school child living in a southeastern costal town obviously assumed that that was where the landing took place. He certainly fell back to near North Foreland after the attack,

His landings were in 55 and 54 BC as you will have gathered if you read the Caesar’s account the British had a fair idea of what was going on.

Around the same time (the end of the iron age) there was a lot of toing and froing between Britain, Belgica and Amorica (roughly now Belgium and Brittany) people immigrated both ways and archaeology shows they developed the same burial customs.

The main Roman occupation didn’t happen until the invasion of AD43 this was Aulus Plautius on the orders of the emperor Claudius, some forty thousand troops with elephants this time, landing probably at Richborough.

There is quite a bit of archaeological evidence, and of course the expected argument about it, to suggest Thanet was fairly heavily occupied by the Romans.

Ramsgate has had a lot of roman finds and it would seem that the inlet where the harbour is now has been protected from costal erosion by the build-up of sand since those times, Roman finds were found when the slipway was built.

I think it also probable that the cliff top locations would have been attractive to roman settlers so much of our Roman remains probably vanished due to erosion.

With the two important fortifications of Richborough and Reculver nearby Thanet’s pastoral environment must have had its attractions.

As to where the Romans first landed the coastline would have been quite a bit different due to costal erosion, however if you click on the map above and enlarge it, it is fairly obvious from where the shaded bits are where the Wantsum channel was.

More early Thanet history and reflections on books and documents.

As some of you will know I am no historian and got dragged into the history of Thanet when Ramsgate library burnt down and most of our local history collection was destroyed.

This leaves me with both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to relaying local history to others, I hope all of the serious historians that view our history in the context of a broad understanding of national and world history, which comes from history being their main interest will forgive and correct my errors.

My main advantage when it comes to relaying our local history is that I don’t make much in the way of preconceptions about what I expect my readers to know, running the bookshop and being there when customers are buying their local history books I have a fair idea of what it is they want.

I have come to something of an impasse in my local book publishing mainly because the restrictions of copyright, I have reprinted most of the main local history books that I am allowed to, that is those where the author has been dead for more than 70 years and I don’t have to get permission from them or the beneficiaries of their estates, if they are dead to do so.

Most of the remaining Thanet history books fall into the bracket where the author has died but it is impossible to track down their ancestors to get permission to reprint them, any help with this is always appreciated.

By virtue of the limited amount of information about the history of Thanet and the work that has already been done by past historians, any general work on the history of Thanet is to a greater or lesser extent plagiarism of those previous works.

There is a problem here though and that is that many of the writers either disagree on issues or are just plain wrong, often wrong information is repeated again and again in later books. At the moment I am trying to get a picture of what Thanet was like between about the time of Christ and about 1700, this is the period when there is little written history, I am inclined in my mind to think of it as the early confused period.

One of the most important series of documents that survive are the letters from the monarchs to The Lord Wardens of the Cinque Ports from the early 1200s to the mid 1500s. these are mostly held in Canterbury Cathedral Library and have been collected in David Oliver’s book “Late Medieval Thanet and the Cinque Ports” this was only produced in a limited first edition and is fairly hard to get. I am reading it at the moment and hope to make the material in it a starting point for a general history of Thanet.

The general picture I have of Thanet during this period is that of a fortified island slowly turning into an extension of the mainland. This was achieved by the silting up of the Wantsum channel helped along by the land reclamation carried out by the monks who managed most of the land in Thanet.

The oldest map of Thanet is Thomas of Elham’s map of 1414 (above) at this time Thanet is clearly still an island and the Wantsum appears to be a bit less than a kilometre wide at some time between then and the late 1600s when Lewis was writing his history of Thanet it silted up pretty much to the position today.

Lewis claims to have spoken to a person of great age that remembers it being navigable I think it fair to assume this was a gradual process and that over a period of time with the craft able to navigate it getting smaller and smaller over a period of time.

The main harbour on the Isle of Thanet during this period was Margate the other gaps gates and stairs seem to have been mostly used for fishing and smuggling.

As far as our relationship with the Cinque Ports go, all of the Thanet parishes were affiliated with Dover in 1422, with the exception of St Lawrence (Ramsgate), which was a limb of Sandwich.

Sandwich’s effectiveness as a port was adversely effected by the silting up of the Wantsum certainly as early as 1422 something that had a very adverse effect on the town economy, the burgers of Sandwich were very resentful about this and as late as the late 1700s strongly opposed the enlargement of Ramsgate harbour.

As you will have noticed if you read yesterdays post the content of these letters form the monarch can be fairly bizarre and what they mean can be partly interpreted by a broader understanding of history.

This first extract relates to our local pirates:

From King Henry to The Sheriff of Kent (as this was written in 1413 it could either have been Henry IV or V). Arrest robbers in who in English balingers and other vessels lie in the river and take merchandise, goods and victuals though they be of Holande, Selande and other parts of the kings friendship.

The local monks seem to have been in on this game too.

This one in 1426 “Commission enquires into a complaint by the kings French subjects merchants of Abbevylle, Boloigne sur mer and Brugges that the abbot of St Augustines with a fellow monk called Belle and others arrested a ship loaded with wines and other merchandise claiming it belonged to Spanish enemies of the king.

The ship touched the Isle of Thanet. 74 tuns and one pipe of wine were taken away.”

This was just after Agincourt the abbot was condemned by the Westminster council and made to settle for cash with the Duke of Bedford who was the regent of the English positions in France. Interesting that the Abbot a true Thanet man manage to knock the duke down to 180 livere from the 200 demanded.

Or this truly bizarre one from King Edward IV in 1467:

“Commission to John Martyn, Kings Sergeant at Arms, to arrest malefactors who came upon a vessel sailing upon the sea next to The Isle of Thanet, which the merchants of Genoa had laden with 130 bales of woad at Sandwich their own goods to take to London and carried the vessel and goods off to places unknown, and to bring them before the king in Chancery and to seize the vessel and woad and put the same in safe custody.”

Although the ancient Britons painting themselves blue with woad seems to be largely mythical I gather apart from being a strong dye it is also an excellent wood preservative.

I am reminded of the period in the 1970s when Ramsgate harbour imported tractors and most of the boats in the harbour suddenly seemed to have new batteries not unlike those on the tractor.

Sergeant. “Why are all these boats blue?”
I will add to this today if I get the time.

Minster in Thanet and related books.

One of the few country villages in this area that seems in any sense to be alive to the outsider is Minster in Thanet. I went there the other day and it still has some ordinary shops, butcher, greengrocer, baker etc, no small achievement because of the value of buildings in attractive villages. Click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts10/id10.htm

I was sad to see that the bakers is now opening only one day a week and one wonders if this is the beginning of the end, I have often wondered how much of Minster’s survival when so many of the surrounding villages have lost all of their shops was due to Minster Museum, a tourist attraction now sadly closed.

The problem here is the value of residential property particularly in attractive villages means that either the freehold investment or the rent will be out of all proportion to anything a small shopkeeper could make on the site, hence most village shop property gets converted to residential.

The problem as always being that people would most like to live in some sort of community with shops restaurants etc which drives up the prices and drives out the shops and once they have gone there is usually nothing more left to a village that an attractive housing estate, perhaps retaining a few things that are subsidised in some way.

On to Minster related books.

Having got a bit behind with my local history publications recently, because of other demands on my time two that relate to Minster just out, the first being Minster Rambles by Yvonne.

Here is what she has to say about it: “My delights in this world are to walk and to observe nature and its reflections on our lives. I am grateful I can walk as I do, for so many are not able to enjoy because of disabilities etc. I never take for granted the fact I am fit and can get out in the countryside. This is why I like to write about all I see for those who cannot be there seeing things for their selves.”

Click here to go to her blog.

Click here to go to her website.

Click here to buy the book.

Although not strictly local history still a local book related to Minster.

The other one is a bit more difficult to explain I have just written an introduction to it in an attempt to stop people buying it because they assume it’s a history of Minster.

It’s called “The Manor of Minster and Other Estates in the Isle of Thanet……….

Click here to read the whole book.

Here is my introduction:

“As a publisher of local history books most of which relate to The Isle of Thanet I endeavour to as much material into print as I can. With the reprints of the older and scarcer books that relate to this area my primary objective is to produce a small inexpensive reprint to preserve these documents for future generations.

Do not buy this book if you are looking for a history if Minster in Thanet, as it is not one and was never intended to be one.

Aldred has compiled the information in this book for an audience of Victorian genealogists and historians and while it is a useful source for part the genealogy of some local families, I don’t recommend tackling it before first having read the main local history books about the area that were first published before 1900, most of which I have produced in a cheap reprint form.

As some explanation to writing an introduction to a book that I publish, that for the most part is warning the general reader not to buy it, I should point out that as I produce my local history books in short print runs printed here in the bookshop, it serves me no advantage to sell people one book more than another.

In other words I don’t have a large pile of any local history title that I would benefit from getting rid of and would far rather that you bought the books that are most useful to you.”

Click here to buy the book.

Some thoughts on Minster here as it’s important in medieval history.

Minster Abbey was first founded in 670 AD and destroyed by the Vikings in the 800s rebuilt in1027 it’s probably the oldest inhabited dwelling in England.

Throughout the middle ages the abbot of St Augustine outside Canterbury was one of the most powerful people within the Catholic Church in England with considerable power within Thanet.

At that time the church was the main landowner in Thanet possessing the monasteries of Salmanstone, Cliffsend, Minster Court and Minster Abbey.

The Doomsday Book of 1086 for instance shows just one of the farms of Minster Court employing 152 villeins and 50 bordars.

If you want to go and look at Minster Abbey you need to appear at the right time for tours.

Tour Hours
Monday to Friday from 2:45 p.m. until 4 p.m.,
(1st May to 30th September only)

Saturday mornings from 11 a.m. until 12:00 noon (Throughout the year)

Tours can also be arranged by appointment, by ringing Sr. Benedict at 01843 821254

Click here for their website.

Due to the lack of much written down it is hard to get to grips with life in medieval Thanet, paper was very rare and for the most part people were illiterate, in fact I think it would be fair to say that literacy was suppressed by both the monarchy and the catholic church neither would have wanted subversive pamphlets, something hard to imagine in the world of blogging.

Common people however still managed to give authority a hard time there were attacks recorded at the monasteries of Cliffsend and Salmanston in 1318 because of the high rents.

Thanet was usually the first part of the UK to be attacked by foreign forces, the places where a boat could put in being protected by walls dykes and gates, in 1392 there was an order to maintain the turreted walls above and below the cliff between Cliffsend and Margate that the locals had been neglecting.

All of these fortifications are of course lost now to costal erosion, however these odd old documents paint a different picture to the one that perhaps some of us would imagine of Thanet at this time.

Ordinary folk would have had a hard time in medieval Thanet most only growing to about 5 feet tall due to the poor diet, however I think Thanet probably fared better than most of the UK due to the mixture of seafaring and agriculture.

The liming of chalk and the use of seaweed for agriculture combined with the availability of fish from the sea gave us an edge not available elsewhere.

Many of the documents that survive from this period relate to The Cinque Ports and tell us to supply ships and armed men for the kings service although some of the documents I am reading today to put this post together are a little hard to comprehend. For example this strange missive from Edward III in 1345:

To the abbot of St Augustines certain persons bringing bulls and other things prejudicial to the king and community at the port of Mergate to be arrested.