One of the greatest prizes of the sea is the ancient city of Dunwich, which dates back to the Roman era.  The Domesday Survey shows that it was then a considerable town having 236 burgesses.  It was girt with strong walls; it possessed an episcopal palace, the seat of the East Anglian bishopric; it had (so Stow asserts) fifty-two churches, a monastery, brazen gates, a town hall, hospitals, and the dignity of possessing a mint.  Stow tells of its departed glories, its royal and episcopal palaces, the sumptuous mansion of the mayor, its numerous churches and its windmills, its harbour crowded with shipping, which sent forth forty vessels for the king’s service in the thirteenth century.  Though Dunwich was an important place, Stow’s description of it is rather exaggerated.  It could never have had more than ten churches and monasteries.  Its “brazen gates” are mythical, though it had its Lepers’ Gate, South Gate, and others.  It was once a thriving city of wealthy merchants and industrious fishermen.  King John granted to it a charter.  It suffered from the attacks of armed men as well as from the ravages of the sea.  Earl Bigot and the revolting barons besieged it in the reign of Edward I. Its decay was gradual.  In 1342, in the parish of St. Nicholas, out of three hundred houses only eighteen remained.  Only seven out of a hundred houses were standing in the parish of St. Martin.  St. Peter’s parish was devastated and depopulated.  It had a small round church, like that at Cambridge, called the Temple, once the property of the Knights Templars, richly endowed with costly gifts.  This was a place of sanctuary, as were the other churches in the city.  With the destruction of the houses came also the decay of the port which no ships could enter.  Its rival, Southwold, attracted the vessels of strangers.  The markets and fairs were deserted.  Silence and ruin reigned over the doomed town, and the ruined church of All Saints is all that remains of its former glories, save what the storms sometimes toss along the beach for the study and edification of antiquaries.

As we proceed down the coast we find that the sea is still gaining on the land.  The old church at Walton-on-the-Naze was swept away, and is replaced by a new one.  A flourishing town existed at Reculver, which dates back to the Romans.  It was a prosperous place, and had a noble church, which in the sixteenth century was a mile from the sea.  Steadily have the waves advanced, until a century ago the church fell into the sea, save two towers which have been preserved by means of elaborate sea-walls as a landmark for sailors.

The fickle sea has deserted some towns and destroyed their prosperity; it has receded all along the coast from Folkestone to the Sussex border, and left some of the famous Cinque Ports, some of which we shall visit again, Lymne, Romney, Hythe, Richborough, Stonor, Sandwich, and Sarre high and dry, with little or no access to the sea.  Winchelsea has had a strange career.  The old town lies beneath the waves, but a new Winchelsea arose, once a flourishing port, but now deserted and forlorn with the sea a mile away.  Rye, too, has been forsaken.  It was once an island; now the little Rother stream conveys small vessels to the sea, which looks very far away.