Just a few minutes after we’d left the Viking ship at Pegwell Bay, we came to another fascinating site – and this one was genuinely old, dating back to Roman times. It was also a great surprise to us as, although Mum knew of it from research she’d done for one of her children’s information books and knew it was somewhere along the coast of Kent, she’d had no idea of where it was exactly and certainly never thought we’d be going near it that day.
I think if she’d realised earlier how easy it was to get there on the bus, we’d have got off there and gone for a look around, instead of going on to Dover. As it was, however, we’d already paid for the whole journey and we didn’t want to waste our money, as so we had to make do with the view from the bus window.
Luckily it was one of the places along the route where the bus driver had to have a short rest before continuing the journey and so we had a good ten minutes at the bus stop and Mum was able to tell me and Granny Betty more about what we were looking at.
She said that what we could see were the remains of a Roman fort called Richborough which was where the Roman invasion of Britain had started with the landing of 40,000 men from the Roman Empire in AD43. She also said that at that time it was on a small island just off the coast at a point which was very near to mainland Europe. And, as well as having a good harbour, there was sheltered passage by sea from there to the Thames estuary, making it easy to sail up to London and beyond.
Now however, thanks to naturally shifting sandbanks and a lot of work by humans to drain the marshy areas and turn them into agricultural land, Richborough is at least 2 miles/3.5 kms from the sea and its days as a port are long past.
But, when the Romans landed, their first big task was to set up a military base from where they could set out to conquer as much of Britain – which they called Britannia – as possible. Luckily for them there was little resistance in the area around Richborough and they were soon able to advance further inland. Richborough became the main entry port to Britain from mainland Europe and it changed from a military base to a supply depot. Then a busy town grew up around the port, with shops and houses, an amphitheatre and temples.
Known to the Romans as Rutupiae, the town flourished until 256 AD. Then, because of the threat of attacks across the Channel from Saxon and Frankish raiders, buildings in the centre of the town were knocked down and replaced by a small fort.
And by 290 AD this small fort had been replaced by a much larger one with walls up to 25 feet/8 metres in height. One of what became known as the Forts of the Saxon Shore, it was part of a chain of defences along the south and east coasts of the Roman province of Britannia – and it was the remains of this fort that we could see from the bus windows.
But Mum told us that, in spite of all this effort, the Roman armies began to withdraw from Britannia just over 100 years later, with Richborough possibly being the place many of them left from.
As the driver started the bus engine again, we realised that it was time for us to leave as well. Unlike the Romans, however, we weren’t going to Rome. Instead, we were going on to Dover – and there are no prizes for guessing what was the first thing we did when we got there…
That’s right – we found a nice café and sat down for a cup of tea and a slice of cake and, when we’d done that, we bought ourselves a loaf, ready for the next day.
Then we found the double-decker bus that did guided tours around the town and decided we’d have a ride on that. We were lucky enough to get the front seats upstairs and enjoyed it so much that we went round twice.
I’ll have to tell you more about that and the rest of our holiday in Kent in my next post, however, as we’re expecting visitors any minute now and so I can’t write any more today, but please take care, stay safe – and look out for some more tales from me soon!
Follow my next blog: 266. MY MUM THE STORY-TELLER – PART ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO
06/07/2023
Wilf the bear-faced blogger 