RIVER STOUR – HISTORY
• Julius Caesar landed at Richborough when it was truly an island and the Wantsum Channel separated the Isle of Thanet from the mainland. St. Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet in 597 and was taken to Canterbury through Fordwich by boat to eventually convert the Kentish people to Christianity. • The Romans built forts at both ends of the Wantsum Channel to safeguard their ships against Saxon raids at Reculver (Regulbium) and Richborough (Retupiae). • The Romans had to subdue the Cantitribe in their first incursion in 58BC at Bigbury Iron Age Hill Fort at Harbledown, near Canterbury. • As Canterbury developed as a religious centre the river continued to mould the morphology (physical shape) of the City. Although the river was gradually silting up and shrinking the water continued to power mills and industry and it provided drinking water, washing water, a sewage system, as well as creating a defensive moat. Near the river most of the important buildings of the medieval period have survived including the Norman Castle, the Westgate Towers, the Eastbridge Hospital and the Franciscan and Dominican Priories. • By the Ninth Century Fordwich was the navigable limit of river traffic and it became the Outport for Canterbury. Pilgrims from all over Europe often came by boat to Fordwich on their way to visit Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. • Long Shore Drift along the Channel caused the mouth of the river to move from the Wantsum Channel, which was gradually silting up towards Sandwich. The villages of East and West Stourmouth mark the old estuary. Sandwich was a founder member of the Cinque Ports and Fordwich became an Associate member. Sandwich reached its peak in the Thirteenth Century but the accretion of material in the river and the wrecking of a large boat belonging to the Pope in 1561 in the river mouth, caused the port to decline further. Sandwich is now two miles from the sea and four miles along the river. • In 1776 the Stonar Cut was opened. It cut across the neck of the Sandwich Loop so that floodwater caused by high precipitation and/or a high spring tide, could take the shortest route to the sea without flooding Sandwich. Its sluice gates were renewed in 1999 and for 175 years the gates were manned fulltime. • By 1820 and with the threat of Napoleonic invasion receding, the merchants of Canterbury needed to improve their transport links in order to keep trade flowing. Roads to London were impassable in the winter and the River Stour was only navigable at high spring tide. They invited Thomas Telford to plan a way of dredging and canalising the river from Fordwich to Sandwich but the cost of £80,000 was considered prohibitive. • Instead they turned to George Stephenson to build a railway line to the nearest coast at Whitstable where a new harbour was to be built. His estimate of £25,000 proved to be more suitable but upon starting the project, costs spiralled as it became apparent that the steam locomotives could not cope with the gradients and tunnels had to be constructed. • The Canterbury to Whitstable Railway opened on the 1st May 1830, five months before the Liverpool to Manchester line. With its opening river transport virtually ceased. The railway line closed in 1952 but by then the City was well served by other railway lines and a full road network
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