down. In 1804, part of the churchyard with some
adjoining houses was washed away, and the ancient church, with its two
spires, was dismantled and abandoned as a place of worship, but kept in
repair as a landmark well known to mariners. I visited the spot in June,
1851, and saw human bones and part of a wooden coffin projecting from
the cliff, near the top. The whole building would probably have been
swept away long ere this, had not the force of the waves been checked by
an artificial causeway of stones and large wooden piles driven into the
sands on the beach to break the force of the waves.

[Illustration: Fig. 34.

Reculver Church, in 1834.]

_Isle of Thanet._--The isle of Thanet was, in the time of the Romans,
separated from the rest of Kent by a navigable channel, through which
the Roman fleets sailed on their way to and from London. Bede describes
this small estuary as being, in the beginning of the eighth century,
three furlongs in breadth; and it is supposed that it began to grow
shallow about the period of the Norman conquest. It was so far silted up
in the year 1485, that an act was then obtained to build a bridge across
it; and it has since become marsh land with small streams running
through it. On the coast, Bedlam Farm, belonging to the hospital of that
name, lost eight acres in the twenty years preceding 1830, the land
being composed of chalk from forty to fifty feet above the level of the
sea. It has been computed that the average waste of the cliff between
the North Foreland and the Reculvers, a distance of about eleven miles,
is not less than two feet per annum. The chalk cliffs on the south of
Thanet, between Ramsgate and Pegwell Bay, have on an average lost three
feet per annum for the last ten years (preceding 1830).

_Goodwin Sands._--The Goodwin Sands lie opposite this part of the
Kentish coast. They are about ten miles in length, and are in some parts
three, and in others seven, miles distant from the shore; and, for a
certain space, are laid bare at low water. That they are a remnant of
land, and not "a mere accumulation of sea sand," as Rennell
imagined,[415] may be presumed from the fact that, when the erection of
a lighthouse on this shoal was in contemplation by the Trinity Board in
the year 1817, it was found, by borings, that the bank consisted of
fifteen feet of sand, resting on blue clay; and, by subsequent borings,
the subjacent chalk has been reached. An obscure tradition has come d