The Wantsum Channel was a strait separating the Isle of Thanet from the north-eastern extremity of the English county of

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

and connecting the

English Channel The English Channel, also known as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busi ...

and the

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. It was a major shipping route when Britain was part of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, and continued in use until it was closed by silting in the late

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. Its course is now represented by the River Stour and the River Wantsum, which is little more than a drainage ditch lying between Reculver and St Nicholas-at-Wade and joins the Stour about south-east of Sarre.

Toponymy

Eilert Ekwall, a 20th-century authority on English place-names, wrote that the name "Wantsum" derives from an

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

word "wandsum", meaning "winding".

Bede Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...

, writing in or before 731, mentioned the Wantsum (''Vantsumu'') in describing the Isle of Thanet, but he also recorded an alternative name: he described the church at Reculver as being ''juxta ostium aquilonale fluminis Genladae'', or "by the north mouth of the river Genlade". Ekwall compared this to the name of Yantlet Creek, which separates the Isle of Grain from mainland Kent. He suggested an origin in the Old English word ''gegnlad'' meaning "'backwater' or the like, ndvery likely the source of the word ''inlet'' or'arm of the sea, rcreek'."

History

From prehistory until the

, the Wantsum Channel was joined by the River Stour, which entered it at Stourmouth close to its midpoint; it was a two-mile-wide (3 km) strait. The southern end of the channel met the sea at Richborough ('' Rutupiae''), downstream of

Sandwich A sandwich is a Dish (food), dish typically consisting variously of meat, cheese, sauces, and vegetables used as a filling between slices of bread, or placed atop a slice of bread; or, more generally, any dish in which bread serves as a ''co ...

, while the northern end met the

at Reculver ('' Regulbium''). That the Romans chose both sites for forts indicates the significance of the route, which their shipping commonly used to travel between Britain and continental

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

raided

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the county of Kent, England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climat ...

via the Wantsum in 839. Deposition of shingle at Stonar, at the southern end of the Channel, gradually caused it to silt up; and shipping heading for Canterbury, formerly using the northern entrance, brought Fordwich into prominence as its outport. The silting continued, particularly during the 12th and 13th centuries, when Augustinian monks entered into land reclamation; eventually, by the 16th century, the Wantsum Channel had dried up, apart from the large drainage ditch down the centre of the former channel, and associated feeder ditches. Efforts made by the monks of Minster-in-Thanet to manage the Wantsum in the Middle Ages are reflected in two names for parts of the Channel and Stour, "Abbot's Wall" and "Monk's Wall". During the 18th century, silting threatened the rich port of Sandwich and efforts were made to create sluices and channels to control the waters. These ultimately failed, and as a result Sandwich is now some distance from the sea. Regarding the northern end of the Channel, it has been estimated that the Roman fort at Reculver was originally about 1 mile (1.6 km) from the sea to the north, but by 1540, when John Leland recorded a visit there, the coastline to the north had receded to within little more than a quarter of a mile (400 m). It may be that sediment from this erosion contributed to the blocking of the north mouth of the Wantsum. The southern section of the Wantsum Channel is represented by the River Stour, which empties into the Strait of Dover at Pegwell Bay. The North Sea flood of 1953 led to the flooding of the land where the Wantsum Channel formerly ran, and briefly made the Isle of Thanet an island again. The Wantsum Channel area features in four recreational walking routes, these being the Saxon Shore Way, the Stour Valley Walk, the Wantsum Walk and the Way of St Augustine.

References

Footnotes

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * * {{coord, 51, 23, N, 1, 14, E, display=title, region:GB_type:river_source:GNS-enwiki History of Kent