Romney Marsh is a sparsely inhabited marsh location in the counties of Kent as well as East Sussex in the south-east of England. It covers regarding 100 square miles (260 km2). A selecting ward in the very same name exists. This ward had a population of 2,358 at the 2011 census. The Romney Marsh has actually been progressively built up over the centuries. One of the most significant function of the Marsh is the Rhee Wall (Rhee is a word for river), creating a prominent ridge. This function was extended as a river in 3 phases from Appledore to New Romney in the 13th century. Sluices regulated the flow of water, which was after that released to flush silt from the harbour at New Romney. Eventually, the battle was lost; the harbour silted up and also New Romney decreased in relevance. The Rhee kept part of the old port open till the 15th century. The wall surface at Dymchurch was constructed around the same time; tornados had breached the roof shingles barrier, which had safeguarded it until that time. It is an usual mistaken belief that both these structures were developed by the Romans. In 1250 and in the complying with years, a collection of storms broke through the coastal shingle banks, swamping significant locations and returning it to marsh, and also damaging the harbour at New Romney. In 1287 water ruined the port town of Old Winchelsea (now located some 2 mi (3 kilometres) out in Rye bay), which had actually been under threat from the sea considering that at the very least 1236. Winchelsea, the third largest port in England and a major importer of wine, was relocated on higher land, with a harbour consisting of 82 jetties. Those very same tornados, however, assisted to accumulate more shingle: such beaches now left almost the entire seaward side of the marshland. By the 14th century, a lot of the Walland as well as Denge Marshes had actually been reclaimed by "innings", the process of throwing up an embankment around the sea-marsh and utilizing the low-tide to let it run dry using one-way drains pipes established into the new seawall, running off into a network of dykes called in your area "sewage systems" in 1462, the Romney Marsh Corporation was established to set up drainage and also sea supports for the marsh, which it remained to build right into the 16th century. By the 16th century, the course of the Rother had been altered to its channel today; most of the rest of the area had actually now been reclaimed from the sea. The tile remains to be transferred. Because of this, all the initial Cinque Ports of the Marsh are currently far from the sea. Dungeness Point is still being contributed to: although (especially near Dungeness and also Hythe) a day-to-day operation is in location to counter the reshaping of the shingle financial institutions, making use of boats to dredge as well as move the drifting shingle. The Marsh became the residential or commercial property of the Priory of Canterbury in the 9th century, who gave the initial tenancy on the land to a guy called Baldwin, at some point between 1152 and 1167, for "as much land as Baldwin himself can confine and drain pipes versus the sea"; Baldwin's Drain (drainage ditch) stays being used. The marsh has actually since come to be covered by a thick network of water drainage ditches and when sustained huge farming areas. These watercourses are preserved and also taken care of for lasting water levels by the Romney Marsh Area Internal Drainage Board. Romney Marsh adjoins the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is less established than numerous other locations in Kent as well as Sussex. The decline in sheep prices meant that even the neighborhood stock (sold worldwide for reproducing for over 2 centuries) came to be unsustainable. Turfing had always been a lesser practice because of the meadow maintained brief by the lamb reared upon it, yet ranches are boosting in size to compensate for the decline in lasting livestock farming. Some sight this as unsustainable because of the damages to soil ecology of the Marsh. The only other option, since 1946, has been for farmers to count on arable farming, changing the landscape from a jumble of small family members ranches to a couple of comprehensive cultivatable manufacturing units.