Romney Marsh is a sparsely populated marsh location in the counties of Kent and East Sussex in the south-east of England. It covers about 100 square miles (260 km2). A selecting ward in the same name exists. This ward had a population of 2,358 at the 2011 census. The Romney Marsh has actually been slowly built up over the centuries. The most substantial function of the Marsh is the Rhee Wall (Rhee is a word for river), forming a famous ridge. This feature was prolonged as a river in three stages from Appledore to New Romney in the 13th century. Sluices managed the flow of water, which was after that released to flush silt from the harbour at New Romney. Inevitably, the fight was lost; the harbour silted up and New Romney declined in relevance. The Rhee maintained part of the old port open up until the 15th century. The wall surface at Dymchurch was built around the exact same time; tornados had breached the roof shingles barrier, which had protected it till that time. It is an usual false impression that both these frameworks were developed by the Romans. In 1250 and in the adhering to years, a collection of storms appeared the coastal tile banks, flooding significant areas and returning it to marsh, and ruining the harbour at New Romney. In 1287 water destroyed the port community of Old Winchelsea (now located some 2 mi (3 km) out in Rye bay), which had been under threat from the sea because at least 1236. Winchelsea, the 3rd largest port in England as well as a major importer of red wine, was transferred on greater land, with a harbour including 82 wharfs. Those same storms, nevertheless, assisted to build up much more shingle: such coastlines now ran along practically the entire seaward side of the marshland. By the 14th century, much of the Walland as well as Denge Marshes had actually been reclaimed by "innings", the procedure of vomitting an embankment around the sea-marsh and also using the low-tide to allow it run dry using one-way drains pipes established into the brand-new seawall, running off right into a network of dykes called in your area "sewers" in 1462, the Romney Marsh Corporation was developed to install drainage and also sea supports for the marsh, which it remained to construct right into the 16th century. By the 16th century, the training course of the Rother had been altered to its network today; the majority of the remainder of the area had actually now been reclaimed from the sea. The tile continues to be transferred. Consequently, all the original Cinque Ports of the Marsh are currently much from the sea. Dungeness Point is still being included in: although (specifically near Dungeness and Hythe) an everyday procedure is in place to counter the reshaping of the shingle financial institutions, making use of watercrafts to dig up and also move the wandering tile. The Marsh came to be the property of the Priory of Canterbury in the 9th century, that provided the first tenancy on the land to a guy called Baldwin, sometime in between 1152 as well as 1167, for "as much land as Baldwin himself can confine as well as drain against the sea"; Baldwin's Drain (drain ditch) remains in operation. The marsh has given that come to be covered by a dense network of drain ditches as well as as soon as supported huge farming communities. These gutters are kept and handled for sustainable water levels by the Romney Marsh Area Internal Drainage Board. Romney Marsh is adjacent to the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is much less developed than many other locations in Kent as well as Sussex. The decrease in sheep rates indicated that even the local stock (marketed around the globe for breeding for over 2 centuries) ended up being unsustainable. Turfing had actually constantly been a lesser method because of the grassland kept brief by the sheep reared upon it, however farms are raising in size to compensate for the decrease in lasting livestock farming. Some view this as unsustainable because of the damage to dirt ecology of the Marsh. The only other option, since 1946, has actually been for farmers to turn to cultivatable farming, transforming the landscape from a patchwork of little family ranches to a few substantial cultivatable production systems.