DUNGENESS
Origin of Village Name.
Dungeness is an Anglo-Saxon name taken from Dung Mersc (Smelly marsh) and is the naess (foreland) protecting the marsh. As the sea level was a great deal higher than today, this would have been slow moving slt marsh with lots of rotting vegetation providing the smell.
General Details.
Dungeness is one of the most remote of the villages on the Romney Marsh sitting as it does on the corner of the marsh. It has a unique stark beauty with the fishermen’s small homes contrasting with the enormous bulk of the Nuclear Power Stations.
By the 1400′s the area at Dengeness had stabilised into a shingle bank, before that it was shoals and fast currents. Fishermen settled here and eeked out their livelyhoods by providing food for the other members of the Cinque Ports, Dengemarsh was one of the affiliates to the Cinque Ports .
The village has been the location of a light, warning of the shoals and fast currents around the point throughout the centuries. The first lighthouse was built in 1613, the land built up and the sea retreated so a second one was built in 1635. Another was built in 1792 as the land again expanded the current “Old Lighthouse” was started in 1901 it stands 143 ft high and is open to visitors. The latest lighthouse was built another 1/2 miles further out into the English Channel it was opened in 1963 and is fully automatic In the late 1800′s the Southern Railway built a station to transport shingle extracted from the beach to use as ballast for their lines over the region.
You can still see signs of the old railway as a number of local cottages have been constucted from old carriages. Most of the houses here are owned and lived in by fishermen, their boats lie on the beach.
On the 16th July 1927, the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (RHDR) a narrow gauge railway was opened, the stop at Dungeness was opened 1928, and for a short while until it was opened the trains stopped at Pilot Halt which was demolished in 1968.
The railway was built by Captain J. E. P. Howey and Count Louis Zborowski to serve the local population and tourist trade, it stretches for nearly 14 miles from Hythe through Dymchurch , St Marys Bay ,its base at New Romney ,Romney Sands and then to the fishermens cottages and lighthouses at Dungeness . It is still a major tourist attraction and well worth a visit.
The Dungeness A and B power stations were built in the 1960′s and you can go to the visitor Centre which shows the plant and area, and even provides guided tours.
Dungeness has its own Nature Reserve which acts as a haven for rare birds and marsh dwellers.
