The history of the martello towers during the last few years, forms an interesting footnote to Cobbett’s denunciations. Some, near Hythe, have been undermined and split in half by the sea, and others have been, at great labour and expense, demolished. Others yet have been let by the War Office at modest rentals to romantic people on the look out for something unconventional in the way of a seaside bungalow. Should any romantic reader of these pages desire to do the like, I have no doubt the War Office will be quite ready to let others of these forts that have never fought the foe. Indeed, now and again official advertisements may be seen, inviting tenders for renting some of them, for twelve months. The Department has by no means extravagant notions as to the value of them as “desirable residences,” and an offer of £4 or £5 is pretty sure to win acceptance. It is not an extravagant rental, but, on the other hand, there are obvious drawbacks from a residential point of view. It is not every one who would be content with a home that looks externally like a gigantic pork-pie and has the defects of possessing but three rooms, one on the ground-floor (originally intended for a powder-magazine) with no windows, and two above, dimly illuminated by loopholes in the walls. Indeed, in the winter months life in a martello tower must be almost as gloomy as in a prison. But summer, to be sure, brings compensations, for the interior is then apt to be delightfully cool, and the concreted roof, originally designed to hold a swivel-gun and other ordnance, forms an ideal platform for deck-chairs. Nor need this open-air life on the roof be at all exposed to the gaze of the public, for a four-foot parapet runs round, screening it from too great publicity. We shall, however, better judge what Romney Marsh is like by mounting to the high lands that overlook it; that ridge which is crested picturesquely by Lympne Church and Castle on the right, marking the ancient coast line in the times of the Romans. What is now the Marsh was then a shallow lagoon where the Roman vessels rode at anchor; and to this day the remains of the Roman seaport of _Portus Lemanis_, called “Studfall Castle,” strew the tumbled grassy slopes beneath Lympne Castle, in fragments of massive masonry. It is an excessively steep climb, past Botolph’s Bridge, up to Lympne; that “Lymme Hill, or Lyme,” of which Camden wrote. He tells us, truly enough, that this “was sumtyme a famose haven, and good for shyppes that might come to the foot of the hille. The place is cawled Shipway or Old Haven. Farther, at thys daie the lord of the V ports kepeth his principal court a lytil by est from Lymme hill.” The Court of Shepway, to which Camden thus alludes, was the chief legislative and executive body of the Cinque Ports. It made the laws governing that confederacy of ports, and pronounced decrees.