Old Romney, two miles inland from Romney the new, is so immemorially old that the days when the sea flowed to it, and the ships came to its quays, are altogether forgotten. Sheep graze in fertile pastures, and never a sign of the sea is evident. Yet there was a time when the waters flowed inland to Appledore and Tenterden, a matter of eight miles, and it is an historical fact that the Danish fleet sailed to Appledore in A.D. 893. The very road by which the marsh is crossed between New Romney and Appledore is a Roman causeway, or embankment, still known as the Rhee Wall, along whose sides the waters lapped.
Beyond Old Romney, in the midst of Walland Marsh, is Brookland, whose church is notable for its detached wooden tower, leaning to one side, painted or tarred black, and in the shape of three extinguishers, placed each upon the other. The windows are provided with wooden shutters as a protection against the winds that blow, unrestrained, across these levels. The ancient leaden font, one of the twenty-nine leaden fonts in England, is of the early part of the thirteenth century, and is decorated in relief with the signs of the zodiac, and with figures illustrating the labours of the months. It is a curious relic, and by far the most interesting of the twenty-nine. The inscriptions above each month are in Norman-French: “Janvier, Fevrier, Mars, Avril, Mai, Juin, Juillet, Avovt, Setenbre, Vitovvre, Novenbre, Desenbre.” January is represented by a two-faced Janus, seated at a table; February by a man sitting by a fire; March, a husbandman pruning a vine; April, a bare-headed figure, robed, and in either hand a blossoming branch; May, a sporting knight on horseback, carrying a hawk on his left wrist; June, a mower; July, hayraking; August, reaping; September, threshing; October, wine-pressing; November, a swineherd knocking down acorns, while a pig feeds on them; and December, a man with an axe, killing a pig.
Among the monuments in Brookland church is a table-tomb to John and Thomas Plomer, father and son, jurats of New Romney, and their family. One, we learn, was “Captain of ye selecte board, sometime burgis at ye parliament for ye same towne, who was one of the portes Barons in carrying ye canopie at the coronation of King James ye first of England.”