parish of "exceptional wealth", and the considerable enlargement of the church building during the Middle Ages indicates that the settlement had become a "thriving township", with "dozens of houses". In 1310 Archbishop Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury noted that the population of the whole parish in the time of his predecessor John Peckham (c. 1230–1292) had numbered more than 3,000. For this reason, and because the parish was also large geographically, he converted chapelries at Herne and, on the Isle of Thanet, St Nicholas-at-Wade and Shuart into parishes, though the church at Hoath remained a perpetual curacy belonging to Reculver parish until 1960. Records for the poll tax of 1377 show that there were then 364 individuals of 14 years and above, not including "honest beggars", in the reduced parish of Reculver, who paid a total of £6.1s.4d. (£6.07) towards the tax. Decline and loss to the sea The thriving medieval township depended partly on its position on a maritime trade route through the Wantsum Channel, already present in Anglo-Saxon times and exemplified by Reculver's membership of the Cinque Port of Sandwich later in the Middle Ages. The importance of the Wantsum Channel was such that, when the River Thames froze in 1269, trade between Sandwich and London had to be carried out overland. Historical records for the channel are sparse after 1269, perhaps "because the route was so well known as to be taken for granted [in the Middle Ages], the whole waterway from London to Sandwich being occasionally spoken of as the 'Thames'". But silting and inning had closed the channel to trading vessels sailing along it by about 1460 or soon after, and the first bridge was built over it at Sarre in 1485, since ferries could no longer operate reliably across it. Reculver was also diminished by coastal erosion. By 1540, when John Leland recorded a visit there, the coastline to the north had receded to within little more than a quarter of a mile (400 m) of the "Towne [which] at this tyme [was] but Village lyke". Soon afterwards, in 1576, William Lambarde described Reculver as "poore and simple". In 1588 there were 165 communicants – people taking part in services of holy communion at the church – and in 1640 there were 169, but a map of about 1630 shows that the church then stood only about from the shore. In January 1658 the local