Many thanks JohnWalker, still here just exceptionally busy and keeping me away from the computer.
If you are all ready for it, the info on the fort below is taken from its official listing as being:
Remains of Portus Lemanis, or Stutfall Castle, which was partially excavated by C. Roach Smith in 1850 and Sir Victor Horsley in 1894. Today it consists of an irregular shaped fort with east, north and west walls surviving and was one of the Saxon Shore forts of the last quarter of the 3rd century. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and its remains are very fragmentary owing to numerous springs in the clay soil on which it was built. These caused landslips to occur with large portions of the main outer walling having either fallen, or been thrown out of their original positions, whilst the south wall has largely disappeared entirely. The remaining walling, constructed of typical Roman masonry with tile bonding courses varies between 3.7m and 4.5m in thickness and stands in places to a height of about 5.0m. Three bastions survive at the north, northwest and southeast corners whilst the sites of two more can be identified in the middle and at the south end of the southwest side. There is now no trace of gateways or posterns. Published excavations by Roach Smith located a second century altar, covered with salt water barnacles, reused in a gate platform dedicated by L. Aufidius Pantera, Commander of the British fleet c. AD 133 or soon after. This and tiles of the Classis Britannica suggest a naval base nearly a century before the construction of the fort. Later excavations by Barry Cunliffe between 1976 and 1978 failed to reveal an underlying Classis Britannica base but further reused masonry and an uninscribed altar and more tiles stamped by the Classis Britannica were found. It seems likely that the Classis Britannica base did not lie beneath the later Saxon-Shore fort, but the ruins were fairly close when Stutfall Castle was built. It is quite likely that the base has already disappeared because of the erosion along the coast. The excavation allowed tentative reconstructions of the east gate, which appears to have been of at least two storeys, and the fort plan. It is thought that the fort was built in the late third century and abandoned c 350 AD. Most of the circuit of the walls, of irregular polygonal plan, can be traced, but the greater part is fallen and large chunks of the walls and towers lie about. It is built of flint with the bonding courses and had semi-circular bastions. Substantial portions of the perimeter walls run along the NE and W boundaries. In places these have collapsed enbloc. Practically all the dressed stone has been robbed exposing core stonework. Some dressed stone however survives on west side. The springs have caused serious subsidence and and slipping of the Roman walls, giving a confusing impression, but originally the walls enclosed a semi-rectangular fort 10-11 acres in extent. They were 12-14 ft thick and 20ft high. Externally a number of semi-circular bastions projected from the wall. The main gate lay in the centre of the east wall; not much can be seen, but Victorian excavations showed it to be a simple opening flanked by two bastions. Two masonry buildings have been excavated inside, the principia, and a small bath suite. The fort was probably built in the 280s under Carausius, but judging from quantities of earlier material there must have been a naval base here in the 2nd century. Coin evidence suggests abandonment about 370, possibly because of the land-slipping. In 1943, Mrs E S G Robinson presented to the Haverfield Library Sir Victor Horsley's field notes of the 1893 excavation in the east part of the south ramparts, plus a report of what was found in four of the seven trenches dug. The scale plan, photographs, pottery, coins and metal objects were all missing and there was no account of work in 1894. Studfall Castle was visited by members of the Royal Archaeological Institute on 29th July 1896. Stutfall Castle seems to have occupied a broad point of land forming the north shore of a strait separated by a wide tract of marsh and sandbank from the mainland. This sea channel gradually disappeared to become part of Romney Marsh, but excavation has demonstrated that the shoreline was originally 1.8m below the present level of the marsh. The siting of the fort and its Classis Britannica predecessor, with the command of this narrow estuary, made good strategic sense enabling it to control all shipping entering the harbour, and to oversee the transport of the iron mined and extracted in the Weald. Air photographs in 1945-1952 showed the threat to the site with the Wealden clays slipping downhill. This resulted in buildings being displaced, and the fort-wall shifting. This has led to a suggestion that perhaps the fort was originally rectangular and it is the land movement that has caused its irregular shape. However, B. Philp believes that with the available evidence, Roach Smith's reconstruction of a pentagonal plan to the fort is the best suggestion. He believes that the movement may have not been as much as suggested, and the majority of shore-forts built at the end of the 3rd century, were in fact trapezoidal. At Lympne where the steep slope of the hill was a major consideration, a pentagonal plan is probably the most likely possibility.
I shall paste a GTP pic later today
