Despite Betjeman’s strong aversion to Nikolaus Pevsner’s learned, methodical, emotionless approach to recording architecture, Piper was able to remain on good terms with the German émigré, who was also editor of the King Penguin series, for which Piper wrote and illustrated a gem of a book, Romney Marsh. The dust-jacket of Piper’s own light blue marbled paper is perhaps chosen to complement his quote of George Clinch standing at Dungeness in 1907:
‘The waves are crushed into white, boiling foam on the pebbly shore, the wind whistles in weird melancholy cadence across the expanse of marsh and water. The whole scene produces in the mind a rather uncomfortable impression of barrenness and desolation.’
The teenage Piper had cycled and camped in this region with a school friend in the summer of 1918 as well as revisiting in the late 1920s and early 1930s to sketch and paint. He was inspired by its abundance of lonely historic churches and its feeling of remoteness. His subsequent friendship with Paul Nash, who incorporated the sprawling marshlands and Martello Towers of this region into his art, strengthened Piper’s artistic attraction to the area. The 33 Piper illustrations and text have the feel of an artist’s sketchbook adapted to appear like a pocket-sized Shell Guide as he describes the history of the Marsh near the Cinque Port of Romney with its military canal and Martello Towers, smugglers’ tales, changing farming practices, particular types and colours of vegetation, and the other-world atmosphere enveloping the many old churches which he particularly focuses on. Equally there is a sense of Piper’s affinity with the landscape in the same way he had immersed himself in the Snowdonia range after the war. He captures the mood and feeling of the individualistic churches scattered and mouldering into the landscape as well as the open sweeping swathes of land which while looking forgotten and bleak often still have signs of recent incursions – pylons, poles and modernist concrete houses. This book was selected by the National Book League for their 1951 exhibition of British Book Design. The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust set up in 1982 approached Piper for support and he willingly made paintings of eight churches and ruins for them to sell. Piper also wrote a joint letter with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Lord Runcie) and Richard Ingrams to The t.mes s pointing out the Romney Churches uniqueness as ‘sentinels of the Marsh’. The trust aims to preserve and maintain the fourteen complete churches and four sets of ruins within the marshlands.
Hugh Fowler-Wright