Welcome to the Fifth Continent Landscape Partnership Scheme

In 2017, 17 local and national agency partners joined lead organisation Kent Wildlife Trust as the delivery board for this National Lottery Heritage Funded project on this unique coastal area on the South Kent Coast known as ‘The Fifth Continent’; thanks to the Ingoldsby Legends (1837) which recognised the importance of Romney Marsh as a fifth continent through the statement ‘The world, according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Romney Marsh’

The Fifth Continent Landscape Partnership Scheme has successfully delivered a broad range of exciting projects across Romney Marsh based around the three themes of Restore, Rediscover and Reclaim. Click on a theme title below to find out more including a list of projects that contribute to the theme.

  • Restore theme aimed to conserve or restore the built and natural features that make up the distinctive character of the Marsh.
  • Rediscover theme sought to provide opportunities for people to discover, explore and learn about the Romney Marsh landscape and heritage.
  • Reclaim theme aimed to help people participate in looking after and celebrating the cultural and natural heritage of Romney Marsh.

Communities were encouraged to appreciate more their surroundings and become more involved, whilst protecting and celebrating all that makes the Romney Marsh unique landscape so important and evocative.

This website and associated Facebook social media feed were dedicated to actively promoting and celebrating success in the ongoing delivery and participation in the Fifth Continent Scheme. This is demonstrated through the website and Facebook feed which provided regular updates on the delivery of individual projects, together with encouraging participation through our website Things To Do page. The  projects included:

  • enabling local people to get involved with exciting programmes of community engagement activities and archaeology, together with making short films.
  • delivering restoration and protection of rare habitats including ditches and vegetated shingle, plus working to protect the iconic heritage of the Marsh.
  • providing funding for a number of projects including the delivery of species monitoring and a training programme.

Now you can find out more about this 5 year programme, that not only had the challenges of a major project involving multiple strands, it also had to deal with the pandemic….Life on the Romney Marsh and the people that make it so special rose to the challenges and created a lasting legacy for future generations to benefit from

Take a look at our Theme tabs and open up our archive and downloads of who, what, where and when.

We hope you enjoy your exploration of our  website

The Fifth Continent Delivery Team

& Kent Wildlife Trust

Please click the About tab above for more information about the Fifth Continent area.