Strangers to the Marsh is the eleventh book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards

Monica Edwards

Monica Edwards was an English children's writer of the mid-twentieth century best known for her Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series of children's novels.-Early life:...

, published in 1957 by Collins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

. When Jim Decks has to pay for some valuable cakes which he destroyed in an accident, Tamzin and her friends come to his rescue. They attempt to raise funds by starting a local newspaper—The Westling News. Before long they have a ‘scoop’ of national significance when a pair of rare birds—hoopoes—nests in Cloudesley Castle on the Marsh. (Cloudesley Castle was the fictional name that the author gave to the real Camber Castle

Camber Castle

Camber Castle is one of Henry VIII's Device Forts, also known as Henrician Castles, built to protect the huge Rye anchorage .It is approximately 2 km south of Rye and 2 km northeast of Winchelsea....

)

Although Strangers to the Marsh was written after Operation Seabird

Operation Seabird

Operation Seabird is the tenth book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards, published in 1957 by Collins. Tamzin and Rissa discover to their horror that many seabirds in the area are being killed by oil pollution...

it was actually set before it, as the author's note at the beginning of this book makes clear:

AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although written some time afterwards,
this book is meant to come, in sequence
of time, just before Hidden in a Dream

Blurb from first edition

It all started off with the scuppering of the Emma. The Emma was not, as you might suppose, a fishing smack, but old Jim Deck's ancient and unroadworthy bicycle, on which he hung various seamanlike things such as an anchor and fenders and a lantern. Distracted by Tamzin's shout of greeting, Jim careered down Dunsford's main street into a baker's van; in no time at all he was resting on a bed of rich cakes, and when he was finally hauled to the surface the damage had been done, not only to the cakes which would have to paid for, but to old Jim himself Tamzin decided, quite arbitrarily according to her father the Vicar, that it was her fault and that therefore she should pay. Her friends rallied round, and a great idea was born. They would write, print, publish and sell a local newspaper—the Westling News—and pay the baker out of their profits. So began a most adventurous time for all of them, because in their search for news they discovered a Colorado beetle and then lost it, to Diccon's anguish; a motor-propelled invalid chair for old Jim which was the cause of several escapades; the astonishing fact that old Jim had a father, a man who reduced even Jim himself to comparative insignificance; and above all the arrival of a family of rare birds—hoopoes—at the castle. It was these beautiful birds which proved the innocent cause of a local sensation which rocked the district from end to end.

Subsequent editions

• Children’s Book Club - 1958
• New Portway (Chivers) - 1970
• John Goodchild - new edition (updated) - 1986
• Girls Gone By Publishers
  Girls Gone By Publishers
  Girls Gone By Publishers is a publishing company run by Clarissa Cridland and Ann Mackie-Hunter and is based in Bath, Somerset. They re-publish new editions of some of the most popular girls' fiction titles from the twentieth century.-Elinor Brent-Dyer:...
  
  reprint of original - 2007