Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was combined from 1267 with the office of Constable of Dover Castle. However, from 1708 Walmer Castle at Deal was to be preferred as the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The Lord Warden also holds the office of Admiral of the Cinque Ports with a maritime jurisdiction extending to the middle of the English Channel, from Redcliffe near Seaford, in Sussex to the shore underneath the Naze Tower, encompassing Brightlingsea in Essex, the only Cinque Port north of the Thames. In earlier centuries the northern limit was taken as the Shoe Beacon in Essex. The
Cinque Ports Folkestone, Deal, Tenterden, Margate and Ramsgate. Other places associated with the Cinque Ports and sometimes described as "non-corporate limbs" included Bekesbourne, Birchington, Brightlingsea, Fordwich, Pevensey, Reculver, Seaford, Stonor and Walmer. At one time there were 23 limbs. The continuing decline of the confederation of the Cinque Ports may be ascribed to a variety of different circumstances. While they survived the raids from the Danes and the French, the numerous destructive impact of plagues, and the politics of the 13th-century Plantagenets and the subsequent War of the Roses, natural causes such as the silting of harbours and the withdrawal of the