The area of Small Hythe was still on the coast in Roman times. At that time (1st to 3rd Century AD) there was already an important port from which timber and iron were supposedly shipped to the continent, and a small settlement, as evidenced by finds of Roman bricks and an earthen
figurine of
Mercury that were excavated there. (the rising land in the background) Small Hythe was within the medieval
hundred of
Tenterden, which does not appear to have existed at the time of the
Domesday Book. It is first mentioned in about 1300 and received a
charter in 1449 from
Henry VI. Small Hythe lay on a branch of the
River Rother. The settlement was made accessible to seagoing craft in the 1330s when the Knelle dam—an earthen bank at
Wittersham Levels in the lower Rother valley () constructed to deflect floodwater from the holdings of local landowner Geoffrey de Knelle—diverted the main course of the river around the north of
Oxney island. Large sea-going warships were built on the river banks from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, with associated ship-breaking for reuse of fittings and timber. The ready supply of timber from the
Weald made this isolated community one of the most important shipbuilding centres, other than the major ports, in the country. The town of Tenterden was given the status of a
Limb of the Cinque Ports, with its consequent relief from
taxation, in acknowledgement of providing royal warships built in Small Hythe. A storm of 1636 carried away the dam and the river returned to its former course. Small craft were still able to reach Small Hythe until gradual
silting put an end to this, early in the twentieth century. Small Hythe appears as "Smalide" in the legal dispute about land in Tenterden and Small Hythe in 1460, and as "Smallitt" in the eighteenth century. ==Notable residents==