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THE KENTISH COAST




WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER


  =The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of
      Old.

  =The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.

  =The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.

  =The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.

  =The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.

  =The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.

  =The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

  =The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great Fenland
      Highway.

  =The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road=: Sport and History
      on an East Anglian Turnpike.

  =The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: The Ready Way to
      South Wales. Two Vols.

  =The Brighton Road=: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic
      Highway.

  =The Hastings Road= and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”

  =Cycle Rides Round London.=

  =A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of
      Reproduction.=

  =Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore.= Two Vols.

  =The Ingoldsby Country=: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby
      Legends.”

  =The Hardy Country=: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.

  =The Dorset Coast.=

  =The South Devon Coast.=

  =The Old Inns of England.= Two Vols.

  =Love in the Harbour=: a Longshore Comedy.

  =Rural Nooks Round London= (Middlesex and Surrey).

  =Haunted Houses=; Tales of the Supernatural.

  =The Manchester and Glasgow Road.= This way to Gretna Green. Two
      Vols.

  =The North Devon Coast.=

  =Half-Hours with the Highwaymen.= Two Vols.

  =The Autocar Road Book.=

  =The Somerset Coast.=

  =The Cornish Coast.= North.

  =The Cornish Coast.= South.

  =Thames Valley Villages=

  =The Shakespeare Country.=

  =The Sussex Coast.=

                                              [_In the Press._


[Illustration: DOVER CASTLE: THE WHITE CLIFFS OF ALBION.]




  THE
  KENTISH COAST


  BY
  CHARLES G. HARPER


  “_Kent, in the commentaries Cæsar writ,
  Is termed the civil’st place of all this isle:
  Sweet is the country, because full of riches;
  The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy._”

              KING HENRY THE SIXTH (Second Part).


  [Illustration]


  LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
  1914




  PRINTED AND BOUND BY
  HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
  LONDON AND AYLESBURY.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I
                                                                    PAGE
  DEPTFORD AND PETER THE GREAT                                         1


  CHAPTER II

  GREENWICH--THE ROYAL NAVAL HOSPITAL--THE “FUBBS YACHT”--THE
      GREENWICH WHITEBAIT DINNERS--WOOLWICH--THE “PRINCESS
      ALICE” DISASTER--LESNES ABBEY--ERITH--DARTFORD                  15


  CHAPTER III

  STONE--GREENHITHE--NORTHFLEET--HUGGENS’S COLLEGE--ROSHERVILLE--
      GRAVESEND--SHORNEMEAD--CLIFFE--COOLING--THE HUNDRED OF HOO--
      THE ISLE OF GRAIN--HOO ST. WERBURGH--UPNOR CASTLE--STROOD       31


  CHAPTER IV

  ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM--BROMPTON--GILLINGHAM--GRANGE--OTTERHAM
      QUAY--LOWER HALSTOW--IWADE                                      57


  CHAPTER V

  SHEPPEY                                                             67


  CHAPTER VI

  THE CAPTURE OF JAMES THE SECOND--FAVERSHAM                          88


  CHAPTER VII

  MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE--SITTINGBOURN--OLD INNS--MURSTON--
      LUDDENHAM                                                       94


  CHAPTER VIII

  GOODNESTONE--GRAVENEY--SEASALTER--WHITSTABLE AND THE OYSTER
      FISHERY                                                        103


  CHAPTER IX

  HERNE BAY--RECULVER--WANTSUM--SARRE                                116


  CHAPTER X

  THANET’S CORNFIELDS--MONKTON--MINSTER-IN-THANET--BIRCHINGTON--
      QUEX PARK--WESTGATE--DANDELION                                 130


  CHAPTER XI

  MARGATE                                                            144


  CHAPTER XII

  KINGSGATE--THE NORTH FORELAND--BROADSTAIRS--ST. PETER’S            156


  CHAPTER XIII

  RAMSGATE                                                           167


  CHAPTER XIV

  PEGWELL BAY--EBBSFLEET--THE LANDINGS OF HENGIST AND OF ST.
      AUGUSTINE--RICHBOROUGH                                         177


  CHAPTER XV

  SANDWICH                                                           188


  CHAPTER XVI

  WORTH--UPPER DEAL--DEAL--THE GOODWIN SANDS                         214


  CHAPTER XVII

  THE DOWNS AND THE DEAL BOATMEN                                     240


  CHAPTER XVIII

  WALMER CASTLE--KINGSDOWN--ST. MARGARET’S BAY                       256


  CHAPTER XIX

  DOVER--THE CASTLE AND ROMAN PHAROS--“QUEEN ELIZABETH’S
      POCKET-PISTOL”--THE WESTERN HEIGHTS                            270


  CHAPTER XX

  THE CHANNEL PASSAGE--THE NATIONAL HARBOUR AND ITS STRATEGIC
      PURPOSE--SWIMMING AND FLYING THE CHANNEL                       284


  CHAPTER XXI

  SHAKESPEARE’S CLIFF--SAMPHIRE--THE CHANNEL TUNNEL--COAL IN
      KENT--THE WARREN                                               298


  CHAPTER XXII

  FOLKESTONE--THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW--DICKENS AND
      “PAVILIONSTONE”--SANDGATE                                      308


  CHAPTER XXIII

  SHORNCLIFFE CAMP--THE ROYAL MILITARY CANAL--HYTHE--ROMNEY
      MARSH--THE MARTELLO TOWERS--THE “HOLY MAID OF KENT”            319


  CHAPTER XXIV

  NEW ROMNEY--SMUGGLING DAYS--BROOKLAND--FAIRFIELD--SMALLHYTHE       344


  CHAPTER XXV

  LYDD--DUNGENESS--CAMBER-ON-SEA                                     359


  INDEX                                                              371




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  Dover Castle: The White Cliffs of Albion                _Frontispiece_

                                                                    PAGE
  Deptford Green: St. Nicholas’ Church and Church-house                7

  Greenwich Hospital                                                  17

  The “Old Fubbs Yacht,” Greenwich                                    19

  Ingress Abbey                                                       33

  Tilbury Fort                                                        37

  Curious old Boat-cottage at Chalk                                   39

  Shornemead Battery                                                  41

  Cliffe Battery                                                      42

  Cooling Castle                                                      43

  The “Charter,” Cooling Castle                                       45

  Graves of the Comport Family, Cooling: “Like Chrysalids”            46

  Stoke                                                               49

  St. James Grain                                                     51

  Upnor Castle                                                        55

  The Medway: Rochester Castle and Cathedral                          61

  The Medway: Hoo Forts                                               63

  Upchurch                                                            65

  Lower Halstow                                                       67

  Minster-in-Sheppey                                                  73

  Tomb of Sir Robert de Shurland, Minster-in-Sheppey Church           76

  Harty Church: Faversham in the Distance                             83

  Late Fourteenth-Century Chest, of German origin, carved with
      representation of a Tournament, Harty Church                    85

  The Town Hall, Faversham                                            90

  Faversham                                                           92

  The Church, Milton Regis                                            95

  The Town Hall, Milton Regis                                         97

  Sign of the Adam and Eve, Milton-next-Sittingbourne                 99

  Luddenham                                                          101

  Whitstable: The Old Lighthouse and the Oyster Fleet                111

  Herne: The “Smuggler’s Look-out”                                   120

  Reculver                                                           123

  The Wantsum Ferry                                                  126

  St. Nicholas-at-Wade                                               128

  Minster-in-Thanet Church                                           133

  The Waterloo Tower, Quex Park                                      139

  Dandelion Gateway                                                  141

  From the Palimpsest Brass, Margate Church                          147

  Kingsgate                                                          157

  The North Foreland Lighthouse                                      158

  Broadstairs: York Gate                                             163

  Broadstairs                                                        164

  Thanet as an Island, showing the Wantsum. From an ancient map      185

  Fishergate, Sandwich                                               189

  The Town Hall, Sandwich                                            211

  Upper Deal                                                         215

  The Quaint Foreshore of Deal                                       221

  The Goodwin Sands: “A dangerous flat and fatal”                    236

  The East Goodwin Lightship                                         238

  Walmer Castle                                                      258

  Entrance to Walmer Castle                                          259

  Walmer Castle, from the Sea                                        262

  St. Margaret’s Bay                                                 263

  Westcliff                                                          268

  Dover Castle                                                       272

  Colton’s Tower, Dover Castle                                       273

  The Church of St. Mary-in-the-Castle, with the Roman Pharos,
      Dover                                                          275

  The National Harbour, Dover                                        287

  Shakespeare’s Cliff                                                298

  Shakespeare Cliff Colliery, and the Coast towards Folkestone       304

  The Stade, and Old Tackle-Boxes, Folkestone                        310

  Interior, Sandgate Castle                                          316

  Hythe                                                              321

  Romney Marsh: The Martello Towers and Military Canal, Moonlight    334

  Lympne                                                             331

  Lympne Castle and Church                                           333

  Bonnington Church                                                  342

  New Romney Church                                                  345

  Brookland Church                                                   349

  Fairfield Church                                                   352

  Smallhythe Toll-gate                                               354

  Smallhythe Church                                                  356

  Smallhythe                                                         357

  Lydd Church                                                        361

  Dungeness: Lighthouse and Railway Station                          366


[Illustration: THE KENTISH COAST: DEPTFORD TO FAVERSHAM]




[Illustration]




THE KENTISH COAST




CHAPTER I

DEPTFORD AND PETER THE GREAT


The seaboard of Kent, and indeed the south coast of England in general,
is no little-known margin of our shores. It is not in the least
unspotted from the world, or solitary. It lies too near London for
that, and began to be exploited more than a hundred and fifty years
ago, when seaside holidays were first invented. The coast of Kent,
socially speaking, touches both extremes. It is at once fashionable and
exclusive, and is the holiday haunt of the Cockney: a statement that
is not the paradox it at first sight appears to be, for the bracing
qualities of its sea-air have always attracted all classes. We all
ardently desire health, whether we are of those who romp on the sands
of Margate or Ramsgate and eat shrimps in the tea-gardens of Pegwell
Bay, or are numbered among those who are guests at the lordly Lord
Warden, the Granville, or the Cliftonville.

Where does the coast of Kent begin? It begins at Deptford, that crowded
London suburb which would doubtless be considerably astonished in
contemplating itself as a seaside town, and in fact does not do so.
Yet Deptford’s old naval history and ship-yard associations give it
a salt-water flavour, and so we must needs say that the coast begins
there. True, it is but the Thames whose murky waters lap the shore at
Deptford; but the Thames here is the great commercial “London River,”
as seamen call it, the port to which resorts a goodly proportion of the
world’s shipping; and sea-going vessels crowd the fairway at all hours
of day and night.

Past Greenwich, Woolwich, and Erith the Thames goes in its gradually
broadening course, and at length comes to Gravesend. Gravesend Reach
is, and has always been, by general consensus of opinion, the Sea-gate
of London, and therefore, without any manner of doubt, on the coast.

The length of the coast of Kent, reaching from Deptford, and tracking
round Sheppey and up the Medway estuary to Rochester, and in and
out of the queer places wherever the foreshore wends, I make to be
about one hundred and thirty-eight miles. It is--the whole of it--
extremely interesting, and in places grandly beautiful and in others
quietly pretty; and also along some other stretches, scenically (but
never historically) dull and drab. Below Gravesend, round the Isle of
Grain, and round Sheppey and the Swale to Whitstable and Herne Bay,
for instance, no one could perceive much of nobility actually in that
coast-line of London clay and of low, muddy, or shingly foreshores. But
where the chalk begins at Westgate, and the sea, ceasing from washing
the clay and receiving the contaminations of the Thames and Medway,
becomes more cleanly, the coast, grows by degrees more striking.

As for the history that lies in the landings and embarkations, all
along the coast of Kent, why, there was never such another coast as
these storied shores. The fame of them begins at Gravesend, to which
those foreigners who did not by any chance land at Dover generally
came in the dangerous old days of the road between Dover and London.
At Faversham a king who sought secretly to leave his kingdom was
detained; at Ebbsfleet landed the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa, and a
hundred and fifty-seven years later came to that same spot a Christian
missioner who came missionising very much against his own inclinations.
At Deal, 1970 years ago--a tolerably long stretch of time--a great
personage set the fashion in these numerous landings. I name Julius
Cæsar, the noblest Roman of them all, who, as far as history tells
us, was the first of any importance who ever burst into these unknown
seas. Great personages have been doing the like ever since. The reason
for this exceptional honour shown the Kentish coast, which has thus
from the earliest times been the Front Door of England, is quite
easily glimpsed on any sunny day anywhere between Deal and Folkestone,
in the gleaming coast of France, which reminds us that most of those
world-famous characters, in common with modern voyagers across the
Channel, disliked the sea, and crossed by the “shortest route.”

For the rest, Dover has been the scene of comings and goings
uncountable, and to attempt recounting them would be wearisome indeed.
Charles the Second, who had lively experiences in a hunted embarkation
from our shores, experienced a welcome change in 1660, being received
on his “glorious restoration” by his loyal subjects on Dover beach, and
in 1683 came ashore at what was at that time “Bartholomew’s Gate,” in
Thanet, which, in honour of that act of kingly condescension, has ever
since been called “Kingsgate.”

Kent, the _Cantium_, or country of the _Cantii_, mentioned by Julius
Cæsar B.C. 54, and by other ancient writers, is thought to take its
name from the peculiarity of its geographical position, jutting boldly
out (or, in other words, “canted out”) in an easterly direction, beyond
the estuary of the Thames. There is another view taken of the origin
of the word, a view which derives it from _caint_, the “open country,”
as distinguished from the woodland character of Sussex, the ancient
“Andredswald”; but, against this, it does not seem to be sufficiently
established that Kent ever was such an open country, while the evidence
of maps shows us that it does indeed project most markedly.

The Kentish Coast, then, begins little more than two and a half miles
below London Bridge, the county boundary between Surrey and Kent being
placed at Earl’s Sluice, on the Grand Surrey Canal, in Deptford, just
beyond the Surrey Commercial Docks. There, where the Royal Victualling
Yard fronts the busy Thames, midway between Limehouse Reach and
Greenwich Reach, begin the 138 miles of this strangely varied and
exceptionally historic coast-line.

Undoubtedly the noblest and most fitting introduction is to proceed
down river by steamer to Greenwich, for that way you perceive the
greatness of the Port of London, and the majesty of the commercial
and maritime interests of the capital; while to come “overland”--
thus to dignify the approach by mean streets through Bermondsey and
Rotherhithe--is an effect of squalor.

Deptford of to-day is an integral part of London. Not an ornamental
part; indeed, no. Rather an industrial and wage-earning place. One does
not “reside” at Deptford, and there are not a few who find it difficult
even to live. It is thus not easy to associate it with that “Depeford”
of which Chaucer writes in his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” in 1383: “Lo,
Depeford, it is half-way prime.” The deep ford whence it obtained its
name is--or rather was--on the Ravensbourne, or the Brome, as that
stream has sometimes been called, at the Broadway, on the Dover Road;
but the many changes that have taken place have of necessity abolished
any possible likeness to the passage that existed in Chaucer’s day. In
any case, the Deptford around the Broadway, the present bridge over the
Ravensbourne, and the road on to Blackheath is not the real intimate
Deptford. That is only to be found on the river side of Evelyn Street,
and in the neighbourhood of Creek Road, where the Ravensbourne broadens
out into Deptford Creek. _Here_ is the real Deptford; more especially
along the winding old street oddly--and with a curiously shipboard
suggestion--named “Stowage,” and so to the old original church of
Deptford, dedicated, as it should be in a waterside church, to St.
Nicholas, the sailor’s patron.

From the church, Deptford Green leads to the waterside, and adjoining
is “Hughes’ Fields.” Pleasantly rural although these names sound,
candour compels the admission that they are, in fact, streets, with no
suggestion of grass or meadows about them. The church of St. Nicholas
dates from about 1697, and is a red-brick building in the curious taste
of that time; retaining, however, its old stone fifteenth-century
tower. Flourishing plane-trees render the churchyard in summer not
unpleasing, but the stranger is apt to see with a shudder the grisly
stone gate-piers, surmounted by great sculptured skulls decoratively
laurelled, as though Death were indeed the conqueror and the hereafter
merely a vain thought. You might travel far, and yet find nothing so
truly pagan.

[Illustration: DEPTFORD GREEN: ST. NICHOLAS’ CHURCH AND CHURCH-HOUSE.]

Yet in this church is gathered much of Deptford’s olden story, and in
it are the memorials of captains and constructors of the Navy in times
when Deptford was much more of a dockyard and seaport than a stirring
quarter of London: monuments dating from before the days of Charles
the Second and Pepys. Here you shall find that of Peter Pett, master
shipwright in the King’s yard, who died in 1652. The Latin epitaph upon
this master craftsman quaintly describes him as “a thoroughly just man,
and the Noah of his generation.” It further goes on to say that “he
walked with God and brought to light an invention even greater than
that recorded of his prototype (for it was an ark by which our mastery
of the sea and our rights were saved from shipwreck). He was called
away from the tempests of this world, God being his pilot, and his
soul resting in the bosom of his Saviour as in an ark of glory.” This
seventeenth-century Noah and inventive saviour of his country was the
designer of the new frigate type of ship, the Dreadnought of its day.

Here also is the monument of Captain George Shelvocke, who thrice
circumnavigated the globe, and died in 1742. The north side of the
church facing Deptford Green, which as already remarked is not
any longer a green, and cannot have been for some two hundred
years or more, forms a striking picture, for a group of red-brick
eighteenth-century buildings, built on to it, is obviously associated
with the church itself, although of absolutely domestic character.

The great days of Deptford began in the reign of Henry the Eighth,
with the rise of the Royal Navy. It had been described as “a mean
fishing village” until the “King’s Yard,” as the dockyard was named,
was established in 1513--the first of our naval dockyards. There the
earliest ships of the Navy took the water; vessels with the strange,
and long since impossible, names of _Jesus_, _Holy Ghost_, _John
Baptist_, _Great Nicholas_, and the like: sacred names whose use in
such a connection would in our own days offend the ear with a sense of
blasphemy. The naming of ships in that manner went out of fashion with
the Reformation, and thereafter no English _Holy Trinity_ set forth to
deal out death and destruction upon the high seas. It was left to the
Spaniards to couple holiness with conflict and slaughter, and for such
awful names as _Madre de Dios_, _Sanctissima Trinidad_, and _Espiritu
Sancto_ to be associated with warfare.

The breach with Rome brought an entirely new order of names into the
Royal Navy of England, of which that of the _Mary Rose_ was for a time
typical. But the domestic prettiness of love in a bower pictured by
such as this presently gave place to others, of the robustious, defiant
kind, such as the _Revenge_. It is true that there was even another
order, of which Sir Richard Hawkins’s _Repentance_ was representative.
It marked the full swing of the religious feelings of Englishmen from
the idolatries of Rome to that sinners’ sense of abasement under
conviction of sin which was a feature of Protestantism and the Puritan
wave of thought.

It was in the year of the Armada that the _Repentance_ took the water
at Deptford. One would dearly like to know exactly why Hawkins gave
his ship that name. Was he wrestling with the spirit, or had he in his
mind some conceit of bringing repentance home to the Spaniards? The
Elizabethan age was an age of ingenious conceits, and this may well
have been one of them. But the name did not commend itself to Elizabeth
when she was rowed from her palace of Greenwich to see the new ship,
lying off Deptford beautiful in paint and gilding, and she renamed it
the _Dainty_. Perhaps the great Queen considered _Repentance_ to be a
singularly ill-chosen name for a ship about to sail on a filibustering,
piratical expedition. It is curious to consider that the expedition
was a disastrous failure, and that a cynic dispensation of affairs
thus mocked the original choice of a name; just as it did that of Sir
Richard Grenville’s _Revenge_, three years later, when the fight went
against the English, and Grenville was killed and the Spaniards had
their own revenge for much.

Seven years before her visit to Sir Richard Hawkins’s ship, Elizabeth
had made a notable journey to Deptford, when she went aboard Francis
Drake’s _Golden Hind_, in which he had returned from circumnavigating
the world, dined there, and knighted him after dinner.

Of all those ancient days and brave doings nothing remains. The
dockyard, although from time to time enlarged, and actually in
existence until 1869, is now but a memory, and the site of it is
occupied by the Foreign Cattle Market. It was the smallest of all the
dockyards, only thirty acres in extent; but it was the introduction of
ironclad ships, and the greater depth of water required that led to its
end, after a temporary closing between 1810 and 1844. The last vessel
launched was H.M.S. _Druid_, in 1869.

When the average person thinks of Deptford, historically, it is not to
Queen Elizabeth’s visits his mind reverts, nor even to Mr. Secretary
to the Admiralty Pepys, but rather to John Evelyn, to Sayes Court, and
Peter the Great. John Evelyn, later of Wotton, settled at Deptford in
1651, at the mansion of Sayes Court, which had been originally the
manor-house of West Greenwich. Here he made gardens and planted trees,
the chief delight of his life. “I planted all the out-limites of the
gardens and long walks with holly,” he says, in March 1683.

He was extremely proud of his holly-hedges:

“Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of
the kind than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in
length, nine feet high and five in diameter, at any time of the year
glittering with its armed and varnished leaves? The taller standards
at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral: it mocks the
rudest assaults of the weather, beasts, or hedge-breakers--_Et ilium
nemo impune lacessit._”

No one, he thought, could insult a holly-hedge with impunity.

In 1665 he found Deptford a very desirable place of retreat from the
Great Plague of London. Later he let Sayes Court to Admiral Benbow, who
in January 1698 sublet it for three months to the “Czar of Muscovy,”
Peter the Great, who was as earnest then in planning a navy for Russia
as the German Emperor of our own times in building a fleet for Germany.
But the Czar himself worked as a shipwright in the dockyard and filled
Sayes Court with a semi-savage household. His reputed chief amusement,
that of continually wheeling a wheelbarrow through Evelyn’s cherished
hedges, is perhaps the most vivid item of information about Peter the
Great in the average Englishman’s mind: something of an injustice to
the memory of that constructive autocrat, whose greatness was not built
upon such eccentricities.

The generally received account of the Czar’s way with the hedges is
that he trundled wheelbarrows through them; but it would appear that he
was seated in the barrow, and that some one else did the wheeling.

Three months of “his Zarrish Majestie” and suite sufficed to very
nearly wreck Sayes Court and its gardens. Benbow and Evelyn claimed
compensation from the Treasury for the damage, and the Treasury,
considering that the Czar was the guest of William the Third in this
country, admitted the liability and deputed Sir Christopher Wren to
make a return. The document is still in existence. Among other items of
dilapidations by that riotous tartaric company are:

                                               £  _s._  _d._
  New floore to a Bogg House                   0   10    0
  300 Squares in the Windows                   0   15    0
  All the floores dammag’d by Grease & Inck    2    0    0
  For 3 wheelbarrows broke & Lost              1    0    0

The total amount awarded by Treasury warrant of June 21st, 1698, was
£350 9_s._ 6_d._, of which £162 7_s._ went to Evelyn.

Sayes Court was almost wholly demolished in 1728, and the remainder
converted into a workhouse. A plot of ground of fourteen acres, a
portion of the old gardens, was secured in 1877 by Mr. W. J. Evelyn
of Wotton, and converted into a public recreation ground. The Evelyns
still own considerable property here, and although Court and gardens
be gone, the historic sense is strong, and Evelyn Street, Czar Street,
and Sayes Court Street, neighbour thoroughfares named after the Armada,
Blake, and Wellington, and curiously contrast with the unimaginative
“Mary Anne Buildings.” It is, however, only right to say that the
streets that remind one of those historic people and that old mansion
are as squalid as the buildings that honour Mary Anne.

Across the bridge that spans Deptford Creek, amid the surroundings
of canals and wharves, you come into Greenwich. The Frenchman of the
story illustrating the vagaries of English pronunciation, uncertain
whether he wanted “Greenwich or Woolwich, he didn’t know which,”
and pronouncing the place and names as spelled, was to be excused:
how could he know it was “Grinnidge” and “Woolidge”? And how many
Englishmen can speak the name of Rennes properly after the French use?




CHAPTER II

  GREENWICH--THE ROYAL NAVAL HOSPITAL--THE “FUBBS YACHT”--THE
      GREENWICH WHITEBAIT DINNERS--WOOLWICH--THE “PRINCESS ALICE”
      DISASTER--LESNES ABBEY--ERITH--DARTFORD


To fully appreciate the majestic appearance of Greenwich, you must
view it from the river. Indeed, none of these waterside places from
Deptford all the way to Gravesend, show to advantage on shore. Their
historic associations and original scenic beauties are too overwhelmed
with recent squalid developments. But from the busy Thames, Greenwich
has a grandeur that is not easily to be expressed. This is due, of
course, chiefly to the architectural interest of Greenwich Hospital,
whose stately water-front is in part the work of Sir Christopher Wren.
It began as a Royal Palace, arising on the site of the ancient palace
of Placentia built here by Henry the Sixth, who also enclosed the park.
In that vanished palace Henry the Eighth was born, and there died
Edward the Sixth. Queen Mary in 1516, and Elizabeth in 1533 were born
at Placentia, and from its terrace Elizabeth watched the sails of her
adventurous seamen setting forth to realms that Cæsar never knew. When
Charles the Second found himself firmly established, he began to build
himself a new and gorgeous palace on the site of Placentia, which had
suffered much in the time of Cromwell. The beginnings of it alarmed
Pepys, who was afraid it would cost a very great deal of money; but it
was never finished as a royal residence, and was incomplete in 1692
when Queen Mary selected it as a home for wounded sailors returned
from the battle of La Hogue. She died in 1694, and William the Third
continued his wife’s scheme. The buildings were completed and opened as
a hospital in 1705.

I do not think there was ever a Greenwich Pensioner who liked living
in Greenwich Hospital. That they ever reasoned out all the causes of
their dissatisfaction is not to be supposed, but it must be quite
obvious that residence amid these stately colonnades of Wren’s design,
and in these monumental buildings of such prodigious scale, was not a
little like living in a mausoleum. Then there was the feeling of being
a mere part of a system and subject to a certain degree of control
which, together with an embarrassing public curiosity, must have made
burdensome the life of any Greenwich Pensioner of independent mind.
They are nowadays much happier in living with friends and relations;
and probably suffer less from rheumatism than they did amid these
draughty waterside colonnades, pleasant enough in summer, but where
the bitter blasts of winter can be really murderous. The views of
an old Greenwich Pensioner on Wren’s stately architecture would be
interesting, but probably not at all flattering to the memory of that
great master. They would not be worth listening to on the score of
ideas about architectural style, but as criticisms of the Hospital as a
dwelling-house they would be very much to the point.

[Illustration: GREENWICH HOSPITAL.]

In course of time, somewhere about 1870, the Greenwich Pensioners
plucked up courage sufficient to express their dislike of the place;
and at last prevailed upon those Pharaohs, the Governors of the
institution, to let them go from the House of Bondage and Draughts, so
to speak, and to betake themselves and their pensions wheresoever it
pleased them to live.

The Royal Naval College now partly occupies these great ranges of
buildings; and other portions, are, of course, well known as a museum,
in which the Nelson relics and a curious collection of ship-models are
to be seen.

There are, in one way and another, a good many recollections of Charles
the Second at Greenwich. One of them is found in the name of the
“Old Fubbs Yacht” inn, which stands in Brewhouse Lane, hard by the
“Ship.” “The Fubbs Yacht” is nowadays more in the nature of an obscure
public-house than an inn, but the back of it looks upon the river, and
passengers by steamer to and from Greenwich Pier may easily see the
odd and not beautiful name. No one, however, is in the least likely to
associate it with Charles the Second; but the sign derives directly
from his royal yacht, _Fubbs_, which succeeded his first yacht,
the _Cleveland_, just as his favourite, the Duchess of Cleveland,
was succeeded by Louise de Kérouaille, whom he created Duchess of
Portsmouth, and whom he nicknamed “Fubbs” because of her “plump and
pleasing person.” Singularly enough, these are exactly the words in
which the vicar describes Mrs. Partlet, the pew-opener, in the comic
opera, _The Sorcerer_.

[Illustration: THE “OLD FUBBS YACHT” GREENWICH.]

But you will hear nothing of this history at the inn itself, where the
vague idea prevails that “Old Fubb” was a sportsman, who, at some time
unspecified, sailed racing yachts. The situation of the house is now of
the grimiest, with a busy coal-wharf on either side, but it is sung by
a modern poet--not Tennyson, nor Alfred Austin, nor Kipling, but by
one J. G. Hamer, who writes thus, in the advertising way:

   “There’s an ancient house near the subway,
      ‘Fubb’s Yacht,’ kept by William Pring,
    In the old royal borough of Greenwich,
      Where the bells of St. Alphage ring.

   “Do you want a good sixpenny dinner,
      From twelve o’clock till two,
    You’ll get what you want at the ‘Old Fubb’s Yacht,’
      From steak-pie to Irish stew.

   “A jolly good tea for fourpence,
      You can have at this well-known spot,
    And enjoy yourself by the silvery Thames,
      At the cosy and smart ‘Fubb’s Yacht.’”

Together with much more to the same effect. I fear no contradiction
when I say that Tennyson never wrote anything like this.

Beyond the stately Hospital, along a humble waterside street where
the riverside “Yacht” and “Three Crowns” inns hang out their signs,
the inquisitive stranger will find the Hospital of the Holy Trinity,
sometimes called Norfolk College, an alms-house for a number of old
men, founded together with another at Clun in Shropshire, and one
for women at Castle Rising in Norfolk, by Henry Howard, Earl of
Northampton, in 1814. It is a quaint, white-painted group of buildings,
enclosing a little cobble-stoned courtyard with a central garden and a
fine large lawn at the back. In the chapel, otherwise uninteresting,
is the monument of the founder; removed in 1696, together with his
body, from the then ruined and roofless church of St. Mary at Dover
Castle, where he had been Constable. His life-sized, white marble
kneeling figure, with the Garter on his left leg, looks stately and
dignified in the chancel. It is indeed among the best works of that
notable sculptor, Nicholas Stone. Other portions of the monument, in
fragments at the west end of the building, show signs of having at
some time been long exposed to the weather. The figures are rather
speculative, and may be either a galaxy of Virtues and Graces, or wife
and children.

Trinity Hospital is overhung and pitifully dwarfed by the great
electric power-house of the London County Council’s electric tramways,
whose chimneys rise to a height of nearly 300 feet. They are typical of
the great change that has come over Greenwich in modern times, tending
towards degrading it to a mere indistinguishable part of London.
Fortunately, it possesses too many beautiful natural features to become
ever quite that.

But no longer is Greenwich dignified by the ministerial whitebait
dinners that were once held at the “Ship.” These once famous
entertainments that generally marked the close of the parliamentary
summer session originated in a casual way, about 1798, when the
commissioners of Dagenham Breach invited Pitt to be a guest at their
annual fish dinner at Dagenham. The occasion was successful enough
to be repeated, and the scene was eventually changed to a tavern,
sometimes at Blackwall and sometimes at Greenwich. By this time the
annual feast had developed into a Tory ministerial event, and proved
so useful in the strengthening of party ties that the Whigs, when in
office, adopted the custom.

The Greenwich ministerial whitebait dinners, held either at the “Ship,”
the “Crown and Sceptre,” or the “Trafalgar,” were formerly accompanied
by something of what, in less exalted circles, we should style the
showy “beanfeast” element; for the Royal and Admiralty barges, gay
with bunting, conveyed the guests to the scene of jollity, and back.
Only the concertinas were lacking. The function was first broken
during the Gladstonian administration of 1868–74. In that last year,
with the triumph of the Conservatives, Disraeli revived it, but the
excursion was made by steamer instead of by barge. And so it continued,
through the next Liberal term of office, until 1883, when it was again
discontinued; to be revived on only one occasion since, in 1894, during
the short-lived administration of Lord Rosebery.

Not only Ministers of the Crown resorted to Greenwich for whitebait
dinners: they were long popular with Londoners in general; but now
that the swiftest of communication with London is obtainable, this
most easily perishable of fish is just as readily to be had there, and
Greenwich has suffered in consequence. Whitebait, supposed by some to
be a distinct species of fish, and declared by others to be merely the
small fry of herring, are caught between Blackwall and Greenwich, said
to be the only waters in which they are found.

All the way from Greenwich to Woolwich, a matter of three miles, run
the electric trams; the river going in a bold loop almost due north,
along Blackwall Reach. A fine, broad, new road runs across the dreary
flats to the Blackwall Tunnel; and all along these once solitary levels
great modern factories are springing up. The explorer will not get much
joy of going that way; nor indeed will he find much by going ahead into
Woolwich, for the mean things that fringe about the skirts of a great
city are abundantly evident.

Woolwich looks imposing from the river, with its crowded houses backed
by the wooded heights of Charlton and Shooter’s Hill, but it is
disappointing on close acquaintance. Its streets, of the narrowest,
described to the present writer by a contemptuous attendant at the
Free Ferry as “not wide enough to wheel a bassinette,” are old without
being either ancient or picturesque, and although they own such
attractive names as “Nile” and “Nelson” Streets, “Bellwater Gate,”
and “Market Hill,” are grim and repellent. The parish church, in
midst of these unlovely surroundings, is exactly in keeping: a grim,
eighteenth-century affair of dull stock brick, like a factory. Many of
the crowded tombstones around it were removed in 1894. Among them was
one to a certain Emmanuel Skipper, who died in 1842, whose epitaph
concluded:

   “As I am now, so will you be,
    Therefore, prepare to follow me.”

To which some one, apparently a stone-worker engaged in the churchyard,
added in very neat lettering:

   “To follow you I’m not intent,
    Till first I know which way you went.”

North Woolwich, whose name will be found by the diligent student of
maps, on the opposite shore, is not, as might reasonably be supposed
from its situation, in Essex, but is a portion of the county of Kent.
There are, of course, many instances throughout England of detached
portions of shires and counties islanded in others, but perhaps none
so oddly arbitrary as this, where a broad river separates the two
portions. Rarely ever do we find an altogether satisfactory explanation
of these peculiarities. In the present instance it is held to be owing
to the ancient local manorial possessions of Count Haimo, Sheriff of
Kent in the reign of William the Conqueror, lying on either side of the
Thames, and that, therefore, the smaller portion of his holding was
included in that county in which his greater interests lay. It is an
ingenious, if not altogether convincing theory.

Woolwich is associated with one of the most terrible shipwrecks of
modern times. A good many years have passed since the wreck of the
pleasure-steamer _Princess Alice_ thrilled London, but there are
many yet living who remember the occasion. The _Princess Alice_
plied frequently in the summer between London and Gravesend, and was
generally crowded. She was exceptionally well filled on that fatal day,
September 3rd, 1878. More than eight hundred people were aboard. London
trippers are proverbially jolly, and those who in those days made
holiday at Gravesend and Rosherville were folk of exuberant spirits.
Music and dancing occupied the attention of the holiday folk on the
return voyage, and all went well until after passing Gallions Reach and
rounding Tripcock’s Tree Point. Night had fallen upon the broad and
busy river, and coming swiftly down-stream appeared the lights of a
large screw-steamer, the _Bywell Castle_ collier. The captains of both
vessels were taken by surprise, and both lost their presence of mind,
with the result that the _Bywell Castle_ struck the _Princess Alice_
immediately forward of her engine-room, and cut her in two. In less
than four minutes the _Princess Alice_ had sunk, and 670 persons were
drowned. Some few, with the exercise of much agility, jumped aboard
the collier at the moment of the collision, but many were women and
children, and many more were in the saloon, and were caught there, as
in a trap.

It was finally decided in litigation that the _Princess Alice_ was
alone to blame for the disaster. Some of the drowned were buried in
Woolwich Cemetery, where a monument stands, erected by a “national
sixpenny subscription” contributed by over 23,000 subscribers. Around
it are long lines of small stones, marking where the dead lie. The
inscription on the monument gives figures considerably at variance from
those given in books of reference. It states: “It was computed that
seven hundred men, women, and children were on board. Of these about
550 were drowned. One hundred and twenty were buried near this place.”

This melancholy spot is situated on the one-time pleasant hill-side
above Plumstead, between Woolwich and Abbey Wood; close to where Bostal
Woods still look down from their craggy heights upon the wide-spreading
marshes of Plumstead and Erith. This was once an exceedingly delightful
escarpment, densely clothed with noble woods and vigorous undergrowth,
stretching away to Erith, but the suburban expansion of London is
spoiling it. Cemeteries--the abodes of the dead--and little mean
streets of houses, scar the once rustic hill-sides, and along the road
that goes to Erith, down in the levels, the electric trams run swiftly.
But the place-names are still fragrant: Abbey Wood, Picardy, Belmont,
and Belvedere; and indeed the great Abbey Wood is still very much more
than a name.

Here is Lesnes Abbey Farm, whose 260 acres comprises 200 acres of
woodland. The lands, now and for long past the property of Christ’s
College, are of much romantic and antiquarian interest, for here
was situated the Abbey of Westwood, or Lesnes, founded in 1178 for
Augustinian Canons by Richard de Lucy, Lord Chief Justiciar of England,
and at one time protector of the realm. The founder died within a year,
and was buried in his abbey church. For 347 years the Abbey of Lesnes
continued in existence, and was then suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey,
in 1525, and its revenues seized for the purposes of his educational
endowments. The Abbey ruins and lands passed in succession to a number
of owners.

So long ago as 1752 the buildings had become a mere heap of rubbish,
with little remaining above ground, and that greatly overgrown
with trees. Excavations were then made and numerous monuments were
discovered, but they appear to have been all covered up again; and not
until 1910 was the site again explored. Work was then undertaken by
the Woolwich Antiquarian Society, and some highly interesting remains
have been unearthed. There, close by the modern farmhouse, deep down
in pits dug in the accumulated soil, you see the bases of pillars of
the Lady Chapel and the Chapter House, with floors of encaustic tiles;
and there, too, are five Purbeck or Bethersden marble coffin-lids
of the abbots and brethren of this vanished Abbey. One, bearing a
shepherd’s crook, is that of Abbot Elyas, while another, on which
the word “medicina” may be clearly traced, is obviously that of a
brother who acted as doctor. A museum of relics has been established
in a room of the farmhouse. Chief among these was the life-size,
cross-legged effigy of a knight in chain-mail, supposed to represent
one of the De Lucy family, about 1301; the shield on his arm bearing
the “flower-de-luce.” The colours and gilding are still perfect. This
interesting relic has now been removed to the South Kensington Museum.

The name of Belvedere is curiously un-English, but the village is
sufficiently British, with a very ordinary “Belvedere” railway station.
The origin of the place takes us back to early in the eighteenth
century, when a mansion of that name was built on the wooded hill-top,
in a pleasant park whence the estuary of the Thames and its crowded
shipping could be seen. Hence “Belvedere,” a word deriving from the
Italian, _bello vedere_, a pleasant view. Look-out towers commanding
fine prospects, and known as “belvederes,” or sometimes as “follies,”
are familiar objects all over the country, in ancestral parks. This
mansion of Belvedere was rebuilt in a “classic” style, in red brick,
about 1764, by Lord Eardley. A still wider view is obtained from a
prospect-tower in the grounds. The park was greatly cut up for building
purposes in 1859, and the village of Belvedere then sprang up. The
mansion itself was purchased for £12,000 and opened in 1867 as a home
for old sailors: the Royal Alfred Institution for Aged Merchant Seamen.

Any expectation of beauty in the village, or wretched forlorn
settlement, of Belvedere that fringes the road to Erith would be doomed
to disappointment, and Erith, which succeeds it, is simply beastly:
there is no other fitting word for the place nowadays. “Aer-hythe,”
whence the place-name is said to derive, is considered to mean the “old
port,” and a picturesquely dilapidated old place it remained until
recent years, with a quaintly ramshackle old wooden jetty projecting
into the Thames, and a curious wood-and-glass house at the head of it.
Coal was leisurely landed here, in a way that was, by comparison with
the present methods, altogether amateurish. Nowadays the street of
Erith is mean and squalid, and filthy coal-yards and busy power-houses,
together with a network of railway-lines, occupy the shore. Modern
industrial conditions have rendered Erith a place eminently desirable
to leave unvisited. Nor do the marshes and low-lying fields beyond it,
towards the mouth of the river Darent, reward the explorer, whose only
course is now to turn inland and so come, past the hamlet of Perry
Street, through Crayford and along the Dover Road, into Dartford town.

Dartford does not greatly concern us here, because, for one thing,
it is not upon the coast, and, for another, it belongs to quite a
different subject, the DOVER ROAD; and in a book on that highway I have
described the town at some length.

It is a matter of some two miles from the town, more or less beside
the river Darent, across the low-lying and sometimes marshy meadows,
to the Thames-side. You pass the scattered hamlet of Joyce’s Green
and evidences of gunpowder works; and, nearing the Thames, there opens
before you a view of Long Reach, with the smallpox hospital-ships, and
on the Essex shore the very striking picture of Purfleet, a busy little
place, nestling at the foot of its bold, chalky hill. A place very
little, yet very busy and grimy when you come closely into touch with
it, is “Portflete”--thus to style it by its older name.




CHAPTER III

  STONE--GREENHITHE--NORTHFLEET--HUGGENS’S COLLEGE--ROSHERVILLE--
      GRAVESEND--SHORNEMEAD--CLIFFE--COOLING--THE HUNDRED OF HOO--
      THE ISLE OF GRAIN--HOO ST. WERBURGH--UPNOR CASTLE--STROOD


Rising steeply out of Dartford, we come by the Dover Road, the ancient
Watling Street, up to the lofty plateau of Dartford Brent; here
taking the left-hand fork where the road branches. To the right goes
the Watling Street, the Roman road, our left-hand route conducting
gradually past Stone to the waterside at Greenhithe. Industrial England
is prominent on the way, greatly to the disadvantage of the older
England of romance. The thoughtful man asks himself, on passing the
huge City of London Lunatic Asylum at Stone, and coming into a region
of chalk-pits and cement-works, whither we are tending.

Here, where the hill-sides are being cut away for sake of the chalk,
and where lofty chimneys send forth clouds of smoke, stands the lovely
Early English church of Stone, built, it is thought, by the designers
and craftsmen who created Westminster Abbey. The clustered shafts of
the nave-arcade, and the general decoration of the interior, bear a
marked resemblance. The exceptional elaboration of this parish church
is due to the offerings of pilgrims on their way to and from the shrine
of St. William of Perth at Rochester. The church stood beside the
road, and thus came in for the pilgrims’ alms. The modern pilgrim will
only note that this church, begun on this beautiful and costly scale,
was completed on a minor note. This is due to a falling-off of those
wayfarers’ gifts.

Greenhithe sits beside the river, in a queer little byway. From it
sailed away into the northern ice and an obscure death, Sir John
Franklin and his crews of the Arctic expedition, on board the _Erebus_
and _Terror_, 1845. Many an one must, since then, have reflected upon
the peculiarly ominous names of those ships.

Greenhithe is just a quaint, waterside street of houses running
parallel with the Thames, with shops of a kind which give you the
impression that they are kept by people who never expect to sell
anything, and that they, in fact, never _do_ sell anything; that
they would resent the very suggestion of a sale, and are a kind of
shop-keeping anchorites, who keep shop in fulfilment of vows to deny
purchasers the satisfaction of making purchases. Though, I honestly
declare, I have never seen any article in Greenhithe shop-windows in
the least desirable by any reasonable person. Almost the oldest house
in this queerest of queer streets is one which bears the initials and
date:

   E.
  I. M
  1693

I believe it must have been only a little later than this period when
some of the goods exposed to view in these windows were added to stock.

[Illustration: INGRESS ABBEY.]

In the broad reach off Greenhithe and Northfleet are anchored the
training-ships _Arethusa_, _Warspite_, and _Worcester_; and at the
eastward end of this street, which leads to nowhere in particular,
you come suddenly upon the handsome mansion of Ingress Abbey, built
about 1834 by Alderman Harmer, then proprietor of the _Weekly
Dispatch_. It was built from the stones of old London Bridge, which
had been pulled down two years earlier. Sweetly pretty, almost
noble, must the Alderman’s lordly mansion have looked, in its lovely
waterside park, rich in noble trees. So, indeed, it does even yet,
although the house has been long empty, and although it and the park
are about to be abolished for the building of a huge wall-paper
manufactory. The entire neighbourhood, in fact, is being thoroughly
commercialised, and rendered a fuming, striving horror of machinery
and belching factory-chimneys. Enterprising people have even plans
for factory-building on that projecting spit of desolation between
Greenhithe and Northfleet, known as Swanscombe marshes; while as for
Northfleet, that old-time village has become a sprawling place of much
squalor.

The chief feature of the long street is the rather striking group
formed by the dwellings and the chapel of Huggens’s College, in
grounds secluded behind a lofty wall. In the years 1844–7 the amiable
John Huggens, a city merchant, founded and endowed this college, as
almshouses for the benefit of gentlemen reduced to poor circumstances;
and here forty of these collegians, with their wives and one woman
relative, reside and enjoy an annuity of £52 apiece, and live, like all
pensioners, to the most preposterous and incredible ages, much to the
disgust of those in the waiting list. Over the archway leading into the
grounds is a statue of the admirable Huggens, seated and habited in a
tightly buttoned-up frock-coat. He seems to be seeking inspiration in
the skies, and holds a roll of papers in his right hand, while the left
appears to be groping in something that resembles a coal-scuttle. The
street at this corner is quaintly named--in allusion to Huggens, no
doubt--“Samaritan Grove.”

Here we are again on the DOVER ROAD, with modern developments of
electric tramways leading on through Rosherville to Gravesend. Let us,
as soon as may be, turn off to the left from the dust and the traffic,
and seek the waterside at Rosherville Pier. The famous gardens created
in the great chalk-pit by the enterprising Jeremiah Rosher, 1830–35,
were for many years the scene of Cockney jollity and the wildest
of high-jinks; all thought very daring by the early Victorians who
indulged in them. “Rosherville, Where to Spend a Happy Day”: that was
the legend. You made excursion by steamer from London and indulged in
tea and shrimps--“s’rimps” in the Cockney tongue, you comprehend--
taken in earwiggy arbours in gardens decorated with plaster statues;
and possibly took part in some dancing, later on, under the illuminated
trees. These things, considered awfully wild then, we look back upon
with disgust for their mingled slowness and vulgarity.

Of late years Rosherville Gardens have had but a precarious existence.
Now you find them closed, and then they are reopened for a space, and
again they are closed once more. The place that Rosher created outside
his moribund gardens--this Rosherville--is a grim and grisly spot,
with gaunt, would-be stately stucco-fronted mansions and a vast hotel,
empty. A melancholy Parade or Terrace faces the river, and a broad road
leads up from it to the Garden entrance, on whose gate-piers are great
gilded sphinxes: the whole presenting, even its prime, an awful aspect
of Egyptian mysticism, qualified, it is true, by plaster, but still
not, you know, ever of a gay and gladsome kind. Children, involuntary
partakers of those “Happy Days,” were appalled by these surroundings,
and usually howled with dismay at sight of those gate-piers, refusing
to be comforted at the explanation that the awful beasts on them were
only “spinkses.” Many an unhappy child dreamt horribly afterwards of
being pursued by spinks.

The mile-long walk along the shore from Rosherville to Gravesend
affords much food for reflection. Here you notice for the first time
that the water is salt; obviously sea-water, because the wooden piles
are hung with sea-weed. At this time of writing the “Marine Baths” that
once were well patronised are being demolished, after a long period
of disuse and decay. They fronted upon this parade, in a forbidding,
Pharaonic type of architecture that gave to bathing an aspect of
partaking in the dread rites of the ancient Egyptian worship of
Osiris and all that weird hierarchy of bird-and-beast-headed gods and
goddesses. Sea-bathing at Gravesend is a thing of the past, and on the
site of these baths the commercial spirit of the age is rearing vast
factory-buildings. Thus ends Gravesend’s Early Victorian dream of being
a seaside resort; but one would not declare that the place is the less
interesting. It is, indeed, of a greater interest than ever, and the
busy waterway presents a grand panorama of the might and majesty of
modern shipping. For there, on the opposite shore, are Tilbury Docks,
to and from whose capacious basins come and go the great liners and
cargo boats. There, too, glimpsed across the half-mile of waterway, is
Tilbury Fort, where modern and unhistorical batteries stand in company
with that old historic blockhouse where Queen Elizabeth reviewed her
troops before the threatened arrival of the Spanish Armada.

[Illustration: TILBURY FORT.]

The chief feature--ornament it can scarce be styled--of Gravesend’s
river-front is the Royal Terrace Pier. It is a construction for use
rather than display, and is in fact the headquarters of the sea and
river pilots who, to the number of nearly 300, wait here and navigate
vessels up and down river to and from London, or out to sea by the
“North Channel,” as far as the Sunk Lightship, off Harwich; or by the
“South Channel,” as far as Dungeness. At the head of these men is an
official of “the Trinity House,” with the title of “Ruler.” The “Ruler
of the Pilots” settles all official business and disputes that are not
serious enough to be referred to the Trinity House headquarters on
Tower Hill.

“Gravesend” is not a pleasant name, even though it may suggest to the
imaginative the final triumph of the Christian: “O grave, where is thy
sting? O Death, where is thy victory?” with visions of the shining
Beyond. But the place-name has not, in fact, anything to do with these
considerations or speculations; and refers to some prehistoric trench
which in the dim past formed a boundary-line between neighbouring
tribes.

Leaving Gravesend, you come down again to the shore by turning to the
left out of the main road by the tramway terminus and through the
unlovely region of “Coal Road,” past the “Canal Tavern,” and over the
Thames and Medway Canal by a footbridge. Here, along the waterside, is
the office of a person described on his sign-board as an “Explosive
Lighterman.” The place where this alarming creature carries on business
is Denton Wharf. Adjoining is the “Ship and Lobster” tavern. Out in
front stretches the Thames estuary. It is the spot referred to by
Dickens in “Great Expectations,” Chapter LIV., in which Pip is engaged
in smuggling the convict, Magwitch, out of the country. The building
seen in the distance, by the waterside, is Shornemead Battery.

[Illustration: CURIOUS OLD BOAT-COTTAGE AT CHALK.]

It is a curious region: the deserted Thames and Medway Canal on the
right, the busy Thames on the left; and it is rendered yet more curious
by the whimsical old cottage presently seen, standing in the narrow
space between canal and river; an odd, amphibious building, the lower
part brick, the upper portion made of an old man-o’-war’s barge,
placed keel upwards. It is almost exactly such another as Peggotty’s
boat-house on Yarmouth sands, imagined and described by Dickens in
“David Copperfield.” The old _Wellington_ man-o’-war’s boat was sold
out of the service about 1822, and the cottage has been here since
then; obviously, therefore, it must have been well known to Dickens,
whose honeymoon days were passed at the neighbouring village of Chalk
in 1836. “David Copperfield” was not written until 1850, so it is plain
he must have had this queer old place in mind.

It is true that the Peggotty home is described as being in its natural
position, keel downwards, and that this old boat of the _Wellington_
man-o’-war is upside down, and forms both roof and upper floor of the
cottage; but these are mere matter-of-fact details easily surmounted in
a work of fiction.

In all these years these stout timbers have served to shelter the
present occupant and his father, and if the occasional tarring they
receive is not forgotten, they bid fair to last many generations
longer. The upper floor is divided into two bedrooms, and you “come
aboard” into them from the brick-walled lower story up a very
maritime-looking hatchway. The interior is very quaint, showing the
ribs, and, in fact, the whole construction of the boat, while the
bedroom, which has the additional advantage of a window cut in the
stern, quite realises David Copperfield’s view of the bedroom in the
Peggotty establishment, as “the completest and most desirable bedroom
ever seen.”

The melancholy shore-line may be followed as far as Shornemead Battery,
a heavy masonry fort designed in modern times for the protection of
the Thames, its design discredited by later military engineers. Worse
discredit is cast upon the design of Cliffe Creek Battery, a mile and
a half lower down, and the fort near Coalhouse Point, on the opposite
shore, whose fire, it appears, would enfilade one another and do more
damage to friends than enemies. Shornemead is the _ultima thule_ of the
riverside explorer here. It is alike unpleasant and unprofitable, if
not actually impossible, to proceed farther. The point now to be aimed
at is Cliffe, and that village is reached by retracing the shoreward
path and crossing the railway and canal and then taking the road on
left which leads to Chequers Street, near Higham Station, and on past
Cliffe station.

[Illustration: SHORNEMEAD BATTERY.]

The village of Cliffe, as might be expected, stands high, on a kind
of upland whence the ground breaks rapidly away to Cliffe Creek,
remarkable for nothing but cement-works, a coastguard station, and
mud. Always mud. At low water, mud thick and slab; at high water, mud
in solution. Cliffe is otherwise called “Cliffe-at-Hoo,” and is the
“Clofeshoch,” or “Cloves-hoo,” (_i.e._ “Cliff’s Height”) of early
Anglo-Saxon synods, long held here annually. They were established by
Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century.

[Illustration: CLIFFE BATTERY.]

Beyond Cliffe we come by a winding road into Cooling, or Cowling, whose
name means “cow pasture.” In advance of the few and scattered houses
forming the village is that romantic old building, Cooling Castle
gatehouse, almost all that now remains of the fortress built here
towards the close of the fourteenth century by Sir John de Cobham, the
third Baron Cobham. The work occupied six years, and was the cause of
much excited comment among the peasantry. Those were the times of Wat
Tyler and Jack Straw and the peasants’ rebellion--threatening times,
when it behoved even great nobles to go warily; and so Lord Cobham
sought means to avoid criticism and the muttered threats to pull his
castle down about his ears. He did this by letting it be understood
that his stronghold was built, not for the purpose of overawing the
mob, but in view of foreign invasion, and he put his intent on record
by placing on one of the gatehouse towers the curious inscription on
enamelled copper plates which still remains in its original position.
It is designed to resemble a legal document, or charter, and runs thus:

   “Knowyth that beth and schul be
    That I am mad in help of the cuntre
    In knowyng of whyche thyng
    Thys is chartre and wytnessyng.”

[Illustration: COOLING CASTLE.]

The curious word “beth” we may read as “be-eth,” _i.e._ “it is”;
or, as a rustic might say, even to this day, “it be.” These words
are enamelled in black on a white ground. Below them, on a seal,
are Lord Cobham’s arms: gules, on a chevron or, three lions rampant
sable. He died in 1408, at a very great age; about ninety-five.
His granddaughter, Joan, married, as her fourth husband, Sir John
Oldcastle, the “good Lord Cobham,” friend of Henry the Fifth and of
Wycliffe. He became a religious reformer and friend of the Lollards,
and thus incurred the enmity of the Church; churchmen then, as now, and
at all times, being eager in heresy-hunting. He was cited to appear
before Archbishop Arundel, but when the apparitor appeared he shut
himself up behind these formidable walls and defied the citation. But
eventually he was brought to trial in London. He denied the doctrine
of the Real Presence, and in the disputes with the bench of bishops
declared the Pope was Antichrist, the prelates his members, and the
friars his tail. He was condemned to be burnt, and although he escaped
and wandered about the country nearly four years, he met a martyr’s
fate at Christmas 1417, when he was hanged, and burnt hanging. Thus
ended the “good Lord Cobham,” one of the earliest victims of a
bloodstained Church without pity or remorse.

Of the castle little remains except the gatehouse towers with their
bold machicolations, the moat, and the crypt of the Great Chamber. A
modern house has been built in the enclosure.

[Illustration: THE “CHARTER,” COOLING CASTLE.]

Cooling is in midst of the grim fenland associated with Dickens’s
story, “Great Expectations,” and in fact is the scene of the opening
chapter, in which Pip meets the dreadful convict, Magwitch, at night,
in the churchyard. According to the story, the district of “the Meshes”
is “a most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work,” and it
is, truly, dreariness itself in winter or in bad weather. Dickens,
of course, stage-managing his story, which opens on a “raw afternoon
towards evening,” made the most of these unpleasant surroundings; and
those atmospheric conditions, in Cooling churchyard and in company
with the grisly row of graves of the Comport family, just to the south
of the church-tower, would be sufficient to dishearten any one. Pip,
looking out upon “the dark, flat wilderness beyond the churchyard,”
began to cry; and no wonder, for he is represented among the tombs
of his father and mother, Peter Pirrip and his wife, and of his five
brothers. The Comport tombs, which formed the originals for Dickens’s
idea of the Pirrip family, actually number ten in a line, with
three more behind, and are presided over by a headstone bearing the
inscription, “Comport of Cowling Court, 1779.” They are of the most
odious and gruesome shape, roughly cylindrical and widening at the
shoulders, suggestive of coffins and mummified bodies, and plastered
with grey cement over brick. To the imaginative mind, they strikingly
resemble so many human chrysalids, awaiting the day when they shall be
hatched out as cherubim.

[Illustration: GRAVES OF THE COMPORT FAMILY, COOLING: “LIKE
CHRYSALIDS.”]

This is a kind of country that responds magically to sunshine, and,
given a fine day, the marshes that stretch away for two miles down
to the river form a beautiful picture, inviting to exploration. But
it is better to keep along the road that goes winding away through
High Halstow, Hoo St. Mary, and Allhallows, than to attempt reaching
the shore at Egypt Bay, where the convict hulks used to be stationed,
and where a coastguard station now stands. Only the most devious and
primitive tracks lead that way, and the marshes that look so beautiful
in the distant view, grey-green and golden in the sunshine, are
commonplace enough on close acquaintance.

At High Halstow we come into the Hundred of Hoo and into the centre
of this little-visited region, projecting, out of the beaten track of
everyday commerce, between the outlets of the Thames and Medway. “Hoo”
signifies a height, and is often found spelt “hoe” in place-names. “The
Hoe” at Plymouth is in the nature of a cliff-top. The quaint sound
of the word sometimes leads to misunderstandings, as we see by the
following newspaper account of some proceedings at the Gravesend Police
Court, March 13th, 1914.

Solicitor: Where do you live?

Witness: Hoo.

Solicitor: You.

Witness: Hoo, sir.

Solicitor: You, I mean; you yourself.

Witness: Hoo.

Solicitor: Oh! at Hoo?

Witness: Yes, sir.

Following the road on to Hoo St. Mary, where the large church stands
prominently ringed about with trees, the remote little village of
Allhallows is reached, rather over half a mile from the shore. Here is
an ancient church, with little western bellcote instead of a tower.
Turning to left here, along a very bad track, the waterside will be
reached at Allhallows Fort, a modern masonry work at the spot called
“Bell’s Hard,” looking across to Southend, some four miles away.
Southend from this point looks almost as red and yellow, and the sea,
under favourable conditions, as blue, as the places pictured on the
familiar advertisements of the railway companies. “Almost,” you will
observe, not quite! There is nothing on earth really so gorgeous as
those. But Southend, from these muddy shores, on a glorious day in July
wears the likeness of some Celestial City or New Jerusalem.

In the peaceful times which until recently prevailed the only apparent
inhabitant of Allhallows Fort was usually one soldier of the Royal
Garrison Artillery, whose chief preoccupation seemed to be the
potatoes, cabbages, and beans of a garden at the rear. A mile or so
eastward is the muddy Yantlet Creek, which separates the Hundred of
Hoo and the Isle of Grain. At the mouth of it, besides a coastguard
station, is the obelisk called “London Stone,” marking the limits of
the Lord Mayor of London’s jurisdiction as Conservator of the Thames.

[Illustration: STOKE.]

The only way to reach the Isle of Grain is to return through Allhallows
and proceed to Lower Stoke, a hamlet at the cross-roads, occupying
as it were a strategic position midway between a number of extremely
small, so-called “villages.” They have nothing in the nature of a shop,
and thus the “General Stores” at Lower Stoke fulfils the enviable
position of a central emporium. At Lower Stoke, turning left, we come
along a marsh road, bordered with deep ditches, across a narrow bridge,
into the Isle of Grain, with the railway to Port Victoria running
companionably alongside. Port Victoria is glimpsed a mile or so away on
the right: all you see of it, across the marshes, being the big funnels
of the steamships, some huge oil-tanks, and the great lonely bulk of an
hotel. There is no special feature in the Isle of Grain, whose name,
by the way, has nothing to do with corn or wheat. It is cognate with
the word “groin,” and means a projecting piece of land. Near the shore,
overlooking the mouth of the Thames, Southend, and Nore Lightship on
one hand, and the Medway and Sheerness on the other, is the village of
Grain and the recently restored church, for a number of years little
better than a ruin. Here, too, is Fort Grain, with the newly-built
naval seaplane station.

Retracing the road to Lower Stoke and turning to left at the
cross-roads, we come through Stoke village, with its Early English
church and scattered houses set amidst vast flat fields. On the left
stretch Stoke saltings, accessible only by water, and frequented only
by wild-fowling sportsmen, who thread the oozy channels in their
flat-bottomed punts. Along these many salt marshes on either side of
the Medway the wild-fowl abound. At a spot oddly called “Beluncle,”
where the single-track railway to Port Victoria crosses the road, the
vast new sheds and other evidences of the Kingsnorth Medway Airship
Base have recently arisen in the open fields. You will seek in vain for
“Kingsnorth” on maps, for it is an entirely new name.

[Illustration: ST. JAMES GRAIN.]

Reaching Hoo St. Werburgh, we find a considerable village and an
old church with weatherbeaten tower and an interesting interior
containing, sculptured on one of its pillars, an example of those
ancient grotesques which puzzle the modern wayfarer, and seem to him
purposeless. They generally, however, represent the Divine gifts
either of sight, hearing, or speech, and their grotesque character is
often accidental, rather than a matter of intention. This particular
example, a monkish head, with left hand approaching the mouth, appears
to typify the Gift of Speech; but to a casual observer it might very
well be an attempt to portray the horror of some unfortunate person who
had accidentally taken poison.

From Hoo St. Werburgh, across Hoo Common and past the hamlet of
Wainscot, we come to the turning for Upnor Castle, which lies to the
left; paradoxically enough, it would seem, down a village street of
the narrowest, steepest, and most rugged description. Surely, thinks
the stranger, one should ascend to Upnor. But “Upnor,” which means
“up-shore,” refers, not to a height, but to the upper reaches of the
Medway estuary.

The castle is a rambling, grey-walled fortress with a series of rugged,
cylindrical towers facing the waters of the Medway and looking over
to the Chatham Dockyard Extension. Upnor was built in the time of
Queen Elizabeth, as a defence of Chatham and Rochester, and seems
to have justified itself in the reign of Charles the Second, during
that inglorious war of 1667, when the insolent Dutch with sixty
vessels took the fort at Sheerness, sailed up the Medway, burning and
destroying, and later ascending the Thames to Tilbury Fort, humbled
the ancient pride of the Mistress of the Seas. A chain was stretched
across the Medway, from Hoo Ness to Folly Point, to bar the passage
of the enemy to Chatham, and the men-o’-war _Matthias_, _Monmouth_,
and _Royal Charles_ stood by, to help repulse De Ruyter’s forces. But
the feeblest attempts were made: the Dutch broke the chain, burnt the
ships, and continued up-river, capturing the _Royal Charles_, which was
taken by two boats, under the command of one Captain Tobiaz, without
any attempt at defence. Next morning, with the purpose of burning
the large men-o’-war at anchor above Upnor, the Dutch sent up two of
their fighting ships, with six fire-vessels, under cover of a heavy
cannonade. Here Upnor Castle was of some service, and considerably
hampered the enemy’s operations; but the fireships succeeded in
burning the _Royal James_, _Loyal London_, and _Royal Oak_. And then,
half-hearted themselves, the invaders retreated. It was well for us
they were so cautious, for they might have done what they would. The
observers of that time were not indifferent to this indignity. Evelyn,
in his diary, styles it “as dreadful a spectacle as Englishmen ever
saw, and a dishonour never to be wiped off”; and Pepys, Secretary to
the Admiralty, was divided in three parts about it. He shared the
general shame of the nation; he feared, as an official who might be
held personally responsible, and thought dolefully of either being
committed to the Tower, or else having his throat cut by a furious mob;
and he dreaded, as a citizen, the dangers of an invasion affecting his
property and ready cash.

Opposite Upnor the naval activities of the dockyard are very
noticeable. There you see battleships and cruisers dry-docked and
refitting. When last I was here the waterside loungers readily told me
their names. As to the correct rendering of one there was considerable
variation, for while one would have it, “Airy-ale-house,” giving a
pleasant mental picture of a hedgerow tavern of the type which would
have pleased Piscator and Venator, others preferred to style her
the “You’re-a-lias,” and some made it “You-rile-us,” which gives a
distinctly threatening _nemo me impune lacessit_ kind of braggadocio
turn to her proper title, _Euryalus_. There are other versions of the
name--“Airy,” or “Hairy Alice,” for example--which prove the risks of
classic nomenclature.

Upnor Castle is not nowadays a strong place, but the long stretch of
foreshore between it and the waterside, down-river, is occupied by
great naval powder-magazines, and a pier for the Government light
railway running at the rear is a feature. The castle has a certain
picturesqueness, and is worth sketching; but the sketcher, selecting
the best view-point by the riverside, is soon made aware that he has
become an object of interest to the Metropolitan Police on watch
within, and presently finds himself plied with amiable inquiries; these
being times when espionage is very much to the front.

[Illustration: UPNOR CASTLE.]

The inquisitive stranger having thus attracted the attention of the
police, and having--let us hope--duly satisfied them, may now make
his way up the steep street again, and, reaching the cross-roads,
soon come into Frindsbury. From this village, with its hill-top church,
whose spire is a prominent landmark, a descent is immediately made into
the tramway-infested streets and congested areas of Strood; and from
Strood the Medway is at once crossed, into Rochester.




CHAPTER IV

ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM--BROMPTON--GILLINGHAM--GRANGE--OTTERHAM
QUAY--LOWER HALSTOW--IWADE


Very little change overtakes Rochester High Street, that narrow, rather
gloomy, and distinctly dirty-looking thoroughfare. The Corn Exchange
clock still projects its “moon face” over the pavement, as Dickens
described it, “out of a grave, red building, as if Time carried on
business there and hung out his sign”; and the ancient grime still
clings to the brickwork houses, and the occasional old weatherboarded
tenements still lack the new coats of paint cruelly denied them. One
might expend much description upon the High Street of Rochester,
from the famous “Bull” hotel of Pickwickian fame, and the tame,
characterless front of the “Seven Poor Travellers,” on to the curiously
weatherboarded Westgate of the Cathedral Close, familiarly known,
through associations with “Edwin Drood,” as “Jasper’s Gateway,” and not
forgetting the Early English crypt beneath the “George” inn, nearly
opposite the “Bull,” a relic of which very few people know, and little
to be suspected from the decidedly commonplace general appearance of
that house. There is, indeed, room for a most interesting monograph
upon this High Street. I always associate the little weatherboarded
house and shop numbered 195, on the left hand as you go towards
Chatham, with that where little David Copperfield had his adventure
with the half-mad second-hand-clothes shopkeeper who said “Goroo,
goroo,” and invoked his lungs and liver. It is a bootshop nowadays; but
you go down into it from the street-level just as in the story.

Eastbury House--the “Nuns’ House” of “Edwin Drood”--until recent
years a gloomy mansion, mysteriously retired behind a grim brick wall,
has lately been restored and the enclosing wall demolished, and has
become a museum. It is now a much more worshipful-looking building than
before; all the better for its scouring and cleaning, and yet looking
none the less antique. Built in 1591, Eastgate House looks every year
of its age, and has a very thorough air of historical mystery, although
nothing has ever happened there to which one can put a name. Miss
Twinkleton’s young ladies, in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” must often
have experienced strange thrills and shivers in its darkling rooms and
passages.

The allied towns of Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, and New Brompton do
not grow any more attractive, from the tourist’s point of view, with
the effluxion of time. They had always a taint of Cockney vulgarity
which later industrial and military and naval developments, and
an extensive system of electric tramways, have intensified. With
all these things, the natural beauties of the site have been almost
utterly obscured in mean streets and crowded slums. Those beauties
were of a very striking nature. From the lofty side of Chatham Hill
the eye ranged over the broad Medway and its marshes, beautiful in
the distance, and across to the Hundred of Hoo. To-day that view is
qualified by a vista of innumerable roofs and domestic chimneys, and
by the many giant chimney-stacks of the Portland cement factories that
have to-day become almost as striking a feature of the surroundings as
the naval and military establishments, and spread a smoky haze over the
scene.

It is not easy to realise Chatham as a waterside place, still less as
a port and dockyard, because of the closely-packed houses along the
High Street which runs parallel with the Medway. Only the narrowest
alleys open to the water, and few of them: the Sun Pier being, in
fact, the only view-point. But the outlook upon the busy waterside
scenes up-river, along Limehouse Reach, is of an inspiring nature. It
is composed, indeed, of widely different elements, but is therefore
all the more pictorial. There you see Rochester Castle and Cathedral,
contrasting strongly with the huge coal-cranes and the wharves,
alongside with the fuming chimneys of the cement factories on the
Frindsbury shore, and many picturesque, brown-sailed barges and fussy
steam-tugs on the water. The strenuous past, and a much more strenuous
present, lend imagination, as well as pictorial quality, to the scene.

The name of Limehouse Reach is exactly descriptive, for the cement
factories on the Frindsbury shore give it a character. Here, and above
Rochester Bridge, the pleasant Medway valley is scarred and seamed with
the chalk-quarrying and the mud-dredging that go towards the making of
Portland cement, this neighbourhood being one of the chief centres of
that industry. The chalk and the river-mud are mixed roughly in the
proportion of three parts of chalk to one of mud, and are then burnt in
kilns and ground into a flour-like powder. Portland cement, invented
about 1826, is an important industry, with an output of over 3,000,000
tons a year in this country. The price per cask was originally 21_s._,
but the output is now so large and the production has so improved that
a better article is now sold at about 4_s._ a cask.

As to Chatham Dockyard, it is a highly historic place full of keenest
interest to a patriotic Briton, but to such a good deal more difficult
to explore properly than it is made for distinguished foreigners.
Why the native tax-payer who contributes to the support of this
establishment so much of his hardly-earned gold should be thus
discouraged, while possible enemies--much more keenly concerned to
worm out official secrets and far better able to do so--should be
shown every particular is more than the plain man can comprehend. But
it is the same tale in all our places of arms.

[Illustration: THE MEDWAY: ROCHESTER CASTLE AND CATHEDRAL.]

Among the interesting things here in the nature of relics none is
more keenly absorbing than the figure-head of the American frigate
_Chesapeake_, the vessel captured by Captain Broke, in command of
the _Shannon_, in 1813. This naval duel was the brightest incident
in the three years’ war between England and the United States. The
figure-head, a fine specimen of this extinct art, represents a woman
with headdress of feathers in the North American Indian fashion.

It is past the Dockyard gates and by High Street, Brompton, and thence
across “Chatham Great Lines” that the stranger who wants to find
again the coast-line had better trace his course. The district is an
unalluring one of tramways, mean streets, and the squalid side of
military life. But the Brompton Barracks of the Royal Engineers are
rather fine. Here is the Gordon statue, a striking work, representing
the General seated on a camel; and here, too, are two triumphal arches
displaying the achievements of the Royal Engineers, and four huge
bronzes, representing seated Boers with rifles and bandoliers. The
“Great Lines,” an upland, common-like expanse, is the scene of that
incident in “Pickwick” in which, during the grand review, the timid Mr.
Snodgrass, after being violently hustled to and fro, was indignantly
asked “vere he vos a-shovin’ to,” together with many other shameful
experiences.

Following the tram-lines, we come at last to the terminus at
Gillingham, one of the two places of that name in England. The other
is in Dorset. Although their names are spelt alike, they are spoken
differently: the Dorsetshire town is “Gillingham,” as might be
expected: this is, unexpectedly, always locally “Jillingham.”

[Illustration: THE MEDWAY: HOO FORTS.]

The ancient church here has a tall tower, conspicuous far and wide on
its hill-top; its corner-turret provided with a cresset, or fire-pot,
for a beacon. Here, descending the steep and narrow Church Street, and
bearing to the right, a hamlet called Gad’s Hill is passed, giving on
to a variety of creeks and inlets looking out across the Medway and the
circular forts of Gillingham and Hoo, with the wooded heights of the
Hundred of Hoo beyond.

By taking the next turning on the right, up a commonplace new street
called “King Edward Road,” and then turning left, a large country
residence on the right hand will presently be seen. This is the manor
of Grange, or Grench, formerly a member of the Cinque Port of Hastings,
and a separate parish. Some ancient, ivy-clad ruins in front of the
modern house are those of a chapel and a barn built in 1378 by Sir John
Philipot, Mayor of London. Not really “Lord” Mayor, strictly speaking,
for that dignified title is not known to have been given before 1486.

The manor comprised 120 acres, and was held by the service of finding
one ship and two armed men in time of war. Philipot, however, did
better than this. His patriotism impelled him to provide 1,000 men and
a squadron of vessels, to aid against the French. This ancient manor
enjoyed until modern times the singular extra-territorial right of
affording shelter to fugitives from justice who escaped thither; and
criminals who succeeded in reaching this Alsatia could not be arrested
on the warrant of the local magistrates until a confirming warrant had
been obtained from Hastings.

Proceeding and passing a railed-in redoubt, the road rises. Turning
then to left and again to right, we come down beside the estuary of
the Medway, amid the pear and cherry orchards, into Lower Rainham,
past Otterham Creek, and on to Upchurch. Here the church has a steeple
of fantastic ugliness, resembling two wooden extinguishers placed one
above another. There is a curious crypt, or bonehouse, under the north
chancel aisle. This district is famous for the many finds of Roman
pottery in the Medway creeks: the well-known black “Upchurch ware,”
generally discovered by punting in the shallow waters and prodding the
mud with rods. It is supposed that an extensive industry was seated
here in ancient times, on land now more or less submerged. It is now
pretty generally supposed (why it should be I know not) that all the
finds possible have been made. Hasted, writing of these parts early
in the eighteenth century, says “the noxious vapours arising from the
marshes subject the inhabitants to continued intermittents, and shorten
their lives at a very early period.” This, at any rate, seems to be of
the past.

[Illustration: UPCHURCH.]

Passing Upchurch, the creek of Lower Halstow is soon seen, with the
church away on the left, amid scenes of brickmaking activity. The road
in the next half-mile turns sharply right at Parksore, rising steeply;
that going straight ahead to a place marked “Funton” on the map,
rapidly becoming impassable.

Cresting the hill, a wonderful distant view over across to Sheerness,
disclosing the battleships there, like uncanny monsters of fairy-lore,
is obtained. Bending right and then left, and passing a moated farm,
and then a gate across the road, we come in another mile to cross-roads
and there turn left for Iwade, and through the village to the bridge
across the Swale into Sheppey, at Kingsferry.




CHAPTER V

SHEPPEY


It was in the Swale that Augustine baptized King Ethelbert on Whit
Sunday, June 2nd, A.D. 596, and thus made him a child of God. On
Christmas Day the following year he similarly baptized 10,000 of the
King’s subjects, but exactly where these chilly ceremonies took place
is not recorded. In any case, if the Swale were as muddy then as it is
now, the converts must have come out extremely dirty.

[Illustration: LOWER HALSTOW.]

The one and only way into Sheppey without ferrying into it is
across the Kingsferry Bridge, which here spans the Swale, and is an
electrically worked swing-bridge of the South-Eastern and Chatham
Railway. It is also a road-bridge. Sometimes a week will pass before it
is required to be opened to allow a sailing-vessel to pass. The charge
for crossing varies from a modest penny for cyclist or pedestrian, up
to one shilling and sixpence for a motor-car.

It has for such a long time past been the almost universal custom to
speak or write of the “Isle of Sheppey” that it becomes a convenience
to follow the popular way; but really the name “Sheppey” includes the
designation “island”; being the modern form of the Saxon name for it,
“Sceapige,” the “sheep island.” It is said that the Romans knew it
as _Insula Ovium_, the Isle of Sheep; and certainly it has remained
through all the succeeding ages a place where flocks have been kept
and have flourished. In this connection William Camden gives us some
interesting facts relating to Sheppey in his day:

“This Isle of Sheepe, whereof it feedeth mightie great flockes, was
called by our auncestours Shepey--that is the Isle of Sheepe.” He then
proceeds to speak of the “fatte-tailed sheepe, of exceeding great size,
whose flesh is most delicate to taste. I have seen younge lads, taking
women’s function, with stools fastened untoe their buttockes to milke,
yea, and to make cheese of ewes milke.”

[Illustration: THE KENTISH COAST: _Sheppy to Deal_]

Centuries ago this industry disappeared, and although the Roquefort
cheeses we nowadays import from France in great quantities are similar
and popular products, nothing of the kind is now made in Sheppey, or
anywhere in England.

The “fat-tailed sheep” will nowadays be sought in vain in Sheppey.
There are many of the ordinary breeds, but, on the honour of a
traveller, none of that type.

This intimate, yet in some ways remote, island off the Kentish mainland
is but eleven miles in length by five broad, and would thus seem to
afford little scope for variety; but within this small compass is found
scenery of very varied description, ranging from the wide-spreading
marshes beside the Swale to a high ridge or backbone, on whose highest
point stands the village of Minster-in-Sheppey. A peculiar feature of
the low, marshy part of the island is found in the ancient mounds known
as “cotterels,” usually said to be burial-places of the Danes; they are
large and irregular grassy hillocks, which may more probably be the
spoil from olden drainage-trenches. Thus heaped up, they formed, either
by accident or intention, refuges for sheep in time of floods. Two of
these are seen on the way from Kingsferry.

The chief town of the island, the dockyard town and port of Sheerness,
is six miles from Kingsferry. On the way to it you pass near
Queenborough, originally “Kingborough,” but renamed by Edward the Third
in honour of Queen Philippa, when a fortress was also built. Of that
castle, in whose design that distinguished Bishop, William of Wykeham,
had a hand, nothing now remains, and the railway station, which
stands on the site of it, although no doubt a more useful institution
nowadays, frankly makes no attempt at romance. Queenborough is now a
rather plaintive-looking town of one broad street, devastated by the
gruesome odour, resembling putrid meat, emanating from extensive and
diabolically prosperous chemical-manure works. It will thus be judged
that Queenborough is an excellent place not to visit. The church itself
contains nothing of interest except a battered and illiterate brass on
the wall, to one “Henry Knight, sometime maior of this Towne, who was
Master of a ship to Greenland, and Harpined there 24 Veiages.

   “In Greenland I Whales, Sea horse and Beares did slay,
    Though now my bodie is in tombe, in Clay.”

Nor is Sheerness precisely a joyous holiday resort. It is a place of
strength, guarding the entrance to the Thames and Medway, and will
have to stand in the forefront of any attack; but exactly wherein its
strength resides is not at all apparent to the layman. No doubt booms
and floating mines, although not spectacular defences, would play a
foremost part. The history of this congeries of four towns--Blue Town,
Marine Town, Banks Town, and Mile Town--that constitute Sheerness is
not a glorious one. The site was a swamp until reclamation was begun
under James the First. Continued in the next reign, and through the
Commonwealth, the Admiralty in the time of Charles the Second selected
this as the site for a dockyard and fortifications to protect Sheppey
from invasion. Pepys tells us, under date of August 18th, 1665, how
“we,” the King and others, “walked up and down, laying out the ground
to be taken in for a yard to lay provisions for cleaning and repairing
of ships, and a most proper place it is for the purpose.”

On February 27th, 1667, the King and the Duke of York were at Sheerness
to lay out the design for the fortifications, which, four months later,
were destroyed by the Dutch.

An odd survival, found where least expected, remains here. Few who walk
the planks of the Cornwallis Jetty realise that they are laid over the
forgotten hull of the old man-o’-war _Cornwallis_, seventy-four guns,
which figured in the Navy a hundred years ago. Down beneath remains
the dim interior of that wooden line-of-battle ship, with the original
portholes.

[Illustration: MINSTER-IN-SHEPPEY.]

For the rest, Sheerness to-day is sheerly and frankly ugly, and
Cockney, and quite unashamed. The look of it is as though long lengths
of the Old Kent Road and the dullest, dreariest purlieus of Camberwell
had come down to the sea and forgotten to return. Let us, then, leaving
it behind, hasten along the shore, past the obsolete Barton’s Fort
and the hideous brick-and-iron railed Admiralty range-finders that
form abominable eyesores on the beach, and make for Minster. To reach
that hill-top village, the woebegone attempted developments of a
building-estate styled “Minster-on-Sea,” a place without shape or form,
are passed; but, these things left behind, the unspoiled country of
Sheppey is entered. The “monasterium,” whence Minster derives its name,
was the ancient Priory of St. Saxburga, founded in early Saxon times.
The square gatehouse of the nunnery, standing by the church, is all
that remains of that religious house, and even this building, fashioned
of the most amazing admixture of brick, stone, and flint has been
wholly secularised and converted into a dwelling-house.

The church is intrinsically interesting for its architecture, its
monuments, and its brasses, including the very fine and early brasses
of Sir John de Northwode--that knight who, according to the irreverent
Ingoldsby, received a black eye from a brickbat at the siege of
Shurland Castle--and his wife, Joan, about 1320; but it is far more
so as a literary landmark. It is, of course, closely associated with
that most engaging among the “Ingoldsby Legends,” the story of “Grey
Dolphin,” one of the most genuinely humorous things in literature,
which bears reading over and over again, and will remain fresh when the
marks of many a later funny fellow have been forgotten. Sir Robert de
Shurland, the hero of that story, was a real flesh-and-blood person,
who flourished in the thirteenth century and was a very earnest,
strenuous, and warlike knight--not at all a farcical person. He went
out in the Crusade of 1271, and at a later date was knighted for
gallantry at the siege of Caerlaverock. The ladies, it would seem,
liked this doughty character. “If I were a young demoiselle,” says an
old metrical romance, “I would give myself to that brave knight, Sir
Robert de Shurland.”

In the church is the singular tomb of this warrior, with a recumbent
effigy not in the least resembling the portrait drawn of him by
Ingoldsby, for he is shown to be tall and thin, not short and stockish.
Otherwise, the description is exact; and it is indeed the effigy of a
“warrior clad in the chain-mail of the thirteenth century. His hands
are clasped in prayer”--or they would be, had not the arms been shorn
off at the elbows--“his legs, crossed in that position so prized by
Templars in ancient and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a Soldier
of the Faith in Palestine. Close beside his dexter calf lies sculptured
in bold relief a horse’s head.” Ingoldsby, you see, together with the
antiquaries of his time, thought the cross-legged effigies on ancient
tombs invariably indicated that the person represented had been a
Crusader. It has since been proved to demonstration that this was not
the case, and that this curious pose was only a convention of the age.
The horse’s head is shown rising from some strange carving intended to
represent waves, and is an allusion to the grant of “wreck of the sea”
which the knight had obtained where his manors extended to the shore.
This was ordinarily a privilege of the Crown. It gave him property in
all wreckage, waifs and strays, and flotsam and jetsam which he could
reach with the point of his lance when riding as far as possible into
the sea at ebb-tide.

Margaret Shurland, daughter and heiress of this personage, married
one William Cheyney. The altar-tomb of their descendant, Sir Thomas
Cheyney, Warden of the Cinque Ports in the time of Queen Elizabeth,
stands in the church and is a noble monument. He was a remarkable
man, for he filled important offices of State in the reigns of Henry
the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary, and Elizabeth, and in all the
tragic changes of those changeful times lost neither head, fortune,
nor repute. He was Knight of the Garter, Constable of Dover Castle,
a Privy Councillor, and Treasurer of the Household. A man of wealth,
he demolished the old castle of Shurland and built in its stead the
mansion yet standing, long used as a farmhouse.

[Illustration: TOMB OF SIR ROBERT DE SHURLAND, MINSTER-IN-SHEPPEY
CHURCH.]

Among the other monuments in Minster church is an alabaster effigy
sometimes considered to be that of one Jeronimo Magno, a Spanish
prisoner of war captured by Drake off Calais Harbour in Armada time.
For three years this unhappy hidalgo was kept prisoner aboard ship at
the Nore, and then death ended his trials, in 1591. Later criticism,
however, identifies the chain worn by the effigy as that of the Yorkist
faction: the chain of Suns and Roses, worn by adherents of Edward the
Fourth and the House of York; which would date back the monument by
some seventy years and thus dispose of the Spanish prisoner theory.

Another very interesting effigy is that of one Jordanus de Scapeia,
found in 1833 in the churchyard, buried five feet deep. The clasped
mailed hands hold a little mystic oval at the tips of the fingers,
bearing a tiny effigy intended to typify the soul.

Out in Minster churchyard on sunny days of wandering breezes the guns
of the distant forts and battleships that guard the coast are heard to
roar and mutter and rumble, according to their distance, and above the
peaked roof of the church tower twirls the odd horse-head weather-vane
which gives the local name, the “Horse Church.” Here are many stones to
the memory of Sheerness dockyard men; among them one with quaint and
weatherworn sculpture and curious verses to one Henry Worth, a gunner,
who died in 1770, aged fifty-seven:

[Illustration]

“Pallida Mors æquo pede pauperum Tabernas Regumque Turres.

    Who e’er thou art, if here by Wisdom led
    To view the silent mansions of the Dead
    And search for truth from life’s last mournful page
    Where Malice lives not, nor where Slanders rage,
    Read on. No Bombast swells these friendly lines;
    Here truth unhonour’d & unvarnish’d shines.
    Where o’er yon sod an envious nettle creeps,
    From care escap’d an honest Gunner sleeps.
    As on he travell’d to life’s sorrowing end,
    Distress for ever claim’d him as a friend;
    Orphan & Widow were alike his care;
    He gave with pleasure all he had to spare.
    His match now burnt, expended all his priming,
    He left the world, and us, without e’er whining,
    Deep in the earth his Carcase is entomb’d,
    Which Love & Grog for him had honeycomb’d.
    Jesting apart, Retir’d from winds & Weather,
    Virtue & WORTH are laid asleep together.”

Leaving this memorial to the charitable and love-worn Worth and his
grog-blossoms, we trace the road towards Eastchurch. Along to the
left, folded between the hills and sheltered from the winds, are vales
where elms and beeches thrive luxuriantly. Such a spot is the ravine
of Scrapsgate, very like the “chines” of the Isle of Wight, a charming
spot in spring, where one may always be sure of finding violets,
primroses, and bluebells in their season.

Scrapsgate was the scene of a mysterious tragedy many years ago. It has
long since been forgotten, and the only reminder of it now to be found
is a weather-worn tombstone in the obscure churchyard of the workhouse
at Minster, with the following inscription:

                               “O, earth
                          cover not my blood!
                                 Sacred
                            to the memory of
                         a man unknown, who was
                         found murdered on the
                     morning of the 22nd April 1814
                  near Scraps Gate in this parish, by
              his Head being nearly severed from his body
                             A subscription
                    was immediately entered into and
                       one hundred guineas reward
                      offered on conviction of the
                          perpetrators of the
                    horrible act, but they remain at
                         present undiscovered.”

The perpetrators were never discovered. “Mysterious” I have described
this affair, but it was pretty widely understood at the time that
the stranger had met his fate at the hands of the smugglers who then
found Scrapsgate a convenient spot for their shy trade. His identity
and occupation alike remained unestablished, but the supposition was
then current that he was either a member of a smuggling band who had
turned informer and had been discovered in his treachery, or that
he was one of the revenue officers. The ferocity of the smugglers
who infested the coasts of Kent stuck at nothing, and this was by no
means an exceptional outrage, as the history of their desperate doings
sufficiently proves.

A complete and weird contrast from this lovely vale is Warden Point,
which lies off to the left of the way to Eastchurch, along two and a
quarter miles of solitary winding road. “At Warden Point,” I read in
a geological work, “is the finest exposure of the London clay.” And
it may be added that, in the many landslips which have occurred here
of late years, other things have been exposed. In short, the slipping
away of the cliffs has torn asunder the churchyard of Warden, with
the shocking result that the coffins and skeletons of the dead are
strewn about. You come to this Golgotha at a point where the road,
making straight for the cliffs’ edge, has been carefully barred, lest
the stranger should descend into the sea and there perish. To the few
cottages that stand here, all that is left of the village of Warden,
has been given the unlovely name of “Mud Row.” Forming part of the
garden fence of one of these is a sculptured stone tablet recording
that Delamark Banks, son of Sir Edward Banks, the contractor for the
rebuilding of London Bridge, gave some of the stones of old London
Bridge to rebuild Warden church, in 1836; the ancient church having
been destroyed by encroachment of the sea. By 1870 the sea had further
advanced and the new church was closed, being demolished in 1877, when
the bodies of those who had been buried in the churchyard during the
last thirty years were removed to Minster. Now all that remains of
the churches of Warden is this dedication tablet, part of a garden
fence. Looking down here, across the yawning rifts and crevasses of the
land-ship, you see the poor exposed relics of the dead in the olden
churchyard, and out to sea the waters are discoloured with the washings
of the clay.

Eastchurch, a pretty village with a charming and well-kept old church,
is a pleasant place, associated recently with aviation and the Naval
Flying grounds. It is thus appropriate enough that a new stained-glass
window should have been placed here in 1912 to the memory of Charles
Stuart Rolls and Cecil Grace, who both lost their lives in flying.

Among other memorials is a tablet to Vice-Admiral Sir Richard King,
Bart., Commander-in-Chief at the Nore, who, having commanded the
_Achille_ at Trafalgar and come scatheless through that action, died of
cholera at Sheerness, aged 61. Here, too, is an elaborate monument to
Gabriel Livesey, who died at Eastchurch parsonage in 1622. His stately
recumbent effigy, under a canopy of coloured and gilded marbles, has in
front of it a group of children; among them the kneeling figure of his
son Michael, afterwards notorious as one of the Commissioners who tried
Charles the First and signed his death-warrant.

Close beside Eastchurch the striking group of Shurland Castle is
prominent. This is the embattled manor-house already referred to,
built on the site of Sir Robert de Shurland’s stronghold. The
building is most imposing from the front, but it puts all its goods
in the shop-window, so to say, for it is just a long, shallow house,
with nothing of interest within; and all the vast original ranges
of buildings in the rear have been demolished. It is, in fact, a
farmhouse, and it and the farm, in spite of the old Sheppey proverb,
“Sheppey grass none can surpass,” have been unlet for about twenty
years. Although the interior is commonplace itself, the front is
fine, in good red brick, with vitrified brick in diamond patterns,
and moulded brick chimneys. Among the paving-stones leading up to the
entrance is an Early English floriated stone coffin-lid, of some beauty.

[Illustration: HARTY CHURCH: FAVERSHAM IN THE DISTANCE]

Down from Eastchurch, we come out of the “hill country” of Sheppey,
along a beautiful avenue of overarching trees, to the Harty Road
station of the Sheppey Light Railway, and thence along the levels
to Leysdown and the long, flat shell-beach of Shellness, with the
pink-washed coastguard buildings at the extreme end, looking across
the Swale to Whitstable. History has been made at Shellness. It was on
December 11th, 1688, that James the Second fled, panic-stricken, from
his palace of Whitehall, before the advance of the Prince of Orange,
who had been proclaimed King in his stead in the market-place of Newton
Abbot, on November 7th, by the title of William the Third. The fugitive
sovereign, with a wig of unaccustomed modest cut and semi-clerical
clothes for disguise, made his hasty exit in company with Sir Edward
Hales, a Roman Catholic pervert whom he had recently appointed Master
of the Ordnance, Lieutenant of the Tower, and Privy Councillor. This
facile person brought with him a gentleman named Sheldon and a Mr.
Abbadie, who occupied the position of Page of the Backstairs. If you
do but consider a moment, there is something exquisitely appropriate
and humorous in a Page of the Backstairs taking part in such a fugitive
back-door departure. A librettist in comic opera could have thought of
no happier touch.

One is curious to know how it was that King James came to select such
a difficult, out-of-the-way place as Sheppey for his departure. He,
of course, sought some obscure point for embarkation, but there were
easily dozens of sufficiently quiet and unfrequented places suited to
his purpose, without taking this extreme trouble. The explanation is
that the King was really at this time almost beside himself, and his
mind was so disordered that he could not think coherently nor plan
anything. Hales was the master at this juncture. He was the owner of
property in Sheppey, and had a steward, one Bannister by name, whom
he could trust, at his house of Neat’s Court, Minster. The steward
was instructed to hire a vessel at Elmley, and did so, and some of
the party went aboard there and others were to be picked up here, at
Shellness, whence it was hoped to make a passage for France. The hoy
was on the point of departure, when Bannister’s livery was noticed by
the fishermen. It was a livery well known locally, and little liked
since Hales had rendered himself so obnoxious to the Protestants. The
spectacle, therefore, of Bannister assisting a company of strange
gentlefolk to embark from so unaccustomed a place, at such an
untimeous hour, in those times of social, political, and religious
disturbance, and in a craft so humble, was one to excite curiosity and
suspicion. The fishermen assembled to the number of fifty or sixty on
the beach, soon recognised Hales, and, that once done, there was no
escaping. They surrounded the fugitives, and prevented them by force
from leaving.

[Illustration: LATE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CHEST, OF GERMAN ORIGIN, CARVED
WITH REPRESENTATION OF A TOURNAMENT, HARTY CHURCH.]

We shall meet this party again, on the mainland, on the way to
Faversham; ourselves tracking laboriously round the coastline, to
Harty, which was once in the nature of an island, divided from Sheppey
by Cable Fleet and Crog Dick; but these have long been dry.

There are more imposing coastwise walks than this: there cannot well be
many duller. Imagine the dun-coloured waters of the Swale, bordered all
the way by a continuous grassy embankment, raised to protect the land
from being drowned; and further imagine this protective bank carefully
winding along the configuration of the shore, so that you progress with
painful slowness: there you have the route from Shellness to Harty.

Harty consists of a solitary farm, close by the little church. There
is no village, and almost the only other house is the “Ferry Inn” by
the waterside, half a mile away. In the church remains a curious and
highly dilapidated old chest 4 feet 6 inches long, its front carved
with a spirited scene representing two knights tilting. One of them
is seen on the point of being unhorsed by his opponent’s lance.
The tilting-saddles, with long shields for the riders’ legs, are
noticeable. The chest is of German origin, and dates from the close of
the fourteenth century. The reason of it being here is unknown, but one
may venture the opinion that it is one of the spoils of shipwreck.

From the “Ferry Inn” at Harty, across the unlovely Swale, it is a
half-mile passage, a long and laborious business for an oarsman.




CHAPTER VI

THE CAPTURE OF JAMES THE SECOND--FAVERSHAM


It is two miles from this side of Harty Ferry to Faversham, through
Oare and Davington. Hard by the landing-place the sinuous and muddy
Faversham Creek joins the Swale, and ugly sheds stand here and there on
the ill-favoured banks, exhibiting minatory notices for the observance
of would-be trespassers. I don’t think any ordinarily sane person fully
informed of what those sheds contain would in the least desire to
trespass, for they are, in fact, stored with dynamite, the making of
which, together with brewing and the manufacture of paper and bricks,
forms an industry actively followed in the neighbourhood of Faversham.

The creeks hereabouts--“cricks” they are called locally--and the
marshes, or “meshes” in the speech of Kent, are not scenically
beautiful nor in any way spectacular, but the brick-barges, gliding by,
do at least give, with their great rusty-red sails, a quaint touch.
Scarce a duller spot could be found for the scene of an historic
incident, but the incident of James the Second being brought here, a
prisoner, was itself drab and unheroic. The fishermen who had seized
the fugitive King on the long low spit of Shellness did not at first
know how important was their capture, that cold December day. The
humble hoy was a strange vessel for the conveyance of such gentlefolk
as these appeared to be, and the fact, in itself, was suspicious in
those troubled times; but the fisherfolk’s thoughts did not rise to
the contemplation of a monarch leaving his kingdom in that evasive
way. Probably, if the truth of it were known, their idea of a king
was that of a personage splendid in appearance and wearing a crown;
certainly it was not this tall, thin-faced man, of mingled careworn
and severe expression of countenance, and habited in unrelieved black,
who was masquerading as chaplain to Sir Edward Hales, the gentleman
who appeared to be the chief among the party they had detained. The
fishermen, indeed, took them for escaping Jesuits, and thought the
King to be that most notorious of them all, Father Petre. “I know him
by his lean jaws,” exclaimed one, and another advocated searching
“the hatchet-faced old Jesuit,” a suggestion acted upon in earnest.
They snatched his money and watch--those they could understand and
appraise; but his Coronation Ring and a number of little trinkets he
carried they left untouched, together with the diamond buckles of
his shoes, which they took to be glass. What indignities to offer
the Lord’s Anointed! Then some person recognised him. It was a great
moment, and I wonder no painter has ever made that tableau the subject
of a picture. Perhaps it would have been done had the King presented
a better front. Monarchs are by courtesy “gracious,” and they are
supposed, in addition, to be dignified and courageous; but this poor
James became, under these circumstances, a distressingly mean figure.
Why should he at this juncture have proved a coward: he who, when Duke
of York and Lord High Admiral, had shown notable courage: he who, three
years before, had been contemptuous of the pitiful appeals for mercy
made by Monmouth?

[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, FAVERSHAM.]

He seems to have made no effort to save himself from these indignities,
and was really in abject terror, not perhaps of the fishermen, but
of the fate which he supposed awaited him when delivered up to his
son-in-law, William the Third. Bloodthirsty and merciless himself, he
imagined others in his own likeness. These apprehensions are evident
enough in the incoherent words he used to those ignorant fishermen and
oyster-dredgers, and later, at Faversham, in his frantic appeals to
be let go. The exulting mob brought him to that town and lodged him
at first in the “Queen’s Arms” inn, now the “Ship” hotel. News then
spreading of these strange things, and of the personal danger in which
the King appeared to be placed, the Earl of Winchilsea, a Protestant
nobleman, but no revolutionary, hurried over with others from
Canterbury to protect him, and removed him to the Mayor’s house. There
he was kept a prisoner for two days, by rejoicing crowds, who jeered at
his terrified appeals: “The Prince of Orange is hunting for my life.
If you do not let me fly now,” he exclaimed, “it will be too late. My
blood will be upon your heads if I fall a martyr.”

A troop of Life-guards was sent to bring him back to Rochester, whence
he was soon after allowed to escape to France. “There is nothing
so much to be wished,” William the Third had declared, when the
possibility of James fleeing the kingdom had been put before him. Thus,
in a truly contemptuous way, he was allowed to depart, and so ended the
rule of the House of Stuart. No one in authority had the least desire
for his blood; although it is quite certain that his execution would
have been extremely popular.

The waterside village of Oare, on the way to Faversham, beside the
creek, is one of several places so named, with slightly differing
spellings, throughout the country. The name means simply “shore.”

The strangely beautiful stone spire of Faversham parish church, a
church oddly dedicated to “St. Mary of Charity,” piques the curiosity
of the stranger from afar. It greatly dignifies distant views of
the town, and is especially effective against a stormy or overcast
sky, when it shows whitely and boldly. It was built in 1797, and was
intended for Gothic architecture, as Gothic was then understood. It is,
of course, easy enough to criticise its details, but, taken as a whole,
it is an exceedingly fine and effective work, and gives Faversham
an individuality that would not be obtained by the ordinary type of
tower or spire. There are very few such spires as this, supported on
flying ribs of stone, in the country. The others are at King’s College,
Aberdeen, St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, St. Nicholas, Newcastle, and
St. Dunstan-in-the-East, London.

The reality of Faversham is perhaps something of a shock on coming
to close quarters, following the invitation of that beckoning spire.
There are picturesque and stately corners in this ancient, but still
thriving, port, but the corners and purlieus that are by no means
pleasant are found along the waterside. There are situated vast heaps
of rubbish from London dustbins, brought to these quays by barges, for
use in the brickmaking that is one of Faversham’s principal means
of livelihood. The great heaps and the barges lying by the quays look
picturesque enough in an illustration with the church spire for a
background, but the cinders and the dust are distressing when a high
wind is blowing.

[Illustration: FAVERSHAM.]

The interior of Faversham church should be seen to be believed. It is
a curious example of the eighteenth-century way with ancient Gothic
architecture, and discloses an attempt to convert a Gothic nave into
an Ionic interior. The effort was a half-hearted one, for while the
columns are in the Ionic style, the Perpendicular clerestory windows
remain; with, however, a fillet of classic ornament around them. The
fine large Early English transepts have not been interfered with. On a
pillar of the north transept is a twelfth-century fresco representing
the Nativity, and in the chancel remains the brass to one William
Thornbury, rector and anchorite, 1481.

In the churchyard will be seen this curious epitaph:

                             WILLIAM LEPINE
                          of facetious Memory,
                       Ob. the 11th of March 1778
                              Æt. 30 Years
                                  Alas

    Where be your gibes now?
    Your gambols? your flashes
    of Merriment that were wont
    to set the Table in a roar?

This is, of course, a quotation from _Hamlet_. Lepine, who ended so
untimely, was a dissolute and convivial lawyer of Faversham.




CHAPTER VII

MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE--SITTINGBOURNE OLD INNS--MURSTON--LUDDENHAM


A curious and but-little-visited part of the Kentish littoral is
that which stretches, some eight miles or so, between Iwade, Milton,
Sittingbourne, Tonge, and Faversham. It is that part of the country,
going down to the low-lying shores of the Swale, which was in olden
times spoken of as being possessed of “wealth without health.” The land
was, and is still, wonderfully fertile, but in remote days was full
of malaria. To-day, as the traveller by the leisurely South-Eastern
Railway passes from Sittingbourne, past Teynham to Faversham, he
sees orchards and farmsteads, grazing sheep, and many evidences of
prosperity and beauty. It seems to him like a Land of Promise. And
truly, once past the squalid papermaking and brickmaking purlieus of
Sittingbourne, this is a district of exceptional beauty; by no means
flat; and rich in orchards of cherry, apple, and pear.

If we retrace our route from Sheppey, and, coming again across the
bridge at King’s Ferry, turn off to the left beyond Iwade, we shall
presently come into Milton Regis, otherwise Milton-next-Sittingbourne,
past the fine and very striking church, of Norman and Early English
periods. It is, in this age of silly “suffies,” generally locked, and
therefore the tourist finds considerable difficulties in the way of
seeing the beautiful interior and the three Northwode brasses: a knight
in heraldic tabard; another about 1480; and John Northwode and wife,
1496. But the odd, and much more humble, tombstone in the churchyard to
one “Abraham Washiton late Hvsband of Alise Washinton, now living at
Milton, whome had in all six hvsbands,” 1601, is easily found. Alice,
you will observe, was at that date “now living,” and so, for all we
know, may have married again; but possibly she may by that time have
struck the surviving men of Milton as rather lethal.

[Illustration: THE CHURCH, MILTON REGIS.]

Before ever there was a town of Sittingbourne there was a town of
Milton, standing upon Milton Creek. It was from early times a royal
manor, and until ages comparatively recent Sittingbourne, as the lesser
place, was best described as “Sittingbourne-next-Milton.” But, from
being situated directly upon the great Dover Road, Sittingbourne grew,
while Milton languished. Great inns sprang up beside that historic
highway, to serve the needs of travellers. No less a personage than
Henry the Fifth, coming home flushed with the victory of Agincourt
in 1415, was entertained at the “Red Lion,” a hostelry still in the
forefront in 1541, when Henry the Eighth was its guest, and held there
one of his fateful Councils, which probably resulted in some one losing
his head. The “George,” the “Rose,” and the “Red Lion” seem to have
long been the best inns. Hasted, the historian of Kent, says the “Rose”
was the most superb of any in the kingdom; but that must have been at
a much later date, for we are not to suppose that those two monarchs
stayed at a second-rate house. For the “Red Lion” you will now seek in
vain, although there is a “Lion,” without any specified colour; a large
old inn, with long, seventeenth-century red-brick frontage: twelve
windows in a row; quite the largest in the town, although part is now
let off as a bank. A quaint, old-world scene presents itself up the
archway entrance to the courtyard, with the prettily framed windows of
the coffee-room on one side.

The “Rose,” once “the most superb,” is a thing of the past, for we
cannot affect to believe that the small house which now bears that
sign is its modern representative. No: what was once the real “Rose”
stands adjoining, and is parcelled into four shops. A tablet on the
frontage bears the date 1708, with a rose sculptured in full bloom.
The elevation is a handsome two-storied one, with projecting eaves
supported by richly carved consoles. A tall window at the side,
apparently that of an old assembly-room, runs through two floors.

[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, MILTON REGIS.]

Opposite is the old “George,” red brick, about 1720, with nine windows
in a row. The building is in two parts, with two coach-entrances, and
must once have been an important inn. Up one entrance is the Liberal
Club, and up the other, oddly enough, is the Conservative Club. Along
this last, looking back, you see a picturesque tile-hung front, hung
with wistaria.

Finally, just past the Wesleyan Chapel is the old “Crown,” now a shop.
The old coach-yard, very picturesque, has five old postboys’ dwellings
in timber, now much dilapidated, with broken windows.

But Sittingbourne is not, on the whole, an engaging town, and the
bubbling brook, the “seething burn,” as the Anglo-Saxons styled it,
which gave the place its name, has since 1830 been hidden away from
view in a pipe beneath the road. It used to flow across the highway
at the east end of the church. The industrial modern circumstances of
Sittingbourne, the making of paper and bricks, are the very denial
of beauty. Lloyd’s paper-mills will be found at Milton. There, on
the banks of the muddy Milton Creek, you see mountainous stacks
of wood-pulp, for the making of paper. The scene, with the greasy
mud-banks and the squalid pieces of wrapping-paper, is inexpressibly
ugly. If there is any choice, Milton Creek is even more beastly than
the brickmaking village of Murston, below Sittingbourne; and even that
is a horror.

But, although Milton is so ill a place, full of lodgings for tramps,
and all such mean circumstances, there are yet in its narrow streets
some fine old houses, of good architectural character, which hint,
not obscurely, that this was, two hundred years ago, a place of
charm and gentility. On an old house, now the “Waterman’s Arms,” in
Flushing Street, may be seen a quaintly sculptured stone sign dated
1662, representing Adam and Eve standing on either side of that fatal
apple-tree: Eve about to pluck the fruit which caused all the trouble.
The sign is the arms of the Fruiterers’ Company; but the reason of it
being here is not known.

[Illustration: SIGN OF THE ADAM AND EVE, MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE.]

It is perhaps worth while to turn aside, on leaving Sittingbourne, to
see what manner of place Murston may be. It has already been described
in unfavourable terms, but how unutterably wretched a spot this great
brickmaking centre is can only be learnt by close inspection. One comes
into it by a mile-long road which for the most part stands prominently
up above the surrounding country, something in the likeness of a
railway embankment; the brick-earth of which the neighbouring fields
once consisted having been dug out to great depths on either side. Down
below there, in that artificially low level, the valuable brick-earth
having been excavated, many of those fields have once again been given
over to agriculture. Crops seem to do well in this curious situation,
deriving benefit from what a native described to the present writer as
the “mysture,” which is apparently Cantise or Cockney for “moisture.”

At the end of this singular interval, close to the shores of Milton
Creek, is Murston. Whatever beauty the village once possessed has
long been obliterated in its expansion into an industrial slum of
long, unlovely, characterless streets of human kennels. Even the
parish church has been severely dealt with, only the chancel of the
old building being left; and that stands in a mangy little walled
and locked enclosure, strewn with old tins and other refuse. Such is
Murston; and the “brickies” who live in it match the place completely.

It is pleasant to think and to know that Murston is exceptional.
Beautiful country, wholly unspoiled, immediately adjoins it, and one
comes pleasantly past Tonge, in search of the coast-line, past Chekes
Court Farm and Blacketts, to Conyers Quay. There indeed is again an
unpleasant interval, for advantage has been taken of a slimy little
creek opening out of the Swale to erect a brick-factory, whence the
bricks are barged to Sheerness, and round up the Thames; the barges
bringing back from London cargoes of cinders and the contents of London
dustbins, which (under the name of “breeze”) is useful in the making of
bricks. The immediate and intimate part of Conyers Quay is therefore,
it will be readily understood, undesirable alike to sight and smell.

[Illustration: LUDDENHAM.]

The roads of these parts carefully avoid the shore; the one leaving
this spot running directly inland, to Teynham, where orchards and
hop-gardens and old cottages neighbour the church, in a pretty,
diversified landscape. From Teynham, through the hamlet of Deerton
Street, one comes to Buckland, where the scanty ruins of an old church
stand in front of a farm, on the other side of Buckland crossing.
Near by is a humble old timber-framed cottage on the edge of
hop-gardens. This was originally the parsonage. Beyond it, over Stone
level-crossing, a road leads away on the left to Luddenham, a solitary
parish on rising ground overlooking the marshes. There is no village,
only scattered farms and cottages; but the picture formed by the church
on its height, neighboured by the Court Lodge, now the largest of
the neighbouring farms, devoted partly to hops and in part to fruit,
is an unusual and striking one. There you see the church, partly
Early English, with an eighteenth-century red-brick tower, displayed
against the skyline in company with some hop-oasts, the hollow in
the foreground on the left, evidently once a creek, planted with
bush-fruit; while on the right the hop-gardens are screened by a weird
hedge of polled poplars, looking very knobbly and knuckly with their
annual trimming.

From Luddenham we come steeply uphill and then down, through Davington,
again into Faversham.




CHAPTER VIII

GOODNESTONE--GRAVENEY--SEASALTER--WHITSTABLE AND THE OYSTER FISHERY


The road from Faversham to Whitstable winds level for long distances,
passing at first through a charming district of cherry-orchards,
interspersed with emerald pastures, with sheep feeding under the trees,
and evidences of much poultry-keeping, in the many coops filled with
anxious hens clucking nervously after their young broods. Here, too,
you see hop-gardens; looking more than a little bare in spring, but
with plenty of work going on, chiefly in trimming and tarring the ends
of the new ash-poles that are to be planted, thick as forests, for
the hop-bines to grow upon. Here and there are the hutches in which
the hop-pickers will live in August, and now and again you see an
oast-house; the old buildings with their quaint outlines, the new apt
to be eye-sorrows for angularity and sheer commonplace ugliness.

It is perhaps best to come this way in the sweet of the year, when the
cherry-blossom mantles the trees with purest white, and when there is
everywhere an inspiring and heartening air of anticipation, not only
in the preparations going forward in the hop-gardens, but in the great
barns where the thousands of cherry-baskets are collecting, awaiting
the cherry-picking.

A lovely, lovable corner, this, past Goodnestone on the way to
Graveney, and it seems prosperous, too. Moreover, the yellow gravel
road is excellent.

The name of Goodnestone is a corruption of “Godwin’s Town.” It was one
of the manors of the great patriot Saxon, Earl Godwin. Graveney stands
where the wide-spreading marshes of Seasalter stretch away to the sea.
There is little of it, beside the ancient, time-worn church, containing
a fine canopied brass to John Martyn and wife, 1436. He was a Judge of
the King’s Bench. The effigy shows him holding a heart, inscribed “IHV
MCY,” in his hands.

A stone in the churchyard, not otherwise remarkable, mentions a place
with the odd name “Old Wives’ Leaze.” One naturally wants to know
something of these old wives and of their leaze, but disappointment
dogs the footsteps of the inquirer, as closely and as constantly as
his own shadow. An old man mowing the grass of the churchyard remarks
incuriously, on his attention being drawn to it, that he “’spects it’s
only a name.” “What’s in a name?” he seems to suggest with Shakespeare.
Much sometimes.

Later inquiries prove “Old Wives’ Leaze” to be a hamlet high on a
hill-top, one mile from Chilham, some seven miles distant; but I
have no information as to the old wives, nor does any one else appear
to possess any. The name, in fact, seems, like so many others, to be
a corruption of some forgotten name, and is indeed supposed to have
originally been “Overs,” or “Oldwoods Leaze,” or Lees.

In the marshes of Seasalter the hedgerows die away, leaving the flat
road open and unfenced and bordered by watery dykes, in which last
year’s reeds, rubbing together in the wind, keep up a rustling murmur,
looking sere and wan until with the coming of June they are replaced
by newer growths. The dykes quarter the marshes in all directions, and
keep the pastures efficiently drained, but the sight of men busily
engaged in digging thick slab-mud from them proves that they require
constant care.

The scenery is that of Holland; even down to the particular detail
of grass-grown earthen embankments against the sea, which long ago
encroached here and destroyed the original church of Seasalter, and
has in modern times caused its successor to be abandoned, in favour of
a new building in Whitstable. In any case, it is difficult to see the
need of a church where there are but few houses, unless some modern
St. Francis were wishful of preaching here to the birds, the seagulls
and the curlews that haunt these marshes and maintain a mingled
screaming and melancholy piping, varied sometimes with what sounds like
demoniacal chucklings or mocking laughter.

Inland you see the wooded uplands of the old forest district of Blean,
with the whirling sails of distant windmills seeming to beckon over the
hills and far away. Of the sea one observes nothing until the grassy
embankment is climbed, hard by the “Old Sportsman” inn that stands
sheltered under the lee of it, but from the top is seen the entrance
of the Swale, dotted with many small vessels, with Sheppey about three
miles across the channel and the pink-washed houses of the coastguard
shining out yonder on Shellness Point.

From this spot the embankment gradually dies down and the land rises
slightly to Whitstable. Stakes are stuck in the ooze of the foreshore,
which is strewn with myriads of cockle and mussel-shells. Passing a
coastguard-station where the coastguard’s chief anxieties seem to be
concerned rather with his cocks and hens than with guarding the coast,
the road comes past the “Jolly Sailor” and the “Blue Anchor,” into
the hamlet of Seasalter, and thence winds inland. Here the approach
to Whitstable is heralded by the notice-boards of the “Bolingbroke
Building Estate,” a would-be suburb that appears by no means to have
attained success. It is one of the very many attempts, so curiously
characteristic of these speculative and impatient times of ours, to
discount the future; to make a place, _ad hoc_, instead of letting
it gradually develop, in response to requirements. The essential
difference is that in other times places grew by gradual accretion of
population. The population grew, and the houses increased gradually
to meet its needs; but in this present era of “building estates”
on the edges of towns, it is the speculative greed of landowners
that seeks to build or let on building lease, and it is the public
which is coy. The imaginations of landowners riot so freely on the
alluring prospect of ground-rents that there is nowadays scarce a
seaside town whose outskirts are not rendered squalid and utterly
detestable with projected roads that are grass-grown failures, and
with notice-boards in various stages of abject decay, offering
“desirable sites” whose desirability appears to be more evident to
the vendors than to purchasers. Here, at the approach to Whitstable,
notice-boards make what appear to be splendid offers, “Title-free,
rates-free, tithe-free”--everything, it seems, but rent-free; and yet
the “Bolingbroke Building Estate” has not resolved into much more than
a waste of scrubby pasture, dotted plentifully with sign-posts marking
imaginary streets and avenues with the most grandiloquent names:
Valkyrie Avenue, Medina Road, Wauchope Avenue, and so forth. One would
conclude, not merely that the ground is _not_ “ripe for building,” but
that it has not even blossomed.

Having successfully passed the attractions of “Ye Olde Sportsman,” the
“Blue Anchor,” the “Jolly Sailor,” and finally the “Rose in Bloom” and
the “Two Brewers,” we come into Whitstable.

Domesday Book, which mentions “Seseltre,” says nothing of Whitstable,
but there was then a “Hundred of Whitstapele,” a division even then of
ancient standing. The name was, in its origin, evidently that of some
prominent white pole, or post, or even of some white church-tower; for
the word “stapol” means any of these; surviving in modern English as
“steeple.” But no one will ever know what that object really was from
which, in such roundabout fashion, the town of Whitstable derives its
name.

It is, at first sight, a singularly unattractive place; and the more
you see of it, the less you like it. The streets are narrow and mean,
without the saving grace of picturesqueness, and the sea-front adds to
the squalor by being occupied by the railway-station and a very coaly
dock.

Having thus successfully taken away the character of Whitstable, I will
now address myself to the oyster fishery.

There are numerous conflicting accounts of the reason for Julius
Cæsar’s invasion of Britain. Some historians consider he was impressed
with the riches of the country in gold and skins, and some--with
clearer vision, no doubt--are of opinion that he was actuated by sheer
lust of conquest. Whitstable, however, is earnestly of opinion that
Cæsar’s coming was entirely and exclusively prompted by an appetite
for “Whitstable natives.” It is a flattering belief. At any rate, the
“Rutupine oysters” (the “natives” in question) were at that time high
in favour at Rome, and continued so with all the Roman emperors;
so that one instinctively associates “oyster” and “emperor” in
indissoluble company.

No one will ever discover the origin of oyster-eating. The eating of
the first must have been a thrilling experiment, as James the First
declared. “He was a very valiant man,” said our British Solomon, “who
first ventured upon the eating of oysters.”

One can imagine that man, faced with the dilemma of starving or being
poisoned, making the awful experiment. Whoever he was, or whenever he
flourished, he merits the gratitude of that portion of the world which
eats oysters.

Speaking for myself, and those of my fellow men who are illogical
enough not to like oysters--never having tried them, and never
intending to do so--I am quite cold upon the subject, and therefore am
inclined the more to applaud Seneca, who, austere philosopher that he
was, described the oyster as “a thing that cannot be called food,” but
an abstruse luxury, “a provocative of appetite, causing those who are
already full to eat more.” Thus he dismisses oyster-eaters to the cold
shades of contempt occupied by such people as those who take bitters
and wash themselves out with table-waters. But Seneca himself was an
oyster-eater, and spoke, as your true philosopher should speak, at
first-hand knowledge.

The Rutupine oyster of Roman times still remains, as the “Whitstable
native” of our own day, the prime favourite, and the cultivation
of him here employs some three thousand people. We shall see the
fishing-grounds to better advantage on having left Whitstable behind
and ascending the cliffs of Tankerton. They are not lofty cliffs, but
they do assuredly command a fine view, out over this shallow sea at
the entrance of the Swale. There, where at low water you perceive the
long “Street Stones” stretching out to sea, many of the eighty-five or
more of the Whitstable oyster-fleet will, at the beginning of August,
when the season begins, generally be seen going to their work of
dredging up the young oysters, so far away as Margate, presently to
return with the spoils of their dredge-nets, for laying down in these
Whitstable grounds. Others are engaged in dredging for the mature
oysters, ready for the market. It takes seven years for the Whitstable
natives to reach maturity, and they do so only to perfection in this
patch of shallow water, some two miles square. There are many theories
to account for the especial virtues that reside in these exceptionally
favoured waters; but the generally received explanation of the
undoubted fact is that the shallowness of the water permits it to be
readily warmed by the sun, and that the streams descending from the
land keep the sea-bottom free from mud. The Colchester native, from the
shores of Essex, has a great reputation, but he is often dredged up and
taken to finally mature in Whitstable waters.

[Illustration: WHITSTABLE: THE OLD LIGHTHOUSE AND THE OYSTER FLEET.]

The natural history of the oyster is interesting. There is, for one
thing, no “race-suicide” about what would-be eloquent journalists were
once used to term the “succulent bivalve,” for it has been estimated
that each oyster produces 276,000 little ones. It will thus be readily
supposed that it takes all the efforts of the busy dredgers to prevent
over-population. But the oyster has many enemies, from his birth
upwards. Beginning as “spat,” or spawn, in June or July, the young swim
about for a while, a prey for everything else that swims. They then
settle down to grow shells, at the rate of one inch in diameter every
year, for three years, after which the growth is slower. Meanwhile,
sand, mud, and weeds, but especially crabs and starfish, slay the
oysters in hundreds of thousands; and frosts often cause great havoc,
that in the winter of 1890–91 being responsible for £15,000 damage.
But the starfish is the oyster’s worst enemy. He spreads two or three
of his arms over the upper shell of the oyster and places the others
firmly on the ground, his position being such that his central orifice,
or mouth, is at the edge of the shell at the point farthest from the
hinge. Then he applies a steady pull. In course of time the oyster gets
tired, his big muscle gradually relaxes, and the shell reluctantly
opens. The rest is silence.

Thus it happens that the oyster-fishers regard the starfish with
the bitterest hatred. It is probably the worst feeling these burly,
genial, jerseyed fellows entertain; for they don’t really dislike
the person who doesn’t eat oysters. Him they regard merely with a
half-amused, half-pitying contempt. Always, of course, excepting
oyster-poachers, against whom no law can, of course, be sufficiently
severe. To deal with the poachers who come out at night to dredge in
the preserves of the fishermen who, after ages of oyster-culture,
were incorporated by Act of Parliament into the Corporation of Free
Dredgers, in 1793, and have in latter years converted themselves
into the “Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company,” there are guard-boats
always at hand, and, should they not be sufficient, there are artful
contrivances laid upon the sea-bed, called “the creeps.” These consist
of chains with barbed grapnels attached at intervals, which intercept
and destroy the dredge-nets of these illegal dredgers.

There are not many prettier sights than that of the oyster-fleet,
on a sunny day; the red-brown sails of the ten- to twenty-ton yawls
going in stately procession over these shallow waters. They come back
with uncounted millions of “brood” for laying down in this restricted
pasture off Whitstable, or with mature oysters for the markets. In the
season, which extends by Act of Parliament from August 5th to May 14th,
as many as 200,000 “natives” are despatched from Whitstable in a day;
and great is the activity to be observed here in that time, on the
foreshore, and in the wooden shanties where they are scrubbed clean
and packed carefully in barrels. Be sure, the Whitstable folk will
impress upon you that there is no competition possible with the local
specialty.

Surely he must have been one of these local patriots who originally
propounded this excruciating conundrum: “What is the difference between
a Whitstable oyster and a bad one?” the answer being, “One is a native,
the other a settler!”

A pretty, pretty wit!

Among other efforts on this subject this may be recalled: “Why is an
oyster the greatest curiosity in the world?” “Because you have to take
it out of its bed before you can tuck it in.”

One quaint old feature of Whitstable beach is the unconventional
lighthouse, cobbled up out of some old copperas-works. It makes not a
bad picture, looking out across the Swale, with the cliffs of Warden
Point beyond, and the oyster-dredging fleet in between. At low water
the shallow channel displays a long rocky ridge called the “Street
Stones,” supposed to be the remains of a Roman causeway.

At the farther end of Whitstable, and giving character to an otherwise
featureless shore, is the wooded bluff of Tankerton, the growing
residential suburb that Whitstable is at last throwing off. New roads
strike through it, and there are fond hopes that the place will become
a great seaside resort; but it has hitherto been slow in developing.
Meanwhile, the cliff-top--a very modest cliff-top though it be--
affords the best view of the “Street Stones” and of the crowded
flotilla of the oyster-fleet. The coast-line through the hamlet of
Swalecliffe, and on to and through Herne Bay, is protected from wastage
by the sea by serried ranks of closely-set wooden groynes, erected in
the shingle at enormous expense and looking, in the long perspective,
like gigantic combs.




CHAPTER IX

HERNE BAY--RECULVER--WANTSUM--SARRE


Herne Bay is a place of entirely modern creation, and does not stand
upon a bay. The coastline, in fact, runs remarkably straight between
Whitstable and Margate, and anything in the nature of a bay is not to
be seen. But, as old writers speak of a point here, it seems likely
that a bay of some sort existed and has disappeared in the great
wastage of the land that has certainly taken place all along this coast
and around Sheppey. The “Street Stones” at Whitstable, pointing to a
Roman road into a vanished country, the shallowness of the sea, and the
many sands out there, and the vague legends that “Herne the Hunter”
once chased the deer where the sea now rolls, all support the idea of
great encroachments upon the land.

The town of Herne Bay is built upon a foreshore rising gradually from
the water. Where the houses end this line of coast is known as “The
Downs”; a rough upland stretch of common or commonable land which forms
a peculiar feature of the place, and is an unconventional playground
for the children, Herne Bay being above all else a seaside resort of
unsophisticated ways, and favoured by parents with large families.

Herne Bay was one of the earlier created seaside resorts, and rose from
out the azure main--or rather, the somewhat mud-streaked sea that
does duty for such--at the command of speculators, about 1830. It was
actually created, for until that time there were but a few cottages by
the shore, or anywhere in the neighbourhood, with a tiny green as the
only cultivated ground. The first pier at Herne Bay was the Royal Pier,
opened in 1831, the enterprise of a company which spent £50,000 on the
building of it. This was a wooden structure, 3,000 feet long, and had
a set of rails along its entire length. Carriages fitted with sails
were made to run along the tramway when the wind served. At those times
when it did not, I suppose one got out and shoved! Such were the simple
pleasures of Herne Bay when William the Fourth was King. Passengers
from the steamers landed at the pier-head. At the entrance were a
number of stone balusters, part of the parapet of old London Bridge,
demolished in 1832. They may still be noticed at the entrance to the
present pier.

But Herne Bay did not prosper. In vain was a parade installed in 1837,
and with it a Clock Tower. The Clock Tower is still with us at Herne
Bay; it forms indeed the one architectural, or decorative, feature of
the place. True, it is not greatly decorative, unless we adopt the
poet’s maxim in its favour, “the useful and the beautiful are one.” Of
the utility of a Clock Tower, with a prominent clock in good working
order, there can be, I take it, no doubt whatever; if only in that it
prevents children numerously and continually asking testy old gentlemen
what time it is.

Railways ruined the original pier financially, and neglect and the
teredo worm wrecked it materially. A second pier was built in 1873, and
a third, the present, in 1878, considerably longer than the original
and totalling a length of 3,920 feet. Electric cars run along it.

The fortunes of Herne Bay have of late years recovered, and bid fair
to continue so long as the site of it exists. There, however, is the
problem. The sea is in a destructively encroaching humour, and thus
the most elaborate defensive works have been necessary, to arrest the
scour of the shingle. No fewer than ninety-one stout timber groynes
project from the beach fronting the town, and do succeed in keeping the
foreshore intact.

Herne, the parent village of Herne Bay, is a quiet place, a good mile
and a half from the shore. It was originally subject to Reculver, the
mother-church of this district, to which the lesser churches paid dues.
In the end, Herne grew important enough, and bold enough, to refuse
tribute, and was threatened by Reculver in 1335 with excommunication;
to no purpose. But the parish still pays five shillings a year for the
repair of Reculver church, although that building is now nothing but a
ruin, and its twin towers existent only as land and sea marks.

A kind of poetic justice, a manner of retribution, befell Herne in
1833, when the newly planned town of Herne Bay, less than two miles
distant, obtained an Act of Parliament making it independent of Herne.

In the fine church are some interesting brasses, notably the remarkable
example to Christian, wife of Matthew Phelip. He was that hard warlike
Mayor of London who led the citizens to the battle of Barnet. She
“departed from this vale of misery” in 1471. The brass to Peter Halle
and his wife Elizabeth, 1420, show them lovingly, hand in hand.

   “Here lies a piece of Christ, a star in dust,
    A vein of gold, a china dish that must
    Be used in Heaven, when God shall feed the just.”

Nicholas Ridley, who, as Bishop of London, suffered martyrdom in 1555
at Oxford, was appointed vicar here in 1538. Leaving, he exclaimed,
“Farewell, Herne, thou worshipful and wealthy parish, the first cure
whereunto I was called to minister God’s word. Thou hast heard of my
mouth ofttime the word of God preached, not after the Popish trade, but
after God’s gospel. Oh that the fruit had answered to the seed! But I
bless God for all that godly virtue and zeal of God’s word which the
Lord by preaching of His word did kindle manifestly both in the heart
and the life of that godly woman, my Lady Fiennes.” A brass to that
excellent lady, dated 1539, is among those to be seen here.

[Illustration: HERNE: THE “SMUGGLER’S LOOK-OUT.”]

The name of Herne, which really derives from the Anglo-Saxon _hierne_,
a corner, has by some been thought to derive from the herons that once
abounded in this marshy district; and the modern town of Herne Bay has
boldly taken a heron into the arms it has assumed. The village still
keeps some curious old houses; among them a white-painted corner house
opposite the church, with a tiny triangular window under the eaves,
said to have been a smuggler’s look-out and signalling station. A still
more remarkable building is that on the hill above the church, called,
from its ground-plan, the “Box Iron.” Extensive cellars exist beneath
it, and under the road, with a trap-door on the adjacent green. This
building, now very dilapidated, is supposed to have been a smugglers’
warehouse.

To Reculver from Herne Bay is a pleasant three miles’ walk, with
pastures on the right and the open sea on left. The cyclist and
the road-user in general must, however, go inland, by Beltinge and
Hillborough. Reculver stands at a dead-end. Having seen the historic
place, you cannot go forward, but must retrace a part of the way.
It is a strange, uncanny-looking corner, both by reason of its
end-of-the-world appearance and on account of those twin towers of
Reculver church which, crested as they are by skeleton iron steeples
and vast weather-vanes, have possibly given rise to the vulgar error of
the plural form, “Reculvers.” The place-name, a corruption of the Roman
_Regulbium_, no doubt seemed so strange that the ignorant thought it
was a description of these towers. Here in ancient times the Wantsum
channel, dividing the Isle of Thanet from the mainland, opened to the
sea, and here the Romans had a fortified port, corresponding with
_Rutupiæ_, at the southern extremity of the channel, hard by Sandwich.
Encroachment of the sea has left but little of the Roman station here,
and the church-towers, now the peculiar care of the Trinity House,
stand on the very edge of the tide, instead of half a mile from the
shore. This spot, traditionally that to which the converted King
Ethelbert retired and died, has always been a prominent sea-mark to
mariners, who must keep well inshore here if they would avoid the shoal
called Margate Hook. An old legend tells how the Abbess of Davington,
near Faversham, being narrowly saved from shipwreck here, while her
sister was drowned, built the twin-towered church alike in gratitude
for her own safety, to her sister’s memory, and for the welfare of
all who should in future voyage past. Ingoldsby tells the story, with
a vast difference, in his own peculiar vein, in “The Brothers of
Birchington,” Robert and Richard, whom he names as the none-too-pious
founders.

Reculver church, as its remaining towers show, was a fine example of
Early English or Late Norman architecture, and could easily have been
preserved; but the wanton hands and material minds of 1809 decreed
its destruction, lest the sea should do it instead! It would not
have passed the wit of man to preserve it, as the towers themselves
have been preserved. Substantial stone-and-cement aprons have been
constructed here by the Trinity House, and long protective wooden
groynes run out to defend the towers against further assault. Grim and
minatory they look in certain lights, as impressive in their way as the
giant statue of Memnon in Egypt.

[Illustration: RECULVER.]

The pilgrim of the coast must now turn inland, a good three miles, to
Chislett, a village in the marshes, whose name derives from “Cheselea,”
_i.e._ “shingle isle.” From thence, in less than a mile, he comes to
the main Canterbury and Margate road, at Grove Ferry.

The road leading across these marshy levels is really an ancient
causeway, marked on old maps “Sarre Wall.” This old history of it is
still very plainly manifest in its straight course, in its level,
raised above the surrounding fields, and in the deep dykes, brimming
with water and filled with rushes, on either side. The tall, delicate
poplars that line Sarre Wall and confer upon it a distinctive grace,
like that of some country road in Picardy, give a gentle sighing voice
to every breeze. It requires stronger winds to set the sword-blades of
the clustered rushes rustling sharply in the dykes.

This road into Sarre is your only entrance this way into the Isle of
Thanet, now an island only by courtesy, but still to be entered or
departed from by but two roads, one at either extremity; the one now
under discussion, the other at Sandwich. The marshy character of the
land still renders roads into Thanet scarce. The Wantsum, the channel
that formerly divided the Isle of Thanet from the mainland of Kent,
flowed past here in a salt-water estuary half a mile broad in the
times of the Romans, who were so concerned to defend each of its two
mouths, that they built the strong maritime fortresses of _Regulbium_
and _Rutupium_ where ruined Reculver and Richborough now stand. The
direct way into Thanet was then, as now, by this road, but it was by
ferry that travellers then crossed, and continued for many centuries to
cross. The Wantsum had already somewhat shrunk in the time of Bede, who
died in 735. It was then three furlongs wide. But that it was readily
navigable for ships for another couple of centuries is proved by Earl
Godwin’s fleet sailing through. That the channel must, however, have
been known from the earliest times as a dwindling passage seems evident
from the very name given to it by the Saxons; an adjectival form of the
verb _wansian_, to diminish, or to wane.[1]

    [1] It is also said to have a common origin with the name of the
        river Wensum, in Norfolk, and to signify a winding stream.

Yet this Wantsum appears to have been practicable for small vessels
until 1460, and it was not until 1485 that it had narrowed sufficiently
for the original bridge, dating from that year, to be built. That
bridge was of course a work of piety, owing its origin to the monastery
of the Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul, at Minster, which had from ancient
times owned the ferry and had derived from it a handsome revenue. In a
curious map of Thanet, the work of one of the monks of St. Augustine’s,
Canterbury, and now in the library of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, is to be found a representation of the ferry-boat, with a
boatman and a nun, while a man is observed wading from the shore to the
boat, carrying a monk as passenger on his back. He is evidently one of
those employed at the ferry by the Abbey, for he wears a cross-badge on
his right arm.

[Illustration: THE WANTSUM FERRY.

  _From an ancient Map._
]

The lands on either side of the now ineffectual Wantsum are known still
as “The Salts.”

The days when Sarre was a port are long since done and forgotten,
except by industrious delvers into old and musty records. At the same
time, it may be not entirely out of place, while lingering here by the
parapet of the little bridge, to recall those old circumstances of this
“ville of Sarre,” as it is still called. That it is so becomes evident
to all who pass through it, from the small notice-board displayed
at either end. Going eastward, you read “Town of Sarre,” and coming
west, “Ville of Sarre”; and greatly do these inscriptions puzzle
those wayfarers who have not read into the history of the place, and
therefore do not know that it is still technically a “ville,” that is
to say, one of the smaller members of the Cinque Port of Sandwich.

Standing here, on the insignificant little bridge that now spans the
shrunken Wantsum which in times gone by spread where the grass now
grows and the cows graze, it is difficult to realise those mediæval
days when Sarre was a favourite port of embarkation for France.

It is quite obvious that the name of the Wantsum and the fact of there
being nowadays but little water in it must be productive, year by year,
of many jocular remarks. I have heard cyclists and others, halting on
the bridge, and looking upon the narrow thread of water, say, “Wantsum?
yes, wants a good deal I should say. Well, I suppose it’ll _have_ to
want.”

This is always fondly considered to be new and original; but a census
of wayside remarks overheard in the tourist season would doubtless
reveal it to be said, in one form or another, many times a day. The
people of Sarre probably got tired of hearing it centuries ago, when
the early travellers from Canterbury exercised their wits upon it.
Only, in those days, you know, before the Wantsum had shrunk, and when
it was yet a broad channel, with a ferry-boat plying across, the joke
took another form; such as “H’m, Wantsum, call ye it, fellow? Beshrew
me, i’ fakins, but it seems, methinks, to want little.” The ferryman
must before long have grown quite misanthropical, at hearing the like.

Sir F. C. Burnand, sometime editor of _Punch_, and supposed to be a
wit, wrote and published in 1897 what he called the “ZZ Guide to the
Bold and Beautiful Kentish Coast.” “ZZ” was a new and original way of
writing “zigzag”! How did he think of it? He, of course, fell a ready
victim to the Wantsum’s name. “The river,” he writes, “was called the
‘Wantsum,’ and the low marshy land was named the ‘Wantsum Moor.’ But
’twas the fate of the Wantsum to be swallowed up by the bigger river
Stour. ‘Nobody Wantsum,’ and so the stream disappeared.”

Really, now!

[Illustration: ST. NICHOLAS-AT-WADE.]

You will search in vain for the parish church of Sarre. That ancient
building fell into decay when the port itself ceased to be a seaport
and dwindled to its present condition of a small village; and the
ruined walls of it became, in the usual manner, a useful quarry for the
local farmers engaged in building cowsheds and out-buildings, until
all traces of them disappeared. This church stood on the hill-top
between Sarre and Monkton. The church of St. Nicholas-at-Wade now
serves for Sarre. It stands prominently ahead, on the hill-top, with
tall black-flint tower, and opposite it is a group of picturesque
seventeenth-century houses, of Dutch-like aspect. The dedication to St.
Nicholas, the patron of sailors, marks the ancient maritime situation
of the place, and the termination “at-Wade” is a corruption of the
Latin “ad vadum”--that is to say, “at the ford”--an allusion to the
passage of the Wantsum.




CHAPTER X

THANET’S CORNFIELDS--MONKTON--MINSTER-IN-THANET--BIRCHINGTON--QUEX
PARK--WESTGATE--DANDELION.


The enormous size of the cornfields of Thanet is immediately apparent,
and is one of the most striking features of the Isle. The soil, too,
is remarkably fertile; owing, according to the old monkish chronicles,
to the Divine favour shown to the locality through the virtues of St.
Augustine and his Christian mission. Nothing was too tough for the
imaginations of those mediæval monks to assimilate.

Three miles across these vast, hedgeless fields, whose waving, golden
corn in August meets the blue zenith with a startling contrast, is
Minster--“Minster-in-Thanet,” more particularly to distinguish it from
Minster-in-Sheppey. It is reached through Monkton, a little wayside
village, where the old stocks still stand by the grassy selvedge of
the road, outside the church. Minster forms one of the most popular
excursions for the summer tripper at Margate or Ramsgate. I think they
do not come precisely for sake of its archæological associations or its
religious history, but rather because there are popular tea-gardens
in the village and the beer at the several inns is supposed to be of
super-excellence.

The founding of the original monastery, at Minster, for nuns, was
accompanied, according to the legend, by miraculous interpositions,
but these are so common in the story of early religious houses that
we are not in the least surprised at them; nor is there any room for
astonishment in learning that the Saxon King, who, very greatly against
his instincts, gave the land for the monastery, did so give it as
expiation for murder.

It all happened about A.D. 670, when marvels were still in the making.
It was Egbert, eighth King of Kent, who instigated the crime. He had
two cousins whose claims to the throne were better than his, but
he secured the succession, and, to make the position doubly sure,
consigned the unfortunate cousins to death by the agency of one
Thunor, whose very name, meaning “thunder,” has something of a grandly
awful quality. Thunor murdered those rightful heirs, and their bodies
were buried under Egbert’s throne. It seems a strange choice. But a
mysterious heavenly light shone upon the spot and threw the King into
abject terror, so that he sent for Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury,
confessed his share in the crime, and asked what was to be done. On
the advice given, he sent for Domneva, sister of the murdered princes,
and compounded with her on the terms of giving her, for the purpose
of building a monastery, as much land as a hind could run over at one
course.

The hind was accordingly released in the presence of the King, and held
a straight course over Thanet, running over forty-eight plough-lands,
some ten thousand acres, in spite of the attempts made by Thunor
to stop it. He had better have let the animal run, without any
interference, for, as he attempted to ride across its path, the ground
opened in an earthquake and swallowed him “in the infernal regions, in
company with Dathan and Abiram,” as the old monkish chronicle has it.

Thunor is described by Simon of Durham as “a certain man of sin and
son of perdition, a limb of Satan and of the house of the devil.” I
don’t think much more to his discredit could be added; and altogether
we may conclude that, if this genealogy be anywise correct, he simply
went home to his relations when the earth opened and received him so
dramatically.

The line taken by the hind was long known as “St. Mildred’s Lynch,”
from St. Mildred, daughter of Domneva, who succeeded her mother as
Abbess. It ran, a green bank, across Thanet, between the manor-house at
the east end of Minster church and St. Mildred’s Bay, Westgate.

Most of it has been broken down and ploughed under in spite of the
monkish legend that the cultivator who destroyed it would meet with the
fate of Thunor.

[Illustration: MINSTER-IN-THANET CHURCH.]

Minster church is a worthy descendant of this monastery, its tower
and lofty leaded spire forming a landmark for long distances. It is,
in fact, by design and not chance that it stands thus, for near by was
the Wantsum channel; and to this day we perceive, in the south-eastern
angle-turret of this tower, the ancient beacon-tower, possibly of
Saxon date, which guided the course of ships to and fro, and probably
exhibited a light after nightfall. The general scale and style of the
church is altogether superior to that of an ordinary parish church, and
still markedly displays its monastic origin. Altogether, its Norman
nave and Early English transepts and chancel, together with the carved
oaken chancel-stalls, form by far the noblest ecclesiastical monument
in Thanet. Some of the eighteen old _miserere_ seats remain. One, with
the name of “John Curteys,” is singular in being dated 1401. It is a
rare thing to find a date on woodwork of such antiquity.

I suppose Minster had never a more objectionable incumbent than the
notorious Richard Culmer, widely known in his time as “Blue Dick,”
who was appointed in 1644, in the place of Meric Casaubon, deprived
and ejected by the Puritans. “Blue Dick’s” nickname derived from
his affecting a blue gown, instead of the then customary black; and
the notoriety he really seems to have enjoyed came from the extreme
fanatical Puritanism that possessed him. His greatest exploit--or the
one best known--was the breaking of the painted windows of Canterbury
Cathedral, which he called “rattling down proud Becket’s glassy bones.”
It did not, apparently, commend him to the people of Minster, who
resented his being thrust upon them and hid the key of the church when
he came to read himself in.

Simple souls, and unimaginative! What difficulty did that present to
one of his methods? None whatever. He simply smashed a window and
crawled through the congenial havoc he had made!

The next move was with his new parishioners, who, after the reading-in,
hauled him out, and, calling him “thief and robber,” and reproaching
him with having broken into the sheepfold instead of entering by the
door, whacked him long and heartily, till their sticks broke and their
arms grew tired. One almost suspects they did not like him.

The only servant-girl he could get was one of illegitimate birth; but
it is difficult to see how an accident of that sort should render a
domestic servant less domestically efficient.

Relations continued strained at Minster, and Culmer did his best to
ensure that they should remain so, smashing all the windows of the
church, and removing the cross that finished off the spire. With his
own hands, by moonlight, he reared the ladders by which the workmen
were to ascend for the purpose. His flock assembled, with jibe and
jeer, to tell him that he should carry the work to a logical conclusion
by demolishing the church itself, seeing that it was built in the form
of a cross; but demolition on that heroic scale was beyond him, as the
continued existence of the ancient church to this day sufficiently
proves.

For sixteen long years Richard Culmer remained at Minster, a purge for
local pride and a constant source of offence. Then the Restoration
relieved the people of his hateful presence, and effected what nothing
else could do. Years before he had been offered a yearly pension,
equal to the annual value of the living, if he would only go, and let
Minster have a parson more acceptable to the place; but he had refused,
preferring rather to be an annoyance and a stumbling-block. One of his
eccentricities was to demolish part of the parsonage--an act as rabid
as that of Goldsmith’s dog, who, “to gain some private ends, went mad
and bit the man.”

After the Restoration had ejected him, Culmer resided in obscurity at
Monkton, and is said to have died two years later.

It behoves us now, after having, as in duty bound, visited the
ecclesiastical capital of Thanet, to return to the coast. This we will
do by way of Acol, near which is found the huge chalk-pit called by
Ingoldsby the “Smuggler’s Leap.” This way we skirt Quex Park, and come
to Birchington.

“Birchington,” says Sir F. C. Burnand, “ought to be a town of schools
in association with preparatory academies at Whippingham.” N.B.--This
is intended to be funny; but we can, with very little thought, and a
glance at the gazetteer, beat the humorist at his own game, and point
out that he forgot, as other preparatory academies, Much Birch and
Caynham, in Herefordshire, and Waxham in Norfolk.

Birchington, the place of the birchen trees, is an ancient village
which has not yet become swamped and overwhelmed by seaside villas,
although there are a good many to be found if you care to seek
them. That, however, would be a sorry quest, even though “Rossetti
Bungalow,” the house in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti died in 1882, in
his fifty-fourth year, be among them. Hard by the south porch of the
ancient church stands a memorial cross designed by Ford Madox Browne,
inscribed:

                              “Here sleeps
                     GABRIEL CHARLES DANTE ROSSETTI
                       Honoured under the name of
                         DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
                      Among painters as a painter
                       And among poets as a poet,
                            Born in London,
                Of parentage mainly Italian, 12 May 1828
                  Died at Birchington, 9 April 1882.”

Here is also a stained-glass window to his memory, in the church.

There is discretion and reticence in that epitaph. If you would know
how Rossetti conveyed (“convey the wise it call”) the methods of the
Pre-Raphaelites, and how he was the author of many of the “bluest”
Limericks of his era, you must read Holman Hunt’s autobiography, and
dip into the various memoirs of their set.

Among the ancient brasses in the church are examples to John Quek and
child, 1449; Richard Quek, 1459; Alys Crispe, 1518; John Henyns, vicar,
1523; Margaret Crispe, 1528; and another Margaret Crispe and chrisom
child, 1533.

The Quex family were anciently seated at Quex Park, near Birchington.
In the sixteenth century the last of their race, the daughter and
heiress of John Quex, married John Crispe, whose descendants died out
in 1680. Their reign at Quex Park was unremarkable, except for one
very strange incident in the life of Henry Crispe, who was abducted
in 1657. The story of it seems more like romance than reality, but
the incident is historical. The unsuspecting Henry Crispe was aroused
late one August night by a party of desperadoes who had landed at Gore
End, Birchington, under the command of a filibustering Royalist, one
Captain Golding. He was bundled into his own coach and driven to the
shore, whence sail was made to Ostend. Crispe was eventually taken to
Bruges, and kept a prisoner there. A curious part of the affair is that
he had evidently been expecting an attack; and had had the walls of his
house loop-holed for musketry. A ransom of £3,000 was demanded; and all
he could do was to write to his nephew, Thomas Crispe, his son being
ill at the time, to come and help him. Thomas and the son did what
they could, in the face of difficulties, Cromwell having a suspicion
that the whole affair was a plot to procure £3,000 for Charles the
Second, at that time on the Continent, in very narrow circumstances. He
therefore for a time forbade the payment of ransom, and it was eight
months before the money was forthcoming and the captive set free.

Henry Crispe was no linguist, and was known until his death in 1663 as
“Bon Jour Crispe,” the only foreign phrase he had learnt in his exile.

[Illustration: THE WATERLOO TOWER, QUEX PARK.]

Quex Park is unquestionably the finest demesne in Thanet. It is a
richly wooded estate nearly four miles in circuit, the seat at the
present time of Major Powell Cotton, whose park of assorted artillery
just within the lodge-gates consists of some thirty ancient guns,
some of them dating back to the sixteenth century: all very curious
and interesting. The gilded vane and odd-looking spire seen above the
massed woodlands in the distance are in the centre of the park, and are
most difficult to find when once within the lodge gates. One might,
in fact, easily lose one’s way at Quex. They crest a lofty red-brick
structure called the “Waterloo Tower,” built in 1820, and hung with a
peal of twelve bells. The spire is a cast-iron one, of a design fondly
thought to be Gothic, but very weird and gruesome. The tower itself is
used as a mausoleum, and was restored in 1896.

Resuming the way into Margate, the road approaches close to the shore
at Westgate, that bungalow town which first arose somewhere about 1878,
on the enthusiastic recommendation of the air of Thanet by Sir Erasmus
Wilson, at that time one of the most influential of medical men and
health-experts. The now much worn and woefully misused word “bungalow,”
an Anglo-Indian importation, also about that time made its first public
appearance here.

[Illustration: DANDELION GATEWAY.]

At Westgate begin the electric tramways. Away to right of the road, at
Garlinge, is an old-world survival: the fifteenth-century gatehouse
of the Dandelion manor-house. The old manorial residence has vanished,
but the gatehouse remains, a fine, imposing sight. Here were seated
the Daundelyon family, who became extinct with John Daundelyon, last
of his race, in 1445. A brass to his memory is seen in the old parish
church of Margate. The inscription describes him as “gentleman”: the
earliest use of that word, it is said, on any existing monument.
The family name is a corruption of “Dent-de-Lion,” _i.e._ “Lion’s
tooth,” which probably derived from the tooth-like part of the family
arms, which are thus expressed, in the queer language of heralds:
“Sable, a fesse indented; voided argent; three lions rampant of the
same.” A sculptured shield bearing these charges is still visible
on the gatehouse; and on the springing of the small archway will be
found a demi-lion rampant, with a label issuing from his mouth. This
was formerly inscribed “Daun-de-lyon,” but the words have now quite
weathered away. It was the John Daundelyon whose monumental brass is to
be found in Margate church who gave the church one of its eight bells.
According to an old rhyme once current in Margate--

   “John de Daundeleon with his great dog
    Brought over this Bell on a Mill-cog.”

The bell is of foreign make. The “dog” in question, it has been
explained, was a ship. It will, in this connection, be remembered that
antiquaries have sought to explain away Dick Whittington’s famous cat
which brought him good fortune, and suppose it to have been the name of
a vessel.

We now come again to close quarters with the seashore, which here
begins to assume the aspect of what excursionists style the “real
seaside.” That is to say, here are cliffs; and there, ahead, is an
illimitable horizon; also indubitable sands. It is true they are not
cliffs on the heroic scale, these chalky bastions. They begin at
Birchington and are continued round to Westgate, Margate, and Ramsgate,
with a toylike, artificial effect; rather, you know, as if some
enterprising Earl’s Court exhibition syndicate had erected them. They
are strangely unconvincing to those who have been used to the great
red cliffs of Devon, or the mighty granite heights of Cornwall. Being
of no great height, and of such unpicturesque outline, and having been
so railed in and scraped and tunnelled and mended with brick, and in
all manner of ways impertinently interfered with, they look like the
products of art, and very poor art too.




CHAPTER XI

MARGATE


Margate the Merry, to which we enter by electric tramway, is the
oldest and most popular of English seaside resorts: and also, in some
opinions, the most vulgar. However that may be, and dismissing the
claims of Rollicking Ramsgate and Southend (to say nothing of Blackpool
and Yarmouth) to pre-eminence in vulgarity, Merry Margate is certainly
a very crowded and unselect place in August and on occasions of popular
holiday. There is then no doubting the reality of Margate, I assure
you, nor, for the matter of that, is it anything less substantial in
winter, for the extensive brickiness of it is a solemn fact; but in
the dull winter months of short days and bad weather it is something
like an elaborate theatrical set scene with the lights turned down
and most of the company off the stage. The alleged merriment of
Margate, which resides chiefly in the same alliteration that renders
Ramsgate “rollicking,” is not a local product. It is imparted by the
holiday-makers. At other times the town is extremely sedate; but
always (except when a March east wind is blowing) its air is charged
with vitality. On one of those occasions, however, Margate looking
north-east, on the most exposed north-easterly verge of Kent, the best
thing to do is to stay indoors, beside the biggest fire you can induce
the grate to hold. Perhaps even the very bestest thing to do is to have
that fire in one’s bedroom, and retire to rest with hot-water bottles.

For more than a century and a half Margate has been a holiday-place,
and therefore wears an air of permanency which not even Brighton can
beat, although its front is more miscellaneous and less stately. In
fact, it looks whimsically as though one side of Gower Street had
come down from London, for a change--and had not yet benefited by
it! Matthew Arnold must have been similarly impressed when he wrote
that this was a “brick-and-mortar image of English Protestantism,
representing it in all its prose, all its uncomeliness--let me add,
all its salubrity.” He had, you perceive, an unworthy affection for
the tawdry rags of Continental Roman Catholicism, however insalubrious
their nature, and in spite of his much-advertised craving for
“sweetness and light.”

Arnold’s sneer at Protestantism offended many, but we have travelled
far and swiftly on the down-grade in the last half-century, and
the thing that would once have seemed impossible has come to pass:
Protestantism has become a term of abuse. We have lived to see _that_!

“Margate” may have been originally the “Meer-geat,” the Anglo-Saxon
for “sea-gate”; or more probably the name derived from the “mere,” or
little stream, which flowed down to the sea past St. John’s Church,
along the line of the street now called The Brooks; “mere” being a
well-known Kentish word for a stream. However that may be, Margate is
really of ancient origin: an historical fact rather obscured by the
growth of the town. Still, one has only to seek that old parish church
of St. John to perceive that this was an established place in Norman
times. Strange though it may seem, “Margate” was once considered a
separate village or hamlet on the seashore, as we read in the itinerary
of John Leland, in the time of Henry the Eighth: “Meregate lyith in
St. John’s paroche in Thanet v miles upward from Reculver; there is a
village and a peere for shyppes now sore decayed.”

[Illustration: FROM THE PALIMPSEST BRASS, MARGATE CHURCH.]

[Illustration: FROM THE PALIMPSEST BRASS, MARGATE CHURCH.]

It is an extremely dark and rather dirty church, tucked away in an
obscure situation, and thus not often seen by the chance visitor. It
stands at the back of the harbour, among little odd Georgian streets,
and tiny squares of a kind of dolls’-house type, and is surrounded by
a mangy churchyard containing trees which look as though they were
longing for the country. There are no fewer than thirteen brasses here,
all greatly worn, including that to John Daundelyon already mentioned,
and a late example, dated 1615, to Roger Morris, with a ship in full
sail and an inscription describing him as “one of the six principall
Masters of Attendance of his Mai^{ties} Navye Royall.” But the most
curious is the fragment of a palimpsest brass hinged in a frame on the
south wall of the chancel. The original was evidently a very large
example of Flemish make and is curiously engraved with vine-tendrils,
a shield of arms displaying three helmets on a field of crosses, two
odd nude creatures on stilts, one kicking the other, reckless of
maintaining his equilibrium; and a little monkish figure trying to
catch monstrous butterflies as big as himself with a net smaller than
the butterflies. This futile endeavour may or may not be intended as
a satire upon the vanity of human wishes; but, in any case, it is a
matter for rejoicing that butterflies larger than turkeys do not exist.

A favourite way of reaching Margate from London before the era of
steamships and railways was by what most of the passengers called “the
’oy,” a conveyance which appeared in print with an “H” denied it in
speech. The “Margate Hoy” was a type of sailing-vessel by which our
ancestral holiday-makers arrived with much pleasure, or intolerable
discomfort as the case might be, after a calm voyage of ten hours, or
a tempestuous passage of fifteen. The hoys set sail from the Thames,
near the Customs House quay, and conveyed passengers at the extremely
moderate fare of half a crown. In after-years, when steamships replaced
these clumsy, bluff-bowed old sailing-vessels, which after all looked
and behaved like sailing-barges, the “Husbands’ Boat,” steaming from
London on Saturdays, became the main feature of the Margate season.
To-day there are still Saturday steamers, of a very up-to-date type,
to Margate and Ramsgate; but the term “Husbands’ Boat” is altogether
outworn and hopelessly stale, now that uxoriousness is no longer even
the mark of the middle class and the ideal is, at the best of it, for
husbands and wives to make holiday apart, or, at the worst of it, with
some one else’s partner.

Margate saw the invention of the bathing-machine about 1765, by that
modest Quaker, Benjamin Beale. The immodest modesty of that cumbrous
and supremely uncomfortable affair has made the English at the seaside
the laughing-stock of other nations; but brother Broadbrim’s invention
still lags superfluous on many a seaside scene, although bathing-tents
actively dispute possession.

The visitor will not have been long in Margate before his attention
is drawn to men distributing bills inviting all and sundry to “Go and
see the Grotto!” Among the attractions of this place, set forth on
these leaflets, is “two thousand square feet of shellwork”--a kind of
decoration sufficient to make the artistic shudder. The “Grotto,” which
is really an excavation in the chalk, is situated in Bellevue Place
along “The Dane,” a thoroughfare about half a mile from the front. It
consists of a passage some 60 ft. in length, ending in a chamber about
12 ft. square. Both passage and chamber are lined with common shells
set in cement and displayed in geometrical and floral devices. A great
deal of nonsensical legend has accumulated about this place, which is
said to be a work of immemorial antiquity. That accepted archæologist,
Miss Marie Corelli, in her book “Cameos,” declares it to be “one
of the World’s Wonders,” and “a curious and beautiful subterranean
temple”; and believes it to be a work of the Vikings; a catacomb where
they buried their dead. Unfortunately for this view, we have only
to refer to Charles Knight’s book, “The Land we Live In,” published
about 1850, to read that “the shellwork was done by an ingenious
artisan of Margate who some years ago went to America.” The chamber
was originally, in fact, the basement-room of the little house above,
and the plaster ceiling of it remains. Thus do the Vikings vanish and
feminine archæologists become discredited!

To witness Margate in the spring preparing to awake from her winter
sleep and to make ready for early visitors is alike amusing and
pathetic. The long, empty vista of seaside promenade has as yet no
promenaders, but a scattered army of painters and gardeners is busy
upon seats, shelters, railings, and flower-beds. Everything is being
swept and garnished; and so long and so thoroughly has Margate been
looked after by a Town Council, that the parlour-maidenly neatness has
spread even to the sands, and you may see Corporation men walking by
the sad sea-waves picking up and neatly disposing of the seaweed and
other jetsam which the rude and sportive winds have left in unseemly
fashion on the ocean’s melancholy marge. Even those ridiculous chalk
cliffs are not allowed to present any jagged, picturesque outlines.
They are pretty freely cased with brick; but, it must in justice be
allowed that they have not been so nearly converted into brick walls as
have been the cliffs at Ramsgate. And in another matter, too, Margate
has not gone to extremes. Dogs (unless things have latterly been
pressed to extremity) may still bark on Margate sands. They may not do
so at Hastings, on penalty of the owner being fined by the local Sir
Oracles.

“Going it!” is said to be the note of Margate. No one who has been
there in August will dispute that. Those who do not wish to “go it,”
and would rather enjoy a quiet, contemplative holiday, had better
go elsewhere. Margate makes merry (this alliteration is positively
infectious) from early morn till dewy eve. You awake to a concert of
sounds, in which the bugling and clarionetting of early brake-parties
is brassily prominent, and at night are sent to sleep by the slowly
expiring minstrelsy of varied bands. Let it be added that the air of
Margate is so forceful that even those constitutionally and mentally
averse from all that “going it!” may be taken to mean let themselves go
here. There was once a highly respectable curate who “went it!” to such
an extent--but that is not our business.

Both Ramsgate and Margate claim the story of the typically pursy,
Perkyn Middlewick type of city man who, stepping on to the railway
platform on the arrival of the train and feeling already the enliving
effect of the atmosphere, exclaimed, “Isn’t this invigorating?”

“No, sir,” returned a porter, “it’s Margate” (or Ramsgate, as the case
may be).

Some few have not the capacity for enjoyment. Sometimes you see, along
these crowded sands, tearful small boys who have somehow missed the
note of the place. “I have brought you out to enjoy yourself, sir,”
said a robustious father to such an one; “and if you don’t begin to do
it pretty quick, you’d better go home!”

Margate has a wonderful reputation for its rough, vigorous, revivifying
air; it is also known at one season of the year--may it be hinted
without offence?--for its very rough, vigorous coast population. A
once well-known actor who long since joined the great majority and
exchanged his fame for oblivion used to illustrate this in one of
his breezy anecdotes. He and a friend, in a sailing-vessel, found
themselves in difficulties in a fog. Suddenly conscious, by sounds and
dim lights, that they were off a coast town, they hailed the shore:
“Ahoy! ahoy! Where are we?” A thunderous voice responded through the
fog, “Go to ----,” whereupon Ryder, the actor in question, turning to
his friend, exclaimed: “All right, my boy--Margate!”

Somewhat similar testimony--although not specifically limited to
Margate--may be found in the pages of a familiar novelist; Mr. Thomas
Hardy remarking, in that beautiful story “A Pair of Blue Eyes,” that
“it has been calculated by philosophers that more ‘damns’ go up to
heaven from the Channel, in the course of a year, than from all the
five oceans put together.”

It is a profane way of stating a fact of which no one will be concerned
to deny the truth.

Not only the seafaring and the coastwise populations indulge in
strong language: conversation in general along the roads is decidedly
over-proof. There is too much “damyer” about the roadside intercourse
of these parts, produced largely by the animosities of motorists and
the drivers of chars-à-bancs, who do not love one another, but unite
and make common cause against the electric tramways in vituperation.
The tramways, the chars-à-banc traffic, and the motor-cars have
indeed greatly changed the aspect of Thanet and its seaside resorts.
The “oldest inhabitant” of some few years hence will be able to
tell strange tales of a time when he knew of rural roads and saw
wild-flowers:

THE GAFFER’S STORY

    “Yes, I’m a ’underd an’ six, an’ healthy enough in a general way,
    But that don’t signify much in these times, when ye meet a couple o’
          dozen centurions a day.
    I can manage a dozen mile afoot; can dig, read, an’ holler, an’
          chaw,
    But, lor’ bless ye! that’s nothing now: lots do all that, an’ more.
    An’ in Ireland, they tell me, centurions grow on every
          blackberry-bush, so to speak,
    An’ corsties the Guv’ment in ole-age pensions thousands an’
          thousands a week.
    I suppose it must be something, don’t ye think, in the hair?
    For at Brighton, where the hair is, there’s dozens an’ dozens o’
          centurions _there_.
    No, I don’t mean the ’air of yer ’ed, but the hair of the sky--
    It’s difficult to make you townsfolk unnerstand, however you try.
    An’ ‘Centenarians’ _you_ say. Why, no! Centurions _I’ve_ allus
          carled ’em, an’ allus shell,
    Although I daresay that way o’ yourn may do ’most as well.
    I don’t ’old with yer new-fangled words: they’re all very fine--
    Like now, when you have your dinner, you say you are ‘going to
          dine.’
    You don’t seem to me to get fatter on ‘dining’ than ‘dinner:’
    ’Fact, it seems some’ow to me, you’re all o’ you worried
          an’ thinner.
    Eh! what was the country like when I wer’ young?
    Well, it’s an old, old story now, forgotten ever so long.
    In them days there was hedges, an’ ellums in the hedge-rows,
    An’ hazels, an’ blackberry brakes, an’ bracken, an’ goodness knows
    How many wild-flowers there. The roads suttingly was rather muddy;
    But the children used to go to the hedges for what they carled
          ‘Nature Study.’
    ‘Not much nature now,’ you say. No: ye see the world got so clever,
          it ’ad to go,
    An’ now if ye wanted to see a cowslip or a buttercup, I don’t know
          what ye could do:
    P’raps they’ve got a speciment or two in the Natural Mystery Museum,
    An’ if I was you, I’d go to South Kensington, an’ try an’ see ’em.
    ‘Hist’ry,’ you say, ‘not Myst’ry’; well, maybe so, ’tis arl the
          same to me--
    _I_ don’t care, not at arl, whichever o’ them it be!
    Pretty things, an’ simple they was: I ’aven’t seen none fer half a
          sentry, I’m sure;
    ’Cos the gardeners took ’em in hand, an’ cultivated ’em till they
          didn’t resemble their own selves no more.
    Look ahere! Ye see this yer flower what looks like a double-daffodil
          gone mad:--
    Well: _that_ was ’riginally a buttercup, before it was
          super-cultivated, me lad!
    They cut down the hedges an’ trees, an’ straightened every one o’
          the winding ways
    That was to be found everywhere in them oncultivated days.
    For, ye see, they’d got moty-cars of such extryornary power
    Which ’ud do well up to 80 or 90 miles an hour.
    An’ when, after coming, sudden-like, round the corners, they’d
          killed a good proportion of the population,
    They was looked upon with something near vexation.
    With a long, straight road, when a motor’s heard, an ’umming in
          the distance,
    You can ’op aside like winking, an’ so save your existence;
    But on a winding road it wasn’t no manner o’ good, I declare,
    They was onto, an’ over you, before ackshully you knew they was
          there.
    An’ now there’s rails, ’stead of hedges, an’ there ain’t now no
          dust, nor trees;
    An’ England’s just the same from end to end, an’ never no kind o’
          diff’rence you sees.
    Why, when I wer’ a lad, there were ’ardly two places the same:
    Each ’ad it’s own character, just as every one its own name.
    But now they tell me the Orkneys is a’most the same as Pegwell Bay,
    An’ Paddington an’ Penzance own brothers, an’ Hastings an’
          Eastbourne, an’ such places as they,
    Ain’t got never a pin to choose between:--
    Ah! things is very diff’rent to what they used to been.”




CHAPTER XII

KINGSGATE--THE NORTH FORELAND--BROADSTAIRS--ST. PETER’S


The plebeian jollity of the older part of Margate, by the Harbour and
the Jetty, the Fort and the Paragon, gives place westward to modern and
more select Cliftonville.

The walk past Cliftonville the select, along the grassy cliffs, leads
round by Foreness Point and discloses a succession of chalky nooks,
“gaps,” and “gates,” where little ravines run down to the sea: every
one of them pretty well peopled in the summer season. If you want a
cloistered holiday, you will not be well advised to repair to the
Kentish coast for it. Frankly, such a thing is not to be obtained here.
But, at any rate, thus tracing the “ocean’s melancholy marge,” you do
at least escape the electric tramways which cut across Thanet inland
and help to vulgarise this historic isle.

A pretty inlet, called “Botany Bay,” leads to Kingsgate, and is a
spot sufficiently desirable, except for the scattering of new villas
there and the notice-boards of the Kingsgate Residents’ Association,
prescribing what things the wayfarer may not do. These appear to be so
numerous that it would seem to be almost better (as it would indeed be
shorter) to specify the few things that are still allowed.

[Illustration: KINGSGATE]

Kingsgate was known as “Bartholomew’s Gate” until 1683, when Charles
the Second landed here. It is naturally picturesque, and is rendered
more so by the pretentious “castle” on the headland, with the North
Foreland lighthouse peering across the intervening neck. The castle, of
black flint, was built in the eighteenth century by Lord Holland, who,
in common with other wealthy people of what was then regarded as “good
taste,” patronised the romantic Gothic spirit and built himself not
only a make-believe castle but a sham convent as well. The poet Gray,
he of the “Elegy,” disclosed himself as a bitter satirist, not only of
Lord Holland’s castellated residence, but also of Thanet:

   “Here reign the blustering North and blighting East;
      No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;
    Yet nature could not furnish out the feast,
      But he invokes new terrors still to bring.

   “Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
      Turrets and arches nodding to their fall;
    Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes,
      And mimic desolation covers all.”

Passing the flint-faced “Captain Digby” inn, famed in the story of
the _Northern Belle_ shipwreck of January 1857, we come to the North
Foreland, “the most easterly projection of Kent,” the cape mentioned
by Ptolemy, about A.D. 150, as Κάντιον ἀκρον, or “Acantium
Promontory.”

The North Foreland light, once occupying a solitary situation on
the cliff-top, is now becoming the centre of a number of villas,
whose windows at night form lower and of course much more feeble
illuminations. But the sea is here spangled with as many lights as
the land, for off the shore are those dangerous shoals, the famous
Goodwin Sands. Dickens, many years ago, in the course of a sketch
of Broadstairs, wrote a good description of them and of the North
Foreland light, mentioning “the Goodwin Sands, whence floating lights
perpetually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on intrigues
with the servants. Also there is a big lighthouse called the North
Foreland, on a hill behind the village, a severe parsonic light, which
reproves the young and giddy floaters, and stares grimly out upon the
sea.”

[Illustration: THE NORTH FORELAND LIGHTHOUSE.

                        _After W. Daniell, R.A._
]

But since 1880, when the lighthouse was altered, the light has suffered
a complete change, and is not now the steady-going gleam it used to
be. It occults every half-minute, displaying a white and red light
for twenty-five seconds, followed by an eclipse of five seconds. The
effect, compared with the light that Dickens described, is something
like that which would astonish the beholder if a Bishop were to wear a
red tie, or take to drink.

The first lighthouse on the North Foreland was a wooden building,
erected by Sir John Meldrum in 1636. This was destroyed by fire half
a century later. A temporary beacon replaced it, and this in turn
was succeeded by a flint octagonal tower, bearing an open brazier of
coals. This was afterwards enclosed behind glass, and the coals were
kept aflame throughout the night by the lightkeeper constantly playing
on them with a bellows! Those certainly were the heroic times of
lighthouse tending.

The licensee of the first lighthouse was given the right of levying a
toll of one penny per ton on all British ships, and twopence per ton on
all foreign vessels passing the Foreland, he paying the Crown an annual
rent of £20 for fifty years. This grant was renewed to various other
persons for other terms of fifty years. The last of these licensees
bequeathed the unexpired years of his term to Greenwich Hospital, to
which a renewal was granted for ninety-nine years. At the end of that
period, the lighthouse was, rather belatedly, taken over by the Trinity
House, whose Elder Brethren then paid the Commissioners of Greenwich
Hospital about £8,000, by way of compensation.

And thus we come to dear, delightful Broadstairs, which, like every
Thanet coast-town or village, is set down in a gap, or “gate,” of the
cliffs, by which, as by a staircase, you land and ascend from the sea.
Here the gap is a bay, rather larger than most, hence the adjective,
“Broad.” It was anciently “Broadstowe,” but why never “Bradgate” or
“Broadgate” I cannot imagine. At any rate, it matters little. The
point is that here is Broadstairs, very much the same place as that
Dickens knew and loved. Let an anathema be here pronounced against
that man who shall ever contemplate remodelling this cheery little
holiday-place--the delight of children, I was about to say--really
the delight of all who know it! And I think that anathema should be
made retrospective and launched against whoever they were who built the
great ugly barrack hotel on the south cliff. The striking alteration
that has been effected in the remodelling of the so-called “Bleak
House” may, however, be welcomed, in spite of the change thus made in
the appearance it wore in the time of Dickens. “Fort House,” which is
its proper name, was really so ugly that everyone who is not a Dickens
fanatic must rejoice at the blest change.

Dickens first made the acquaintance of Broadstairs in 1837, and he
did not finally desert it as a holiday resort until 1859. Enthusiasts
for whom no detail of Dickens’s life is too small or insignificant
have discovered that his first lodgings were in High Street, at the
house now numbered “31.” It has been entirely rebuilt, but their
enthusiasm is of a dreadnought quality superior to such accidents, and
they flock to see the place because the conclusion of “Pickwick” was
written there: in the house that no longer exists. One would think some
peculiar virtue lingered in the air. Lawn House, and Number 40, Albion
Street, now incorporated with the “Albion Hotel,” were favoured by him
before he took Fort House, in 1850. There he wrote a portion of “David
Copperfield,” but positively not a line of “Bleak House”; and that
name, given later and still surviving, is a quite unwarranted title,
unless indeed it may be taken as descriptive of its undoubtedly bleak
and exposed situation.

Dickens, in 1843, described Broadstairs as “a little fishing place;
intensely quiet”; but presently the growing popularity of it began to
qualify his pleasure. In 1847 he wrote: “Vagrant music is getting to
that height here, and is so impossible to be escaped from, that I fear
Broadstairs and I must part company in time to come. Unless it pours
of rain, I cannot write half an hour without the most excruciating
organs, fiddles, bells, or glee-singers. There is a violin of the most
torturing kind under the window now (time, ten in the morning) and an
Italian box of music on the steps, both in full blast.” And so after
1859 place knew Dickens no more.

“Broadstairs,” says a booklet issued in recent years, setting forth
the desirability of the building-land round about it, “has been vastly
altered and improved since Dickens’s time. Mansions and villas have
sprung up in all directions, public thoroughfares have improved, or
been newly constructed, promenades have been formed along the sea
front, commanding extensive prospects of land and marine scenery,
charming gardens have been laid out.”

This is a builder’s, an auctioneer’s, and land-agent’s idea of a vastly
improved place; but, although Broadstairs is still delightful, I do not
think any one else will be found to agree with the ideas put forward
by these interested persons. Most people would prefer the comparative
seclusion of forty years earlier. But you are not to suppose it to have
been altered to any appreciable degree. The surroundings have been
vastly changed, but the little bay with the queer old jetty is the
same, although something, I know not what, has recently been done to
the jetty, something in which plenteous tar is concerned.

[Illustration: BROADSTAIRS: YORK GATE]

You go down to the harbour past the Droit Office and through the old
archway called “York Gate,” built, according to the inscription upon
it, by George Culmer in 1540, and repaired by Sir George Henniker in
1795. This gateway, it is rather surprising to learn, was built as a
defence against the foreign foe. It may, when fitted with its wooden
door, “slammed, barred, and bolted,” have detained an enemy for a brief
space, but it can never have been a formidable obstacle. The suggestion
may be ventured that it was designed to detain the fierce foeman only
until the feeble folk of Broadstairs of old could snatch up a few
belongings and hurry away. The flimsy old stone and black-flint archway
is liberally cobbled with brick, and valerian and grasses grow on its
mouldering walls.

Down along the jetty Broadstairs looks its best. Here is the “Tartar
Frigate” inn, flint-faced, and here, too, the lifeboat-house, with
the _Mary Barton_ lifeboat, presented in 1897, whose chief exploit
was the saving of ninety-three lives on July 14th, 1911. So, you see,
Broadstairs knows something else beside holiday sunshine and calm days.
The old figurehead of a Highlander here, built on to the side of a
sail-loft, hints as much. From what far-away shipwreck it derived is
forgotten; and the Highlander, although still looking out with mien so
dauntless, is now a much-scarred and battered veteran. He once, you
notice, drew a sword, but his right hand and sword are gone.

Broadstairs is extraordinarily self-contained, tightly packed,
cheerful, and bustling, but there are quiet nooks in it; appropriately
named, too. “Serene Place” is one of them. The electric tramways which
now quarter so much of Thanet do not trouble the little town, but
pass by some distance at the back, up along the wilderness tableland
of “Dumpton Park Drive,” and a kind of God-forsaken No Man’s Land,
horribly dreary and depressing, which stretches between Broadstairs and
Ramsgate.

[Illustration: BROADSTAIRS.]

St. Peter’s, the village where the mother-church of Broadstairs is
situated, is a mile and a quarter in the hinterland, with tramcars
whirling all round it.

“In the pretty rural churchyard of St. Peter’s,” I read, “is a
headstone to mark the last resting-place of Richard Joy, the ‘Kentish
Samson.’”

Now the churchyard of St. Peter’s, pretty though it may be, is so
little rural that houses numerously and intimately look upon it;
and the pathway through the very forest of tombstones it contains
is asphalted and strictly railed in. Fortunately, however, for
those interested in this mortuary way, Richard Joy’s tombstone
adjoins the path, and his epitaph, surmounted by representations of
thoughtful-looking cherubs and a couple of trumpets, is distinctly to
be read from it.

Thus you may read:

                      In Memory of MR. RICHARD JOY
                    (call’d the Kentish Samson) who
                      Died May 18th 1742, Aged 67

   “_Herculean Hero! Fam’d for Strength
    At last Lies here his Breadth & Length._

   “_See How the Mighty Man is Fall’n!
    To Death y^e Strong & Weak are all one._

   “_And the Same Judgment doth Befall
    Goliath Great, as David Small._”

Joy, who performed many extraordinary feats of strength, including the
pulling against a powerful horse, the lifting of a weight of 2,240
lbs., and the snapping of a rope that had resisted a breaking strain
of 35 cwts., was one of the smuggling fraternity, and met his death by
drowning when engaged in one of those contraband exploits. His sister
was almost as strong as himself, and performed many remarkable feats of
strength.

This is an authentic memorial, but those irresponsible books, the
various Collections of Epitaphs, tell us of the following choice
specimen to be found here:

   “Against his will,
    Here lies George Hill,
    Who from a cliff
    Fell down quite stiff.
    When it happened is not known
    Therefore not mentioned on this stone.”

It is quite easy to “collect” epitaphs on the terms of inventing
them; and this, as might well be supposed, is a pure effort of the
imagination.




CHAPTER XIII

RAMSGATE


The old seaport and holiday-resort of Ramsgate may be reached quickly
along the desolate Dumpton Park Drive already spoken of; but the
pedestrian’s better way from Broadstairs is past that eyesore the Grand
Hotel, to the grassy cliffs’ edge. These are interrupted by some of
those “gates” and “gaps” characteristic of this part of the coast.
Crossing the bridge at Dumpton Gap, and past some fortifications,
Ramsgate itself is reached by way of Wellington Crescent, whose name,
like that of the thoroughfare near by, called the “Plains of Waterloo,”
sufficiently well dates this part of the town to the 1815–20 period.

It is well to note here that all these Ramsgate developments at
this point, on the East Cliff, and even the busy town and harbour
of Ramsgate itself, are only the expansion, since the eighteenth
century, of that original village situated one mile inland, where the
mother-church of St. Lawrence still may be found. Ramsgate--spelled
“Raunsgate” until the time of Edward the First--derives from “Ruim’s
Geat,” that is to say, the “marsh gate”; and where the busy harbour
now is the fishermen of remote times drew up their boats and dried
their nets, going home inland to St. Lawrence. Here the cliffs of
Thanet die away to the marshes and levels of Pegwell Bay and Sandwich
Flats; and the early fisher-folk, for safety’s sake, preferred to
live away from the shore, upon which an enemy might (and often did)
unexpectedly land. When Ramsgate first began to grow, its inhabitants,
seeking a respectable remote antiquity, affected to believe the
place-name derived from “Roman’s Gate,” but even the credulous old
Hasted, the eighteenth-century historian of Kent, could not accept that
etymology.

As the far more ancient, and once immeasurably more important town of
Sandwich, decayed, so Ramsgate grew; but, although Ramsgate has long
been a considerable town and has now a population exceeding 28,000,
still increasing, it was only incorporated so recently as 1884, and is
still in some respects merely a “Ville of Sandwich,” whose population
is less than 4,000. Thus is the link maintained with the ancient tale
of the Cinque Ports, when Sandwich was great and powerful and Ramsgate
a mere fishing-village.

The commercial beginnings of Ramsgate are found in the construction
of the harbour, between 1749 and 1761. The town then rapidly grew;
although the cost of dredging and maintaining the depth of water
rendered Ramsgate harbour dues among the heaviest in existence--an
undesirable prominence still maintained. The obelisk by the quayside
was erected in 1822 in memory of the embarkation of George the Fourth
for Hanover--not one of the great events of history. Five years later
the parish church of St. George was built: one of the works of Augustus
Welby Pugin. Its lofty lantern-tower, prominent in the High Street, is
fine and rather foreign-looking; but, with the rest of the building,
looks better at a distance, the material being common stock-brick, and
the architectural details very poor. Pugin, one of the great figures
of the Gothic revival in the beginning of the nineteenth century, has
long since been out-distanced by more scholarly and more artistic
architects. He was a Roman Catholic pervert, and oddly divided in his
appreciations. “There is nothing worth living for,” he said, “but
Christian architecture and a boat.” He was an enthusiastic sailor, and
was in appearance the very ideal of a pilot. He designed the Roman
Catholic church and monastery of St. Augustine, at the very extremity
of the West Cliff, overlooking Pegwell Bay, and died at his villa, “The
Grange,” adjoining, in 1854. Truth compels the addition that his Gothic
church, however highly it was once thought of by himself and others--
he considered it his best work--is extremely poor, alike in design
and in the use of the materials--black flint and stone--employed.
He seems not to have possessed that sense of texture in the use of
materials without which even the best design looks poor. It is safe to
say that even the most moderately equipped architectural student of
to-day could do better.

These remarks are applicable enough here, although we have only arrived
yet at the East Cliff; because, cresting this cliff, is the great
Granville Hotel, which was also designed by Pugin and was once also
considered a wonderful example of design. You may note how highly Pugin
was then thought of by the bust of him on the promenade in front.

The Granville does things on a lordly scale, and has an express of its
own from London. Down below it, indeed, and in direct communication,
is the railway station, on the sands, beneath the cliffs. There is a
forthright, downright manner about the railway company which rather
challenges admiration, even if the slowness and unpunctuality of its
trains and the filthiness of its carriages evoke our disgust. The
Company seems to say, “You want to go to the seaside at Ramsgate?”
and then, without more ado, not only conveys you, but, in a manner of
speaking, actually deposits you on the seashore, as near the sea as
possible; short of being actually flung into it.

The railway comes in by a black inferno of tunnel, and smokes the
cliffs to a sooty hue. And here, before you, are the famous sands of
Ramsgate, playground in the summer season of uncounted thousands of
holiday-folk. They have rendered this no place for a quiet holiday;
and effectively disprove the ancient and much-quoted saying, wrongly
attributed to Froissart, “The English take their pleasures sadly.” Can
you come away from Ramsgate sands with that belief?

It is rather curious nowadays to read Dickens’s short story, “The
Tuggses at Ramsgate,” to note that, in the novelist’s mind, a more or
less vulgar Cockney who had suddenly found himself possessed of twenty
thousand pounds, would think at once of Ramsgate as a holiday-place for
himself and family. He would probably not do so now; but the general
trend of popular literature in those days was in the same direction of
comparatively unenterprising holidays on the nearest coast-line.

Thus, according to one of the innumerable guides to Ramsgate, published
in 1864, the following concatenation of summer circumstances clearly
pointed out to the Londoner the desirability of taking holiday on
the Kentish coast in general, and at Ramsgate in particular; that is
to say: “When the weather gets so hot that soda-water bottles are
dangerous as powder-flasks, and go off like pistols; when flowers die
as soon as they are plucked, and butchers’ shops smell unpleasantly;
when the London restaurants ice their bitter ale, and pine-apple is at
a halfpenny the slice; when your hair is always moist and your listless
arms hang at your sides like bell-pulls; when old gentlemen leave off
flannel and sit in draughts with their waistcoats open, whilst elderly
ladies pearl-powder their faces ten times a day; when the warm fingers
make marks on the new novel, and dogs have disagreeable expressions
and long tongues; when the ‘catch-’em-alives’ at the grocers’ are
dotted with dead flies thicker than the currants in a Christmas
pudding, and when the trees in the squares seem powdered over with
Scotch snuff. When all these things are seen and take place, then mamma
thinks how delightful the sea-breeze must be, and suddenly discovers
that the children look pale. Then she carefully points out to papa
at breakfast that the baby is as white as melted butter, that little
Selina has nasty black marks under her eyes; and at dinner she tenderly
makes the stubborn father notice that Tom has scarcely eaten enough to
fill an egg-cup, and that Johnny has emptied both water-bottles, as
if sickening for a fever. If the stern husband should still resist,
then one day, when he is at business, the doctor is sent for, and he,
charming humbug, knows too well his duty not to prescribe ‘change of
air.’ Then, as a further precaution, Selina is put to bed, Tom is
forced to take bitter pills in orange marmalade, and Johnny made to
drink wine-glasses of pink stuff, until at last papa gives way before
the threatened doctor’s bill. Then carpets are taken up, chairs piled
one on another into barricades of legs, the picture-frames are covered
with gauze, the servants put upon board-wages, and at last the family,
with twenty boxes, goes to the seaside.”

That was the elaborate way in which excuses were made for
holiday-making in the ’60’s. Such were the methods of the English
in the days when crinolines were worn and chignons were considered
fashionable. Our fathers and mothers, it will quite readily be
perceived, were not yet emancipated from the workaday ideal that had
hitherto governed England: that grim, joyless, slogging spirit that
had made the nation great, but made it dour as well; and no one, you
know, felt really quite easy in conscience at taking holiday. To
revel in doing nothing was unknown. So some excuse, some way out of
a difficulty, had to be invented, and it generally was found in such
transparent pretexts as above. And yet Ramsgate sands were as crowded
then as now, and the “husbands’ boats” that plied from London were
full. Frith painted his celebrated picture of Ramsgate sands, showing
a merry throng, looking the “picture of health”; and so it is very
evident that a large number of people successfully adopted the holiday
for health’s sake deception.

“And now,” continues our guide, “the seaside towns get busy. Those
virtuous elderly spinsters who have lived the long winter months in
their deserted houses, solitary as spiders in their webs, wake up from
their torpidity and grow lively with the summer heat. They take from
the linen-closet the clean blinds for the bedroom windows, and the net
curtains for the ‘handsome drawing-rooms’ and ‘neat parlours’; the
faded chintz coverings are washed and ironed; and, buying a bottle of
furniture-polish, they make their poor arms ache with rubbing up the
dull tables and sideboards into a waxy lustre. The stationer sells off
his stock of embossed cards, engraved with ‘Apartments to Let,’ and the
spirited proprietors of libraries, bazaars, and assembly-rooms have
their pianos tuned, and make arrangements with musicians and singers
from London.”

To-day the August crowd is far less domestic than that pictured above;
but the same old “amusements,” plus penny-in-the-slot machines and
other inventions not dreamt of forty years ago, prevail. It is, we
will say, the harbour, midday. The weather, in nautical phrase, is
“fresh”; to the inexperienced Cockney it is “stormy”; yet the qualmy
holiday-folk are sufficiently brave, or rash, to venture for a sail
in one of the yachts now filling up. Four of them are lying alongside
the pier-wall, and are advertised to sail at 1 p.m.; but, although it
is now past two o’clock, they show no signs of moving--except the
disturbing movement imparted to them, even in harbour, by the roughness
of the waves, which already, before the voyage has begun, is rendering
many of the bold trippers dimly uncomfortable. But they have paid a
shilling each for the trip, and intend to take their shilling’s-worth,
even though they pay the penalty of being sea-sick. A Briton will at
all costs have his money’s worth, if in any way possible. That is why,
collectively, as a nation, we “rule the waves,” although, individually,
we too often lie in agonised prostration aboard, even before the
stormy winds do blow.

“Fine day for a sail,” shout the touts. It must be bad weather indeed
when these worthies cease that cry. A crowd of idle holiday-makers,
bored with holiday-making, and incapable of making holiday gracefully,
look on, without the slightest real interest. Pickpockets are busy.

Good-humoured man, easy in his mind because there is nothing in his
pockets to lose, to one of the light-fingered (not so dexterous as he
might be) fumbling awkward fingers in his coat:

“Keep it there, sonny; keep it there, if yer ’and’s cold!”

Chorus of touts: “This way, gents, for the large yacht, _Moss Rose_.
’Ere y’are, lidy, for the _King George_. Now sir, come along; I’ve bin
wyting for yer. Now miss, just goin’ to start!”

The Ramsgate Town Council has heroically attempted to provide amusement
for holiday-makers, and has sought (perhaps with a success only
indifferent) to disguise the more urban and grimly commercial aspects
of the place around the harbour. After all, there is not much of
Ramsgate sands. Measured by the shores of Yarmouth, let us say, they
are very small, and are crowded to extremity. The new Marine Drive,
constructed in 1891 at a cost of £80,000, and intended to connect
the East and West Cliffs, has been with much ingenuity provided with
elaborate rockeries planted with rock-plants and provided with
ornamental waters; but the highly dangerous electric tramways, plunging
down the steep gradients and sharp curves, detract greatly from the
front.

Personally, I am much more impressed with the curious old market,
and with its fine display of flowers, fruit, and vegetables. The
market, and (one must not forget these) the extraordinary number of
public-houses facing the harbour, are sufficient to attract even the
most casual notice. I knew a person with a bent for philosophical
inquiry who was greatly struck by never seeing any one enter these
places of refreshment. He commented upon this curious fact to one
of those broad-beamed fishermen which only the coast of Kent seems
able to produce. This worthy answered with a smile, “Lor’ bless you,
sir, I knows every nail and every knot-hole in every one on ’em. The
customers goes in, right enough, early; and they don’t come out till
closing-time.” The moral of this would appear to be that philosophers
should begin their observations at an earlier hour.




CHAPTER XIV

PEGWELL BAY--EBBSFLEET--THE LANDINGS OF HENGIST AND OF ST.
AUGUSTINE--RICHBOROUGH


But to have done with Ramsgate. We may perhaps explore to the very end
of the West Cliff, where rows of great ugly houses look out seaward
from that height, and where the bastioned cliffs crumble and are
cobbled horribly with brick and plaster. But one gets no joy of those
grim grey buttresses that front the waves.

Passing, instead, up the main street, to the surviving Norman church of
St. Lawrence, we note there the brasses to Nicholas Manston, wearing
the Collar of SS.; and his daughter and wife. Then, down the lengthy
Nethercourt Hill, we come to Pegwell Bay.

When the Tuggs family made holiday at Ramsgate they went, of course, to
Pegwell Bay: famous then, as now, for its shrimps and for the various
places where shrimp-teas, chiefly in little earwiggy arbours, might
be obtained: “Mr. and Mrs. Tuggs and the Captain ordered lunch in the
little garden--small saucers of large shrimps, dabs of butter, crusty
loaves, and bottled ale.” That is the ritual to be observed by all
who, coming to Pegwell Bay, want to do their duty by the place.

   “I know a shore where white cliffs face the sea,
      Along the margin of a noble bay;
    Whose air resounds with nigger minstrelsy--
      And motor-cars are tuppence all the way.

   “Ah! there the sky is of an azure hue,
      And aureate glow the yellow sands;
    The ocean darkens to a deeper blue--
      And everywhere are German bands.

   “I know an arbour where the jasmines twine,
      Where creepers hang in folds and tresses limp,
    Where gay convolvuli and eglantine
      Dispute the odour of the fragrant shrimp.

   “There, where the spider weaves his silken net,
      And earwigs crawl, and caterpillars creep,
    Will you and I together hie, my pet,
      For there they furnish teas extremely cheap.”

Pegwell Bay, as you will clearly perceive on maps, is a very
considerable inlet. It marks, indeed, that nook in the coast-line where
the old Wantsum Channel and the river Stour flowed along past Minster
and Sarre, and emerged at Reculver, thus forming the Isle of Thanet.
Tracking round from Pegwell and its shrimpy arbours, along the low
shores, we come at Cliff’s End to the “Sportsman” inn and Ebbsfleet,
and, turning to the right, will presently find St. Augustine’s Cross.

Ebbsfleet is a place of the greatest historic interest; a spot where
many landings that contributed largely to the long story of England
have taken place. Where these fruitful fields now spread there ebbed
and flowed, until well within the period of established history, those
waters of the Wantsum which received the Stour and other streams,
as shown in old maps, and divided Thanet from the mainland by a
navigable channel with numerous creeks, or “fleets.” An enormous mass
of archæological writing has been expended upon the discussion of the
exact site of Ebbsfleet. It has been sought to place it at Stonar,
nearer Sandwich, among other places; but popular tradition has always
pointed to the site occupied by the modern memorial cross. The channel
of the Wantsum, affording quiet anchorage from stormy seas and safe
landing-places would obviously be the place to be made for by both
friends and hostile visitors. Here, accordingly, tradition places the
landing of the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa in A.D. 449, thirty-nine
years after the departure of the Roman garrison, coming in reply to
Vortigern’s appeal to them to help him against the Picts and Scots.
Following that first coming of those fierce men of the sæxe and the
battleaxe were many other landings, few specifically mentioned in
history. They came then, not as allies, but as enemies of the enfeebled
Britons who had originally hired them to do their fighting. Thus we
read that in A.D. 465 “Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh at
Wippidsfleet, and there slew twelve Welsh Ealdormen, and one of their
own Thanes was slain whose name was Wipped.”

For the original name of Ebbsfleet we have a fair choice. It was
written “Wippidsfleet,” “Hypwine’s fleet,” and “Ippedeflete”; but the
essential name has survived through all the centuries.

It was 148 years after the first landing of the pagan Saxons that
Augustine came ashore here, A.D. 596.

“Augustine’s arrival was, it is more or less historically certain,”
says Sir F. C. Burnand, who will have his joke, even if ill-timed and
painfully hammering it out, “in the last of the summer months, since he
is invariably alluded to in ancient records as ‘our august visitor.’”
This is really lamentable.

Augustine was by merest chance the missioner to England. Gregory the
Great, the Pope who sent him on the mission, had himself, when Deacon,
intended to convert the heathen in our island. Gregory was not of the
sour religious type, but something of a humorist, and a punster and
torturer of words after Burnand’s own fancy, only he did it better. The
story is well known, how, seeing slaves from England sold in Rome, he
asked from what country they came.

“They are Angles,” replied the dealer.

“Not Angles, but angels, with faces so angel-like,” said Gregory; “but
from what country come they?”

“From Deira,” was the answer.

“Deira,” rejoined Gregory; “well said, indeed. _De ira_, plucked from
God’s ire and called to Christ’s mercy. But what is the name of their
King?”

“Ælla,” the slave-dealer told him; and the Deacon was again equal to
the occasion. “Alleluia,” he said, “shall be sung in Ælla’s land.”

At once he sought permission of the Pope to travel to that country
whence those engaging pagans had come, to reconvert their land; and,
having obtained it, set forth with a small following. He had not been
gone more than the third day’s journey when, as the company rested at
noon, a locust sprang upon the book he was reading. He saw an omen in
it. “Rightly is it called Locusta,” said Gregory, “because it seems to
say to us ‘Loco sta’; that is, ‘stay in your place.’ I see we shall not
be able to finish our journey. But,” he added, strangely disregarding
the omen his fancy had created, “rise, load the mules, and let us get
on as far as we can.”

Before they had set out again came messengers who had ridden hastily
from Rome to recall him: the people having missed their kindly Deacon.
He returned, and never visited Britain. Years afterwards, when elected
Pope, he was mindful of his old project, but was then compelled to send
another on the mission that had lain so near his heart. That other was
Augustine, and a most unwilling missioner he proved. He had not at any
time wished to go, and departed from Rome with his forty companions
only in obedience to his Sovereign Pontiff’s commands. Arrived midway
in France, the expedition heard tales so dreadful of the distant land
to which they were bound that they sent Augustine back, by no means
unwilling, to beg of Gregory that the project might be abandoned. Bede,
in his “Ecclesiastical History,” tells us “they were seized with craven
terror, and began to think of returning home, rather than proceed to a
barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation, to whose very language they
were strangers.” But it was precisely because they were unbelieving
that Augustine was sent to them. Gregory would not hear of the mission
being abandoned; and so Augustine was obliged, after all, to fulfil it.

Britain was not, however, so terrible a country, nor was Christianity
unknown there. Ethelbert, the powerful King of Kent, was a pagan, but
his French wife, Bertha, was a Christian, and her chaplain, Luidhard,
who was a Bishop in France, officiated in a chapel identified with the
early church of St. Martin at Canterbury. And, while the Saxon kingdoms
were pagan, away in the westward recesses of Britain, in the land we
now know as Wales, unconquered by the Saxon, the British remained true
to the early Church of the fourth century.

Gregory sent Augustine back, reluctant still, upon that business
himself would so joyfully have gone, had it been possible. The mission
at length landed here, at Ebbsfleet, and advanced into the centre of
Thanet, where Ethelbert, doubtful of them, but not unkindly, met them
in the open air; some say under an oak-tree, while others deny that
oaks ever grew in the island. Painters have selected the striking
incident of this meeting of the Saxon King and his soldiers with
Augustine and his monks; and that historic event lends itself admirably
to the sense of drama, and to form and colour. A great silver cross was
borne aloft before Augustine, and in company with it went an image of
the Saviour done in paint and gilding on a board, much after the usage
of the icons in the Greek Church to-day. Bringing the solemn chant
that accompanied their march to an “Amen,” the monks sat down to the
conference between their leader and the King; a conference conducted
of necessity through interpreters, as neither understood the other’s
language.

In conclusion, the King gave leave for the missioners to establish
themselves at Canterbury. The words in which he is said to have done so
are at once dignified and hospitable, even although we must make a good
deal of allowance for the literary English in which the chroniclers
have cast them: “Your words are fair, and your promises--but because
they are new and doubtful, I cannot give my assent to them and leave
the customs I have so long observed, with the whole Anglo-Saxon race.
But because you have come hither as strangers from a long distance,
and as I seem to myself to have seen clearly that what you yourselves
believed to be true and good you wish to impart to us, we do not wish
to molest you; nay, rather, we are anxious to receive you hospitably
and give you all that is needed for your support; nor do we hinder you
from joining all whom you can to the faith of your religion.”

Thus favourably began the work Augustine was sent to do. The place at
Ebbsfleet where he set foot ashore was long held sacred and a myth
speedily grew about it; no less wild a story than that his foot had
miraculously impressed itself upon the rock. If for “rock” we read
“mud,” which is much more likely to have been a feature of this shore,
we shall have less difficulty in believing the story. A chapel was
built over that wonderful footprint--which no doubt the monks in
after-years had provided; but, more wonderful still, it afterwards
became known as the footprint of St. Mildred, who had landed at
Ebbsfleet about a century later. I do not pretend to be able to
reconcile the footprint of a man well over six feet high, as Augustine
was represented to be, with that of a woman; but who would seriously
criticise the statements in fairy tales? Not I, for one. The chapel
disappeared at some unspecified time, and the marvellous footprint is
said to have been broken up by roadmenders for road-metal in the first
decade of the nineteenth century. This seems, for many reasons, a sad
pity. One would joyfully barter the modern St. Augustine’s Cross that
stands hereby for such. This memorial, a very fine one, was set up
in 1884, on the supposed site of the landing, where an ancient oak
formerly stood. It rises eighteen feet and is elaborately sculptured on
the model of the famous crosses at Sandbach, Cheshire. Close at hand (a
very modern touch this) is “Ebbsfleet, Cliff’s End, and St. Augustine’s
Cross” railway station: which rather discounts the romance of the spot.

[Illustration: THANET AS AN ISLAND, SHOWING THE WANTSUM, FROM AN
ANCIENT MAP.]

The four miles onward to Sandwich are a dead level. In the dawn of
history, when Thanet was still an island, and when ships bound to and
from London sailed round the Wantsum channel, by Minster and Sarre,
the sea rolled where now this road runs. It is an impressive thought,
and renders this scenery more than a little romantic. As you proceed,
with the reedy dykes on the right, towards the red, clustered roofs
of Sandwich, ahead, there rise away across the marshes to the right
the grey, solitary walls of Richborough, the place that was once
the Roman port and fortress of _Rutupiæ_, guarding this entrance of
that ancient channel, just as _Regulbium_ kept watch and ward at the
other. The river Stour, which here flows in an extraordinary looped
course, prevents access to Richborough this way, and one must come
to it through Sandwich. No one, once arrived on that spot, can be
insensible to its peculiar charm; the hoary walls, still in places
some thirty feet high and ten feet eighteen inches thick, displaying
the Roman construction of rubble and stone, alternating with courses
of red brick. The walls form three sides of a square, the fourth side
originally giving upon the water in those days when the Roman vessels
anchored here at the quays. The area enclosed by these walls is ten
acres, now under corn. A singular puzzle for archæologists, who have
not yet explained the meaning of it, is the extraordinary subterranean
passage, discovered in 1866, which runs beneath this enclosed area and
is, in effect, a tunnel some five feet high, made of flints embedded in
concrete. It has a right-hand elbow and ends abruptly. There is usually
some one at hand with candle and matches, who is prepared, for a modest
consideration, to conduct the visitor along this passage. Above this,
in the centre of the station, is a concrete platform in the form of
a cross. This, also, is a prime enigma to the inquiring mind. Some
archæologists consider it to have been the base on which was built a
pharos, or lighthouse.

The mind of the contemplative visitor to this solitary spot dwells upon
the contrast between the busy Roman port of sixteen hundred years ago
and the remoteness of life from it now. Ivy of great age mantles the
walls, and wheat grows ripe to harvest in the great field that was once
a populous camp. All is changed, except the cliffs of Thanet, shining
whitely in the distance; and they, too, bear the burden of Ramsgate’s
sprawling streets, dimly made out against the skyline.

Hundreds of thousands of Roman coins have been dug up here, turned
up by the plough, or just picked up from the wet earth, after rain.
They were for the most part common copper _denarii_, but a great many
silver coins, and some gold, have been found, not a few among them of
great rarity. I have been fired by the story of these finds to seek
for myself. Even a _denarius_ would be something to have retrieved by
one’s own personal efforts from this site of an ancient civilisation.
But nothing rewarded half a day’s grubbing among the clods. ’Twas
ever thus--yesterday, to-morrow, some one else, not to-day--not to
ourselves. Oh the hard luck of it!




CHAPTER XV

SANDWICH


Approaching Sandwich, whose towers and roof-tops rise picturesquely
ahead from the level marshes, mingled with the masts and spars of a few
vessels lying at the town quays, a belt of spindly trees is passed,
stretching away to the left. They are trees of a considerable height
and size, but they wear an ill-nourished appearance, as they cannot
fail to do when we consider how poor the soil on which they grow. It
is, in fact, nothing but sand and pebbles. One solitary residence,
Stonar House, stands amid these weird woods. The spot keeps an air of
reticence and melancholy, appropriate enough, for it is the site of a
vanished town: the empty space where once stood and flourished the town
and port of Stonar, or Lundenwic, an old, and at one time a greater and
more prosperous, rival of Sandwich. Rarely ever has a town vanished
so utterly as this. We first hear of it in A.D. 456, when the Britons
routed the invading Saxons at a spot fixed by the old annalist “in a
field close to the Inscribed Stone [_Lapis Tituli_, in the original
Latin] on the shores of the Gallic sea.” What was that stone? No one
can say. Here again was fought a battle: when Edmund Ironside defeated
the Danes, in 1019.

[Illustration: FISHERGATE, SANDWICH.]

Stonar was situated on an island at the mouths of the Stour and
Wantsum. Some archæologists who are not satisfied with the generally
received legend of Ebbsfleet believe it was here Augustine landed. The
converted King Canute made a grant of it to St. Augustine’s Abbey at
Canterbury, and in the deeds accompanying the gift we find it named
“Estonores.” The name should properly, no doubt, be spelled Stonor: the
stone on the edge, or shore. Its _alias_, “Lundenwic,” derived from its
position on the then navigable channel of the Wantsum, on the short-cut
round to the Thames and London by Reculver; “wic,” like the “wich” of
Sandwich, being the Norse _vik_, for bay or channel.

Sandwich was at last overtaking Stonar in the race for prosperity, and
Stonar was already decaying when a great storm in 1365 overwhelmed the
sandy island on which it was situated. This disaster had been to some
extent retrieved when a French expedition landed in 1385 and burnt what
had been rebuilt. Fate was too strong for that unfortunate port, and it
then sank into utter oblivion. Antiquaries claim to have discovered the
site of its church, but of buildings not the slightest traces remain
above ground, and the sea that once destroyed it long ago rendered the
site useless by retreating over a mile away.

Such is the history of Stonar, and almost to the same complexion have
the vagaries of sea and sands brought its once successful rival,
Sandwich.

The town of Sandwich is so comparatively little known that when its
name arises it is first of sandwiches--ham or other--or of the
Sandwich Islands, that one thinks; the ancient town taking the remote
place of _tertium quid_ and coming last. Yet, indirectly, Sandwich
gave a name both to the eatables and the islands, by the intermediary
of the fourth Earl of Sandwich, that bright particular star among the
rabbit-warren of ennobled Montagues in the eighteenth century who was
known familiarly as “Jemmy Twitcher,” and was great at the Admiralty,
and greater perhaps as a gambler. In his honour Captain Cook named
Hawaii and its archipelago the “Sandwich Islands”; and the gamester’s
intentness upon the hazards of play and disinclination from breaking
off for meals led him to keep hunger off at the card-table by eating
meat between slices of bread; called, after him, “sandwiches.”

The ancient town and reverend Cinque Port of Sandwich is entered by a
bridge across the Stour and thence by passing under the arch of the
old Barbican, a curious outwork of the times when walls and gates were
necessary for the town’s security. The only other remaining gate is the
Fishergate, along the same quay, built in 1578. The road from Ramsgate
and the bridge across the Stour to the Barbican are comparatively
modern innovations, the only entrance from this side being formerly by
ferry to Fishergate. The bridge was first built in 1755, and is in part
an iron swing-bridge, permitting the passage of small vessels to the
upper quays. Against its parapets lean the idle, the born tired, and
the infirm of Sandwich the livelong day; some staring into the water,
or vaguely across the sandy flats; others facing north, expending a
fascinated stare upon the activities of the brewery, which is the
busiest thing in the town. There are more imposing entrances than this
to English towns; the bold gates and frowning towers of Canterbury and
of York bring back mediævalism, a living thing; but no other approach
is so truly quaint as that to Sandwich by the Barbican. Little,
squatty round towers with their lower half chequered black and white
in flint and stone, and their upper part finished with peaked roofs
like witches’ hats, give an effect almost unreal in their completely
picturesque setting, with the curious tower of St. Peter’s peering over
the roof-tops. It is so rarely complete that you almost suspect it to
be the lath-and-plaster and painted canvas building of the entrance,
let us say, to a “Cinque Port Exhibition.” But it is undeniably real,
unquestionably genuine, and is but the introduction to much else of an
old-world character that Sandwich contains.

Sandwich is a little town. For all its ancient importance--the
Liverpool of olden times--it was never large, and the ancient,
grassy ramparts that almost encircle it were at no time a hindrance
to expansion. Mediæval Canterbury, in common with another walled city
and town, threw out suburbs, which may be seen to this day outside the
walls, looking almost the age of the original place; but Sandwich,
however crowded it may have grown within the walls, had never any
suburbs. A seaport at once so wealthy and prosperous, and so exposed
to raids from over-sea as was this in the olden days of fire and
sword, could not afford to give such hostages to fortune as unprotected
suburbs would be. The history of Sandwich, a tale of repeated burnings
and pillagings, sufficiently shows that even behind its defences it
could not withstand the many furious attacks made from time to time.
Apart from the many such disasters of early times, of which history
speaks but vaguely, we hear of the town being laid waste in 1046 by
vikings; of damage done in 1052 by the rebel Earl Godwin, and of
constant forays in mediæval times, including the burning by the French
in 1216. It again suffered severely at the hands of the French in 1400,
1438, and 1457; and in 1470, in an attack by the rebel Earl of Warwick;
and only when the power and prosperity of the port had decayed did
the town know peace. “He who is low need fear no foe,” truly says the
jingling proverb.

To-day the size and shape of the town are what they always were. The
ramparts still look out upon the open, level meadows, and not only
are there no suburban developments, but there is even room within the
ancient ceinture for expansion. It is a strange fall from ancient
eminence.

We hear nothing of Sandwich before A.D. 665, when Wilfrid, Bishop of
Northumbria, is recorded to have landed in the haven that then had
apparently begun to make the fortune of the place. He came ashore
“happily and pleasantly.” Richborough was already dead as a port,
and the twin ports of Stonar and Sandwich were thriving upon its
decay. Very rare and fragmentary are these early notices of Sandwich,
and it is not until A.D. 851 that we again hear of it, in a severe
defeat of invading Danes, administered by Athelstan. That date marks
the beginning of an era of troubles caused by those fierce piratical
Northerners, ending for a time only in 1016, when the Danes under
Canute made themselves masters of the country. In all that century
and a half the viking ships, with the dreaded device of the Black
Raven, became, as we are told by a recent writer, “a familiar but
always unwelcome sight.” Unwelcome! Yes, indeed. A thought too mild,
perhaps, that word; because we know those Danish pirates to have been
so peculiarly unwelcome that when they were caught, their captors
expressed their hatred by skinning them alive and nailing their hides
upon the church-doors. Such treatment left no room for doubt.

In the defensive measures early undertaken against these marauding
hosts some historians trace the first inception of that famous alliance
of seashore towns known as the “Cinque Ports,” among which, although
Dover has always been accounted chief, Sandwich certainly makes the
better figure in olden story. Of all those seaports in that brotherhood
whose privilege it was to bear the proud and strange dimidiated arms
of the half-lions and half-boats, Sandwich suffered more severely at
the hands of the foreigner, it was more honoured, it rose to loftier
heights of prosperity, made greater sacrifices, and in the end its
decay was the more marked. It will be convenient here to concisely tell
the story of those ports.

The Cinque Ports, as a confederacy, arose from an early necessity for
guarding the south coast against the sea-rovers and other piratical
hordes out of the north of Europe, who began to harry these shores
so early as the time of the Romans. In the later years of the Roman
occupation of Britain, when the grip of that masterful people was
growing enfeebled with luxurious habits, and when not even the twin
great fortresses of _Regulbium_ and _Rutupiæ_ sufficed to overawe those
fierce strangers, it had been found necessary to provide especially for
the defence of these ports, and to appoint a commander whose particular
charge the great stretch of coast from Yarmouth, down past the Thames
and Medway, and so on to the Kentish and Sussex coasts, should be. This
official was the _Comes littoris Saxonici_, that is to say, the “Count
of the Saxon Shore.”

This warden of the coasts was not ill provided with fortresses. There
were, in all, nine. In addition to _Regulbium_ and _Rutupiæ_, there
was the like defence of _Garianonum_, now known as Burgh Castle, near
Yarmouth; _Branodunum_, Brancaster in Norfolk; _Othona_, now known as
St. Peter’s-on-the-Wall, near Bradwell, Essex; the original castle at
Dover, _Portus Lemanis_, now Lympne; _Anderida_, Pevensey; and _Portus
Adurni_. The fortunes of the various Counts of the Saxon Shore are
unknown. All records are lost in the final overthrow of civilisation
after the departure of the Romans, and when the conquering Saxons had
established themselves here, they were strong enough for a long time to
hold what they had made their own, without the necessity for vigilant
defence of the coast. It was only when the Saxons, in their turn, had
begun to feel the effects of ease and luxury, and when they, too, had
suffered from piratical rovers, that coast-defence again became urgent.
And the protection of our shores has been, more or less, a matter of
urgency ever since, and so remains.

But not until the time of Edward the Confessor did the actual
confederation of the Cinque Ports come into existence, and not until
after the Conquest do we hear with any certainty of it. It is not
clear, amid the mists of antiquity from which this history emerges,
whether the ports concerned took the initiative or whether the duty of
providing ships and men for the King’s use (or for national defence, as
we might nowadays express it) was laid upon them against their will.
But the privileges and exemptions granted to these associated ports in
return for their supply of ships, men, and munitions amply recouped the
cost of the service imposed upon them. The original Cinque Ports were
Dover, Sandwich, Hastings, Hythe, and Romney. At a later period Rye and
Winchelsea were added, under the special designation of the “Ancient
Towns.” Each port had its subsidiary “members.” Thus the “members”
attached to Dover were Margate, Folkestone, Faversham, and St. Peter’s,
Broadstairs. Those belonging to Sandwich were Deal, Walmer, Stonar,
Ramsgate, Sarre, Reculver, Fordwich, and Brightlingsea, away in Essex;
to which Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and Dunwich in Suffolk may perhaps
be added, although Dunwich was early swept away by encroachment of the
sea, and Yarmouth, as a place of considerable size, fully conscious of
its own dignity, always resented the authority assumed by Sandwich over
its fishery, and eventually, in 1663, won its complete independence.

Romney comprised Lydd, Dungeness, Eastweston, and Promwell; Hythe
took in merely West Hythe, and to Hastings belonged the remote and
completely inland village of Bekesbourne.

The story of the Cinque Ports is, above all else, an object-lesson
in the supreme, although generally unacknowledged, importance of the
trading, or middle classes, without whose enterprising activities
and courage and resource the nation long since would have ceased to
exist. It has always been convenient to ignore the services to the
community performed by traders, who on the one hand give employment and
on the other pay the greater proportion of rates and taxes, and from
whose enriched families the failing and impoverished aristocracy has
throughout the centuries been recruited.

Although, as already said, the idea of the Cinque Ports confederation
goes back into dim antiquity, we have few early facts. The first
Warden of whom we have any certain information is John de Fiennes, in
the time of William the Conqueror, and the earliest charter extant is
that of 1277, the sixth year of the reign of Edward the First. By that
document we learn something of the status and scope of this remarkable
association. Those ports were among the richest communities at that
time within the kingdom. They no longer suffered, as of yore, from
pirates, although they were the first to feel the vengeance of the
foreigner when war broke out; and thus they were not so immediately
concerned as of old in guarding their own shores. But the King in those
times, before such a thing as a royal navy had come into existence,
had need of ships wherewith to conduct his foreign wars, and the
merchant-vessels of Sandwich, of Dover, and of these other maritime
communities were the only craft then available. Not even in those
high-handed feudal times was it possible to seize ships at will; some
centuries earlier a compact had been made with the ports, which were
then definitely associated. They undertook to supply vessels, according
to their relative importance. Thus under Henry the Third, in 1229, the
Cinque Ports, as a whole, were to furnish fifty-seven ships, each with
a crew of twenty-one men and a boy (a “gromet,” or “garcion,” as he was
called) for fifteen days, at their own cost; and as long afterwards as
might be required, on pay. The varied importance of the contributory
ports seems to be reflected in the ships each then contracted to supply
towards the tally. Thus Dover is set down for twenty-one; Winchelsea
ten; Hastings six; and Sandwich, Hythe, Romney, and Rye five each.

Thus early were the merchants able to find a fleet for the King’s
needs; and they obtained substantial return for the service. The
Cinque Ports were given many valuable rights and privileges within and
without their own boundaries. They were governed under a Lord Warden
by a representative body of men freely chosen from each port, and were
independent alike of the counties and of the King’s writ, and directly
represented in Parliament and at the coronation of King and Queen. In
place of the aldermen and councillors of municipal corporations, the
freemen of the ports were styled “barons” and “jurats.” The right to
govern one’s own affairs was not recognised in those times, and the
concession granted to the freemen of the Cinque Ports was therefore of
considerable value. They were, moreover, given a privilege that would
be extremely valuable even now: that of trading free of toll everywhere
throughout the kingdom. They were, in the words of Edward the First’s
charter, “quit of all toll and custom, all lastage, tollage, passage,
carriage, rivage, and pontage.” They had also the more abstruse rights
of “Soc and sac, infangtheoff and utfangtheoff, wardship and marriage
of heirs,” and were freed from the King’s right of prisage of imported
wines.

The Cinque Ports navy, thus constituted, performed great services
during several centuries. It not only conveyed the King’s troops in
his wars with France, and Scotland, and in his subjugations of Ireland
and Wales, but fought with, and generally vanquished, foreign fleets.
It was only with the gradual growth of a royal navy, from the time of
Henry the Seventh, that the importance of the Cinque Ports flotilla
declined.

Its gradual declension was due rather to a rage for building big
warships than to any decay in the ports. Much the same forces were at
work then as those we see now. The Cinque Ports vessels were, in the
first instance, merchantmen, and when they had performed their military
service they resumed their trade. The great ships of war built by Henry
the Eighth, the _Mary Rose_ and the _Harry Grace à Dieu_, were the
Dreadnoughts of their age, and led to competitive building on the part
of foreign Powers. Among those leviathans the trading vessels of the
ports seemed insignificant; although it was left for a much later age
to prove that the fishing luggers of the Kentish coast could perform
useful acts; as when they were armed during the scare of Napoleon’s
projected invasion, and succeeded in capturing some French gunboats and
putting privateers to flight.

With the decline of their especial usefulness, and with the growth
everywhere of liberties, the peculiar privileges of the Cinque Ports
either became anomalous or absolutely worthless, and so at length the
office of Lord Warden grew more and more a mere ornamental distinction,
generally conferred upon a statesman towards the close of his career.
The honour is generally the coping-stone placed upon the achievements
of public life. Together with the decline of this once great office,
the various courts held for the conduct of Cinque Ports business have
either ceased to exist or are brought into an effete and unwonted
activity only on rare occasions, such as the Installation of a Lord
Warden, or a coronation, when the “barons” claim their ancient rights
of carrying a canopy over King and Queen. All these changes had come
gradually about at the time when reform generally was in the air, in
the first half of the nineteenth century, and most of these especial
privileges were formally abolished by the Municipal Corporations Act of
1835.

Sandwich was severely governed in mediæval times by its authorities,
the “jurats or barons,” but not one whit more severely than other
members of the Cinque Ports. The “common ordinances” proclaimed by
authority of these jurats included a curious variety of enactments. No
burgess was permitted to lend any money to spinners of wool on security
of their wool, nor to tailors on their cloth; no dealer in fish was
allowed to buy any fish in the market from a foreign fisherman, and
no poulterer might purchase any poultry from a foreigner “until the
better sort of people of the town had supplied themselves with what
they wanted for their own use.” “Foreigner” in these cases meant merely
a person who was not an inhabitant of Sandwich, not an alien.

Furthermore, any person who should wound another maliciously with
knife, sword, or the like, had the choice either of paying the Mayor
and commonalty sixty shillings, of going to prison for a year and a
day, or of having his hand perforated by the weapon with which the
wound was inflicted. Any woman convicted of scolding or quarrelling in
the street, or any public place, was to carry “the mortar,” a kind of
pillory, through the town, beginning and ending at the pillory gate,
and preceded by a piper, to whom she was to pay a penny for his music.
The jurats had also power of life and death for offences that would now
be considered of only a minor kind. The women condemned to die were
drowned in the Guestling Brook; the men buried alive in the Thieves
Dunes, near by.

The treacherous receding of the sea, which, in leaving Richborough
high and dry, had ruined that original port and created Sandwich,
was in course of time to serve Sandwich in the like manner. Its
period of greatest prosperity would appear to have been about 1470.
It had then ninety-five vessels and 1,500 sailors, and the customs
revenue of the port was £17,000, equal to about twenty times that
sum in present values. But the drifting sands soon afterwards began
to create difficulties in the haven; and when, about 1535, a large
vessel belonging to Pope Paul the Fourth was sunk, by accident or
design, in the harbour it caused so serious a shoal that not all the
efforts of the townspeople could remove it. By 1640 the haven was a
thing of the past, but for close upon two centuries and a half hopes
were entertained of reopening it. At an early stage in these troubles
foreigners were had over from Holland to deal with the sands, and
petitions were from time to time presented to Queen Elizabeth and to
Parliament. And still the sandbanks accumulated, and by that time, late
in the eighteenth century, when the Government sent down engineers to
plan and estimate and report, it was discovered that nothing less than
a cut nearly two miles long, at a cost of about £360,000, would serve.
That project never progressed beyond the report stage, and Sandwich has
long been resigned to its fate. The distance to the sea, in a direct
line, is now two miles, across sandy water, partly grown with grass;
and ships coming up the Stour to Sandwich quays have to negotiate a
winding course of nearly four miles from the sea.

But it would be a mistake to assume that Sandwich was immediately
ruined by the closing of its haven. It so happened, about the time
when the sands were first closing in, in the reign of Elizabeth, that
religious persecution in the Netherlands was harassing the industrious
Flemish and French peoples whose commercial and industrial genius had
made the fortunes of that land. England’s textile and weaving trades
were poor in comparison with those of the Continent, and it was a
far-seeing statesmanship, as much as a fellow religious feeling, that
induced Elizabeth to grant the petition of the oppressed weavers
of bays and says, and other craftsmen in 1565, and afford them an
asylum from the ferocious persecution carried on by the Spaniards in
the Low Countries. Archbishop Parker well named the Dutch and French
refugees who by command of that great Queen were permitted to settle in
Sandwich, “gentle and profitable strangers.” Unlike the often diseased,
verminous, and generally vicious, ignorant, and tradeless aliens whose
free entry into the England of to-day is so rightly resented, those
immigrants brought with them, in addition to cleanly and industrious
and law-abiding habits, the mastery of trades and techniques that
England lacked. They were indeed profitable to the State, and they
largely saved Sandwich from such complete extinction as that which has
befallen Romney and Winchelsea.

This community originally numbered some four hundred persons, and
formed a class apart, with two chapels, a Flemish and a French, for
their own use. Their textile trades thrived, and sent forth colonies to
Colchester and other places; and, among other crafts, they introduced
market-gardening. Incidentally, also, they taught the wasteful and the
riotous English a new mode of life. I suppose those two chief races
that mainly go towards the making of the English people--the Celts and
the Anglo-Saxons--have wastefulness and a love of drink in common,
however else they differ. But these strangers added sobriety and
prudence to their industry, and brought much housekeeping cleverness
with them. It is but one example of their methods, but characteristic,
that they were the first to introduce oxtail soup. The English butchers
had always disposed of the tails with the hides, but these newcomers
had long known their value and bought them cheaply, in the way of their
housekeeping, until the English aptitude to learn at other people’s
expense sent up the price of those neglected appendages. It is quite
in keeping with the contrary nature of people and affairs that it was
after a time sought to discriminate unfavourably in taxation against
these people who had brought such benefits into the land. How matters
would eventually have shaped does not appear, for at that juncture
the strangers had begun to mingle with the English. They intermarried
and lost their foreign tongues, and, such is the English power of
assimilation, their very names have suffered similar changes. Thus,
although to this day many names in Sandwich are in their origin Dutch
or French, they have been altered so greatly, following the original
English inability to pronounce them, that they appear, on the face
of them, sufficiently British. All the poetry in them has been
obliterated in the process, and they have become quaint or grotesque.
But those typical Sandwich names, “Gutterbock” and “Poisson,” are in
their original form.

The textile trades in time deserted Sandwich, and at last left it to
a gentle sleep; and so it has drowsed away the last centuries. It is
not the “dead town” it is commonly reported to be, and by no means to
be judged by Cobbett’s uncomplimentary reference in 1823: “Sandwich,
which is a rotten borough. Rottenness, putridity, is excellent for
land, but bad for boroughs.” It was political rottenness that aroused
his indignation; but that was no especial attribute of Sandwich, and
therefore he need not have continued with the remark, “as villainous a
hole as one would wish to see.”

Wish _not_ to see, he doubtless meant, for nobody desires to see
villainous holes. But Sandwich was not of his political creed, hence
this fury.

So much has been said of Sandwich as a “dead town” that strangers who
first come to it full of the tales they have heard, of grass growing in
its streets--and, for all I know, moss growing on its inhabitants--
are likely to be surprised at its comparative vitality. Grass does
not grow like a lawn in the streets of Sandwich, in spite of all the
far-fetched stories of decay and desolation that it pleases eloquent
descriptive writers to tell, and it is something of a shock to find
a quite busy railway station just outside the ramparts and a very
modern “Stores” in whose windows are all sorts of twentieth-century
provisions, for which modern coin of the realm, and not the quaint
moneys of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, must be tendered. All these
signs, including the occasional motor-cars that hurry through the
narrow streets, are very reassuring, or very disastrous, according to
your point of view.

At Sandwich, which is supposed (in the pages of those super-eloquent
writers aforesaid) to have given up the ghost long ago, but has done
nothing of the kind, there should certainly be no railway, and there
should be no room in a “dead” town for the gasworks which may be seen--
and smelt--on the quay, nor for the particularly large and busy
brewery in Strand Street. At the mediæval Sandwich, thus pictured, the
few remaining shopkeepers should stand in their doorways and address
passers-by with “What d’ye lack, my masters?” but they don’t; and the
thirsty wayfarer will call in vain for a posset of sack, a beaker of
canary or malvoisie at the “Red Lion” or “King’s Arms.” Beshrew me,
sirs, but he will need to content himself with a whisky-and-soda,
mineral-waters, or the product of the local brewery already mentioned.
I have no doubt, could he sample the old-style drinks, he would greatly
prefer the modern.

If one really wishes to see a dead town, Winchelsea, or New Romney,
or, better still, Old Romney, may be recommended. They are much more
dead--if it be in any way possible to institute degrees in these
things--than Sandwich.

But the census returns of a hundred years ago, compared with those of
1911, prove an increase of population in the town. They at the same
time disclose how small a place it is. The population in 1801 was
2,452; in 1901 it had risen to 3,170; but the 1911 census reveals a
decline of 130.

There is no grand architecture, of the wonder-compelling kind, in
Sandwich. It is all very quiet and modest and domestic, but at the
same time old-world and reverend. Of the three parish churches, St.
Clement’s, which stands hard by the place where the ancient sea-front
of Sandwich once opened out, is the most notable, and has a fine Norman
tower. The restoration it has experienced was paid for by the sale
of its bells--a quaint touch--and a modern set of tube-chimes now
replaces them. St. Peter’s is perhaps better known, because its tower
is taller and is capped with a curious Dutch-like turret, and rising
to a considerable height, viewed from a distance, across the flats, it
is the most prominent feature of the town. The tower is frankly and
unashamedly unarchitectural, and replaces the one that fell without
warning on October 13th, 1661. It fell disastrously into the church
and demolished the south aisle, making a mighty heap of wreckage. “The
rubidge,” says the contemporary account, “was three fathoms deep in
the middle of the church.” The roofless walls of that destroyed aisle
remain in part to this day. The tower that replaces the fallen building
is of a local grey brick made from the harbour mud, and would appear
from its style to have been designed and built by a local journeyman
bricklayer. But it is to be hoped that the modern passion for
remodelling plain buildings and putting them into a conventional dress
will pass this tower of St. Peter’s by; for Sandwich would scarce seem
the same Sandwich without it, and people who write about the town would
lose the cherished chance of being mildly funny at its expense.

I do not think any stranger has ever been known to find his way
through Sandwich without making one or two false turns, for its
streets are winding and deceptive. The houses of the middle ages
are not represented in them at all, and it is a sixteenth and
seventeenth-century Sandwich you see, not the mediæval port. It is,
in general, a Dutch effect, as if those settlers under Elizabeth had
imported their views upon domestic architecture and had successfully
imposed them upon the town.

The native of Sandwich who has left his mark most visibly upon the
place is Sir Roger Manwood, who founded the Grammar School in 1563.
Manwood was born 1525, son of a local draper, and, entering the law,
became eventually Chief Baron of the Exchequer. An elaborate new
school-building, built 1895, stands in a solitary position outside the
town, at the very opposite end from the original school, now occupied
as a private residence and named Manwood Court. It stands at the very
extremity of Sandwich, as you go towards Canterbury, and is a very
striking building, with five gables and a high-pitched roof, and the
date, 1564, in great figures, sprawling in genuine sixteenth-century
ironwork along the frontage. Queen Elizabeth, on her visit to Sandwich
in 1572, when she was elaborately entertained by the town, honoured Sir
Roger by staying at his house.

For the rest, there are dim, odd corners, where queer old timber
angle-posts, carved with grinning and demoniacal figures, start out of
the houses. Such an one is that which forms the chief adornment of the
“King’s Arms” inn and is dated 1592.

[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, SANDWICH.]

The Town Hall is a curious old building within, although refaced and
rendered commonplace without. In it are held the Quarter Sessions
for Sandwich and the Liberties of Ramsgate, Walmer, and Sarre.
Brightlingsea’s law-cases were also formerly held here; and the Mayor
of that Essex seaport still has his chain of office placed on him here
by his overlord, the Mayor of Sandwich. Another mayoral peculiarity
is the black wand, instead of the usual white one, presented by the
clerk to his Worship on his assuming office. The town traditionally
thus went into mourning after the battle of Bloody Point. As this took
place in the year 851, it is quite evident that the men of Sandwich
are people with long memories, whom it would be an ill business to
offend. The Sessions Hall and police-court is a fine old room, the
court being entered past two weird old sculptured heraldic figures, a
lion and a dragon sitting up on their rumps and holding shields. These
are survivals of the town’s decorations when Queen Elizabeth visited
it, the dragon being, of course, the ancient Dragon of Wales. A number
of pictures of curious interest seen in the Mayor’s Parlour were found
in 1839, during some alterations to a house in Harnet Street. They
represent the battle of Sole (Southwold) Bay, the reception of Queen
Elizabeth, etc. The jury-box in the Sessions Court is worth notice.
It is one which used formerly to be set up at the opening of the
Court, and taken down at the conclusion of business, when its parts
were fitted into the panelling which lines the walls. Thus arose the
expression of “empanelling” a jury.

There is now a stir in the old streets of Sandwich. Somewhere about
1887 some enthusiastic golfers discovered in the wide-spreading sands
an ideal site for links on which to play that “royal and ancient”
game, at that time scarce known, even by name, to the generality of
Englishmen; and speedily the St. George’s Golf Club, since granted the
prefix of “Royal,” was established, on land--or rather sand--leased
and eventually purchased, from the Earl of Guilford, to whom the sea,
in closing the career of Sandwich as a port, has gracefully presented
this truly “unearned increment.” The present club-house was formerly
Great Downs Farm. Recently the trustees of the Earl of Guilford have
constructed a “private” road from Sandwich, across the sandy wastes, to
the sea, where they have erected a smart hotel, chiefly for golfers,
on what was the solitary shore. Sometimes, when the golfers have bored
each other almost to extinction with bragging of their remarkable feats
on the course, they lounge into Sandwich and patronise it. To those who
do not play golf all these developments are hateful and infuriating,
and the players seem to be persons who pretend at exercise, rather
than putting themselves to any real exertion; and on that score very
inferior to cricketers. Meanwhile the boys and growing lads of Sandwich
employed as “caddies” are being bred up to be idle, vicious, and
unemployable men.




CHAPTER XVI

WORTH--UPPER DEAL--DEAL--THE GOODWIN SANDS


The old road from Sandwich to Deal ran across the sandy wastes through
which the railway goes, but the sand-dunes that line the shore all
the way between the towns, and stretch far inland, form a profound
discouragement to those who would seek to trace the seashore. Maps
rightly mark this space of coast “Blown Sand.” Blown it is, into
hollows and heights, sometimes overgrown with a scanty herbage and thus
anchored securely against being moved on again by the winds; but often
mere loose sand-heaps that will be changed radically in shape by the
next furious gale. It is distressing walking, and plaguy ill-favoured
to boot; and where the sand at last dies away inland and gets mixed up
with marshes, is about as easy and as awkward a place to get lost in as
may well be imagined. The railway between Sandwich and Deal cuts midway
through this swampy desolation.

[Illustration: UPPER DEAL.]

The modern road to Deal lies open and unfenced for the most part,
first across samples of these marshes, and then across chalk downs.
It is a pleasant highway, where you get just as much of the dykes
and waterlogged scenery as you want, without a depressing surfeit of
it. By the time the turning for Worth is reached the shore is nearly
three miles distant. Here a signpost directs on the left “To Word,” a
spelling which reproduces the olden Saxon pronunciation of “Worth,”
still current here; all one with the singular inability of the Kentish
folk to enunciate “th”--a strange and widespread trick of the tongue
which makes the rustics talk of “de wedder,” instead of the weather.
The effect upon strangers is almost that of talking to foreigners.
The word “shibboleth” itself would certainly bewray them; they would
inevitably make it “shibboled.”

“Worth” is pure Anglo-Saxon: deriving from “Weorthig,” meaning an
enclosure. The site of it was evidently a very early attempt at
cultivation in these marshes.

We will not penetrate beyond Worth to the shore, the sands, and
marshes, to the site of the old road, but will proceed along the
present highway to Deal, through Shoulden.

The town of Deal is entered through what might at first be considered
the inland modern suburb of Upper Deal, where the very striking
red-brick seventeenth-century tower of St. Lawrence’s church confronts
the wayfarer. But what is now “Upper” Deal is in fact the original
place: the “Addelam” of Domesday, the “Dole” of earlier records. The
place-name, which signifies a “dale,” is singularly appropriate for the
spot where the rolling chalk hills descend to a long level, stretching
to the sea. Before there was any town at all where Deal now faces the
Channel, almost awash with the tides, “Upper” Deal was simply “Deal,”
and what we now know as Deal was the upstart settlement called “Lower”
Deal. Thus oddly is the situation reversed.

A curious piece of evidence as to the comparatively recent origin of
the town is found in a Chancery case argued in 1663, when a witness
seventy-two years of age declared that “he well knew the valley where
Lower Deal is situated, and that he knew it before any house had been
built there.”

The church of St. Lawrence is a singular mixture within, and has a
singing gallery, quaintly painted with an East Indiaman in full sail,
and bearing the date 1705; together with little pictures of pilots
and terrestrial globes, and the inscription: “This Gallery was built
by ye Pilots of Deal.” It will be noted that, in the construction of
this road into Deal, the old Dutch-like houses here have suffered some
mutilation.

It is a mile-long affair of incredibly mean streets from Upper
Deal to the seashore. When the town arose from these levels in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it came into existence as a
place of ship-chandlers and purveyors, and grubbed along in a kind of
squalid, casual prosperity which apparently no one expected to last.
Hence the little grey-brick houses, that seem to have been built with
small confidence in the future. Here and there, however, you find some
charmingly designed old shop-fronts and fanlights, in the nicest taste,
unobtrusive but in just proportion.

The church of Deal, dedicated to St. George the Martyr, and dating
only from the time of Queen Anne, is just the type of building one
would expect from that date: red brick, with factory-like windows and
a cupola-crowned clock turret. But it is a good and well-proportioned
specimen of its class. Something of the fine old salty flavour of the
tarry-breeched sailors of Nelson’s day belongs to the two epitaphs that
may be found against the walls. The first is to--

  “John Ross and James Draper, Seamen, who were killed on board
  H.M.S. _Naiad_ in defeating the French Flotilla off Boulogne in the
  presence of Buonaparte, 21st September 1811. Their Shipmates caused
  this Monument to be erected to the memory of these truly good Men,
  who so nobly fell in the just cause of their Country.”

The other reads:

  “Sacred to the Memory of David Browne, late a Seaman on board his
  Majesty’s Ship _Immortalité_, who died of wounds received in action
  with the Division of the French Flotilla off Cape Blanc Nez, 23rd
  of October 1804. Likewise of James Wilson, William Terrent, John
  Dewall, and George Bacher, Seamen, who lost their lives on the
  same occasion. Of William Panrucker, Seaman, killed 6th Sept.
  1804, John Egerton, Marine, killed 17th February 1804, and of James
  Redout, Seaman, killed 5th Nov. 1803. This is erected by their
  Shipmates. They were brave good Men and fell at that Post their
  Country had assigned Them.”

Deal, in the opinion of Cobbett, was “a most villainous place. It is
full of filthy-looking people. Great desolation of abomination has
been going on here; tremendous barracks, partly pulled down and partly
tumbling down, and partly occupied by soldiers. Everything seems upon
the perish. I was glad to hurry along through it, and to leave its
inns and public-houses to be occupied by the tarred and trowsered, and
blue-and-buff crew whose vicinage I always detest.” The “tarred and
trowsered crew” in his time were very largely smugglers of the most
ingenious type. They smuggled in the most incredible places, and it is
even recorded that the Deal boatmen wore bustles, in which they packed
vast quantities of tea and tobacco. The visitor of to-day, noting that
the Deal boatmen are already provided by nature with a very extensive
area in the region on which bustles are worn, will smile at the
quaint picture that must have been presented by these bold dealers in
contraband.

Julius Cæsar landed at Deal, in his invasion of Britain, B.C. 55, and
again in the following year; and Perkin Warbeck chose the same spot in
1495. The low, shingly beach afforded an easy landing-place; and hence,
when invasion was expected in the reign of Henry the Eighth, Deal was
one of the earliest places to be fortified.

[Illustration: THE QUAINT FORESHORE OF DEAL.]

History speaks with many voices on the subject of Henry the Eighth.
That is partly because history is the sport of partisans, and partly
because the character of that King is so complex. The view that he was
all bloodthirsty tyrant and sensualist is easily taken. His amazing
marriages, and still more amazing dissolutions of marriage, contribute
largely to that estimate of him. But there were several Henrys in that
one portly body. There was the avaricious, greedy Henry, own son of the
mean Henry the Seventh; the vain and luxurious and spendthrift Henry;
the proud and cruel Henry, a true Welsh Tudor; and the statesman and
patriot, whose existence few acknowledge. Whatever were his faults and
errors, Englishmen to this day owe more to Henry the Eighth than to
many a later monarch. He it was who established the Royal Navy, who
had the courage to break with Rome and to free England from the deadly
embrace of that Church; and he spared no effort to arm his country
against the political alliances the Pope sought to direct against it.

Says Hall, the Chronicler:

“The King’s Highness, which never ceased to study and take pains both
for the advancement of the commonwealth of this his realm of England,
of the which he was the only supreme governor, and also for the defence
of all the same, was lately informed by his trusty and faithful
friends that the cankered and cruel serpent, the Bishop of Rome, by
that arch-traitor Reignold Poole, enemy to God’s word and his natural
country, had moved and stirred divers great princes and potentates of
Christendom to invade the realm of England, and utterly to destroy the
whole nation of the same. Wherefore His Majesty, in his own person,
without any delay, took very laborious and painful journeys towards the
sea-coasts.”

The results of these journeys was the building in 1539 of what Lambarde
describes as “castles, platfourmes, and blockhouses in all needfulle
places of the Realme.” Some of these we may still see, here and at
Walmer, Sandgate, Camber, and along the south coast, far away into
Cornwall. These “bulwarks,” as they are styled in the records of the
time, were designed by Van Hassenperg, a German military architect, and
all bore outwardly much the same appearance, consisting of portly, but
low, masonry towers clustered at intervals round a stout curtain-wall
and pierced with lunettes for guns. Islanded within the centre of this
enclosure was a keep and gun-platform, rising to a somewhat greater
height than the outer works. Although of one general appearance, there
were minor differences in the outer aspect of these coast defences,
and the ground-plan of each was markedly individual. Deal Castle, long
since become a private residence, still stands to the west of the
town. It wears much the same exterior appearance, although its moat is
planted with shrubs.

The narrow alleys that lead on to the beach at Deal, and the ramshackly
old houses and hovels from whose windows one might almost indulge in
sea-fishing, seem almost like provocative impertinences to the waves,
which appear always to be threatening them. But there they remain, the
most whimsical of dwellings, with the spars and bowsprits of vessels
almost poking in at the windows, greatly to the amusement of summer
visitors.

The visitor to Deal who does not partake of at least one Deal “hoffkin”
is not considered to have done his duty by the place. There is,
however, nothing especially delightful in one of these strangely
named articles. A “hoffkin” may be purchased at any baker’s shop, at
the price of one penny, and is nothing more than ordinary breadstuff
(except that it appears to be a good deal harder, and not so palatable)
baked in the shape of a teacake. It is about the size of a saucer, and
has a hole in the middle. And why any baker makes such a thing, and how
it came by its name, is an unrevealed mystery.

Half a mile north of Deal once stood the castle of Sandown, one of
Henry the Eighth’s many shoreward castles. They had no opportunity of
fighting the foe, and their history has thus been meagre; but to this
fortress of Sandown belonged one grim incident. It was selected as
the prison of that convinced regicide, Colonel Hutchinson, sometime
member of Parliament for Nottingham, who was at first pardoned on
the Restoration, and then, in 1663, arrested and sent to the Tower of
London. Removed to a solitary imprisonment here in May 1664, his wife
and daughter were only permitted to visit him from Deal. According
to the “Memoirs” written by his wife, Sandown Castle was even then a
“lamentable old ruined place, not weatherproof, unwholesome and damp,”
and he died in four months, September 11th, aged forty-nine, from a
fever with which it had infected him.

Sandown Castle is a thing of the past. Only the black memory of it
remains. It was gradually undermined by the sea, and fell in massive
ruinous blocks of masonry, unsung, unwept, with no story save that of a
sordid and cruel and useless revenge.

[Illustration: THE KENTISH COAST: _Deal to Brookland_]

The explorer who pushes manfully into these sandy wastes will scarce
find that they repay him for his trouble and fatigue. A squalor
pervades them, in addition to their essential melancholy; and when
a kind of golf club-house has been passed and you come upon a small
stone with a barely decipherable inscription, set upon a bank that
marks where the sands and the marshes begin, and are told that it
marks the site of a murder done there, long ago, you feel it to be a
fitting place for such a deed. Here a young woman named Mary Bax was
murdered in 1784 by a sailor tramping this way, along the old road to
Sandwich. A boy roaming in the marshes saw the crime committed, and
hid trembling in the rushes of a dyke, for fear that if he were seen
he would be served the same. When the man had gone he raised an alarm,
and the countryside was roused. The sailor was tracked to Folkestone
and captured in the churchyard of St. Eanswythe. The following account
of the affair, and of the conviction and execution of the murderer,
appeared in the _Annual Register_ for 1784:

“Martin Laas, a sailor, was in April convicted of murdering a young
woman at Worde, near Sandwich. Throughout the whole of his trial he
treated the witnesses very insultingly, and gave three loud cheers
before he was removed from the dock. Upon this, the Judge gave strict
orders for him to be chained to the floor of his dungeon, where he
afterwards confessed the crime. He said that on August 25th, as he was
sitting on a roadside bank near the halfway house, between Deal and
Sandwich, Mary Bax passed by, upon which he followed her, and in half
a mile stopped her and inquired the way to Sheerness. She told him he
was a great way from that place; whereupon he said he had no money,
and must have some. She had none, she said, for him. He then pushed
her into a ditch, and jumped after her, into the mud and water, which
reached to the middle of him. Taking the bundle she was carrying, and
removing the shoes from her feet, he made off across the marshes,
towards Dover. The shoes he immediately threw away, and hid the bundle
near where he was taken.

“The prisoner, giving this account, did not seem to feel the least
concern for the crime, or its consequences, but appeared, on the
contrary, very cheerful, saying he had been fated to commit it, and to
suffer for it, as he had been told, years before, by an old Spaniard.

“He was a native of Bergen, in Norway, twenty-seven years of age, and
had served under Lord Rodney, in H.M.S. _Fame_, for upwards of two
years. He was, however, extremely penitent when brought to the place
of execution, acknowleged the justice of his sentence, and prayed with
great fervency.”

Deal is all very well in summer, but it is in winter and in spring a
desperately cold place. It is as though winter, departing reluctantly
with the coming of the vernal equinox, lingered fondly here, loth to
go. Thanet is open to the east winds, and every gust that blows out of
the North Sea is felt acutely at Westgate and Margate, turning noses
and hands red or blue, as the case may be; but at Deal your very vitals
seem to be frozen stiff and stark with the natural acerbity of the air
and with the cutthroat blasts that come murderously out of the many
alleys of this strange old seafaring town.

At Deal one talks most naturally of the Goodwin Sands. Stretching in a
line about eleven miles long, from Broadstairs to Deal, parallel with
the coast-line, and roughly from four to five miles from the shore,
these dreaded shoals extend at their greatest breadth some four miles.
The dangers they offer to the crowded shipping of the Channel lie
chiefly in their being covered at high water.

The Goodwin Sands are the most famous feature of the Kentish coast,
though not the most spectacular. If they were, indeed, visible in
proportion to their fame or notoriety, they would be as little
dangerous as Shakespeare’s Cliff itself, which is a landmark for
mariners, rather than a peril to them. The Goodwins, more dreaded by
seafaring men than rocks, find impressive mention in Shakespeare. In
_The Merchant of Venice_ they are referred to as “a very dangerous flat
and fatal, where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried.”

The origin of the Goodwin Sands has been from the earliest time
a matter of dispute, nor can the question even yet be considered
settled. This lack of any definite conclusion is by no means due to
want of trying, and the question appears early to have been confused
by the inclusion in the inquiry of that very different matter, the
accumulation of sand that in the sixteenth century destroyed the haven
of Sandwich.

A Royal Commission appears to have been appointed in the reign of Henry
the Eighth for the purpose of ascertaining the cause of the Goodwin
Sands and the sands that were silting up Sandwich haven, and of finding
a method of dealing with them. Bishop Latimer narrated in one of his
sermons, as an example of unverified gossip, how Sir Thomas More,
taking evidence, was met with some curious ideas:

“Maister More was once sent in commission into Kent; to help to trie
out (if it might be) what was the cause of Goodwin Sandes, and the
shelfs that stopped up Sandwich Haven. Thether commeth Maister More,
and calleth the countrye afore him, such as were thought to be men of
experience, and men that could of likelihode best certify him of that
matter, concerning the stopping of Sandwich haven. Among others came in
before him an olde man with a white beard, and one that was thought to
be a little lesse than a hundereth yeares olde. When Maister More saw
this aged man, he thought it expedient to heare him say his minde in
this matter, for, being so olde a man, it was likely that he knew most
of any man in that presence and company. So Maister More called this
olde aged man unto him, and sayed: ‘Father,’ sayd he, ‘tell me, if ye
can, what is the cause of this great arising of the sande and shelves
here about this haven, and which stop it up that no shippes can arrive
here? Ye are the oldest man that I can espie in all this companye, so
that, if any man can tell any cause of it, ye of likelihode can say
most in it, or at leastwise more than any other man here assembled.’

“‘Yea, forsooth, good maister,’ quod this olde man, ‘for I am well nigh
an hundreth yeares old, and no man here in this company anything neare
unto mine age.’

“‘Well, then,’ quod Maister More, ‘how say you in this matter? What
thinke ye to be the cause of these shelves and flattes that stoppe up
Sandwiche haven?’

“‘Forsooth, syr,’ quoth he, ‘I am an olde man: I thinke that Tenterton
steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sandes. For I am an olde man, syr,’
quod he, ‘and I may remember the building of Tenterton steeple, and I
may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that
Tenterton steeple was in building, there was no manner of speaking
of any flats or sands that stopped the haven; and therefore I thinke
that Tenterton steeple is the cause of the destroying and decaying of
Sandwich haven.’”

The ancient man whose evidence seemed to Bishop Latimer so absurd a
_non sequitur_ was not such a fool as he seemed to be, and did but echo
the olden widespread belief in Kent that “the building of Tenterden
steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands.” That belief, when explained,
is not so ridiculous as at first sight it appears, even though it be
founded upon a legend that has no basis whatever. This legend declares
that the Abbot of St. Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury, to build the
steeple of Tenterden church, employed a quantity of stone that had been
set aside for repairing the sea-walls defending the Goodwins, then
a portion of the mainland; and that the next storm, in consequence,
drowned thousands of acres.

Quite apart from the want of any foundation for this legend, the
question was further confused by the old man of Latimer’s story
associating the existing fine and stately Perpendicular tower of
Tenterden church with the disaster. The old belief obviously went back
to a remote period and referred to some ancient steeple at Tenterden
that he never knew.

This folk-tale does not by any means agree with the ancient and
widespread legend that the Goodwins form the site of an island called
Lomea, said to have been overwhelmed in the great storm of 1099,
mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle. John Twyne, or Twine, who in 1590
published a work he called _De Rebus Albionicis_, appears to give the
earliest mention of “Lomea.” He says it was “a low fertile island,”
but it is not known whence came his authority for the existence of the
isle, or the description of it.

Lomea is said to have been given by Edward the Confessor to Earl
Godwin, father of King Harold; but Godwin (from whose name the Goodwin
Sands are said to take their title) died in 1053, and no mention is
found of Lomea or any such place in charters of that time; nor does it
appear in Domesday Book. But it is quite obvious that an island must
at some time have existed where the fatal sands now stretch, for most
legends contain some nucleus of fact; and it is to be noted that, to
the eastward of the North Goodwin, the water is shoaled by a chalk
ridge, often said to be the site of that vanished isle.

The marvel-mongering monks of ancient times had their own version of
the destruction of Earl Godwin’s island. According to them “it sonke
sodainly into the sea,” as the punishment ordained by Heaven for his
sins. Another absurd story, accounting in a quite different way for the
existence of the Sands, declared that they first appeared above water
after Holland had been overflowed by the sea; the greater distribution
of water reducing the sea-level.

There is indeed a very wide choice of tradition and legend from which
to select the most likely story, and in addition to those already
cited there is a tale of how Earl Godwin, in one of his predatory
expeditions, penetrating into the weald of Kent and finding himself
in a desperately dangerous situation, vowed, if he were permitted
to return in safety, that he would build a steeple at Tenterden.
Neglecting to fulfil his vow, his island was destroyed by a justly
offended Providence. A variant of this declares that, anxious to fulfil
his pledge, in doing so he neglected the dams and seawalls of his
domain, which was accordingly overwhelmed in the next great storm.

The Goodwin Sands are of irregular shape, constantly changing in
detail, but in general are considered to resemble the form of a
lobster, and thus the North and South Callipers stand for the claws.
So long ago as 1845 an official report stated that the Brake Sand had
moved bodily inwards towards the shore, 700 yards within fifty years.
By 1885 the Bunthead Shoal had disappeared and the South Calliper
had moved one mile to the north-east; and in 1896 it was discovered
that the Goodwins had continued a general movement, already noticed,
towards the coast, and that the area of drying sand at low tide had
largely increased.

For the Goodwin Sands have this peculiarity, among others, that they
show above water at the ebb. The North Goodwin indeed is not covered
by more than eight or ten feet at high water; but the South Goodwin
is submerged some twenty-four feet. It is no uncommon adventure,
although apt to be a risky one, to land upon the sands at low tide;
and cricket-matches have on several occasions been played upon them,
although, being more or less yielding, and intersected by pools and
runnels, they do not form an ideal site for the purpose. The first
match played here was in 1824, when all details of it were arranged
by Captain Kennet Martin, who, as harbour-master at Ramsgate, was
thoroughly acquainted with the Sands, and was able to bring the
occasion to a successful issue. Another match, played in 1839 by a
party from Deal, had not concluded when the wind freshened and they
found it an ill thing to be on the Goodwins with only a small boat
that, useful enough on a calm sea, was of no use at all in half a gale.
No oarsmen are strong enough to pull away from the Sands under those
circumstances; and there those adventurous cricketers had to remain,
facing death, or the alternative of their danger being recognised
by their friends ashore. Fortunately for them, one of the hovelling
luggers of Deal was despatched in time.

Two other matches have been played on the Goodwins, one in 1844, and
another in 1855; and on August 31st, 1887, a one-mile cycle race was
run by three foolhardy cyclists from London. The time taken by the
speediest of the three was three minutes, thirty seconds.

Boethius, an old-time writer, described the Goodwin Sands as “a most
dreadful gulph and shippe-swallower,” and he was well within the mark
in doing so, for the dreaded Sands do, in fact, not in any metaphorical
sense, often swallow ships up whole. The number of wrecks, too, in
spite of the three lightships that mark the Sands, is still very great;
according to the Board of Trade Wreck Abstracts from 1859 they average
twelve a year, British shipping, exclusive of foreign vessels. The four
lifeboats that divide the sands between them--those of Ramsgate, Deal,
Walmer, and Kingsdown--have saved upwards of 2,000 lives in peril here.

The greatest disaster that ever happened here was during the terrible
fourteen days’ storm of November 1703. On November 26th no fewer than
thirteen men-o’-war were cast away, and Admiral Beaumont and twelve
hundred officers and men were drowned. The story of the wrecks since
then would take long in the telling; let us therefore choose only a few
of the most outstanding. There was the transport _Aurora_, which sailed
straight on to the Goodwins in a fog, and was wrecked with a loss of
over three hundred. The wreck of the _British Queen_ in 1814 was due
to a like cause. The sole fragment ever found was a portion of the
stern, with the ship’s name: the hungry sands had swallowed all else,
ship and crew!

The mail-packet _Violet_, from Ostend, was lost at two o’clock in
the morning of January 5th, 1857. She had started the night before,
at eleven. An hour after she had struck upon the Sands there was no
one left aboard to answer the signals of the steamer and the lifeboat
that set out to the rescue; at seven there was nothing to be seen of
the _Violet_, crew, or passengers but a portion of one mast and the
lifebuoy picked up with the lifeboat, in which lay three dead men.

In recent years these insatiable sands have claimed more ships.
There was the steamship _Dolphin_ in 1885. After being thrown out of
her course in a collision with the _Brenda_, she drifted here and
became a total loss. Seventeen men were drowned on that occasion, and
thirty-three were rescued. On April 20th, 1886, the Norwegian brig
_Auguste Hermann Franche_, with a cargo of ice, went ashore on the
Goodwins in a fog. Of the crew of seven, only one was saved. On the
night of May 14th, 1887, the large schooner _Golden Island_ was lost,
but all hands were rescued. On April 8th, 1909, the four-masted iron
passenger steamer _Mahratta_ struck upon the Fawk Spit, and although
a number of powerful tugs tried to drag her off, all efforts were
useless. The passengers were safely landed, and work was proceeding to
jettison some of the cargo, with the object of lightening the vessel,
when she broke in half, with a noise like thunder, and it was not long
before the sands swallowed her.

The appearance of the Goodwins when exposed at low water is thoroughly
in keeping with the melancholy story of the Sands. The stranger does
not find a broad or long uninterrupted stretch of firm sand, but great
dismal wastes with here and there a navigable channel between, called
by local seafaring men “swatches,” or “swatchways”; and in every
direction, except after unusually calm weather, the sand is ribbed and
hollowed into irregular furrows, water and sand alternating. To remain
standing in one place for a short time is to find one’s self sinking
gradually, and sometimes even suddenly, for these are in many places
quicksands; and innocent-looking pools, apparently quite shallow, give
the incautious a bad shock by often proving to be perhaps anything from
six to sixteen feet deep. They are locally known as “fox-falls,” and
form but one of the many unpleasant surprises the Goodwins are capable
of giving. Another strange thing is the extraordinary steepness of the
Sands on the north side of the North Goodwin. The popular idea of a
sandbank is of a gradual shoaling of the water, but at this point it
falls almost sheer away into deep sea, about ninety feet.

[Illustration: THE GOODWIN SANDS: “A DANGEROUS FLAT AND FATAL.”]

The Sands, even on the brightest day, are the abomination of desolation
to the last detail. They are, it is true, “ship-swallowers,” but are
sometimes nice in their appetite, or over-gorged, and cannot fully
dispose of every wreck; and so the clinching evidence of disaster is
rarely lacking, in the protruding timbers of a lost ship, or the fluke
of an almost entirely buried anchor; although it becomes the duty of
the Trinity House to remove--generally by blowing up with dynamite--
any wreckage here that is considered to be dangerous to navigation.

To stand contemplative upon the Goodwins is a strange and deeply
impressive experience. The expanse of doleful grey sand, almost
mud-coloured, fully bears out the Shakespearean description of this
“dangerous flat and fatal.” It is so nearly awash and so mixed up with
watery gullies that the waves that come curling and snarling upon the
edge appear about to overwhelm you. Except for the sound of them,
an uncanny stillness prevails, and the great expanse of the sky and
the distant white cliffs from near Deal on to Ramsgate intensify the
loneliness. A horror of the solitude seizes you, not lessened by the
strange tameness of the gulls that numerously patter about and seem to
welcome your company.

Attempts have from time to time been made to provide some warning
beacon to mark the Goodwins, but it is now recognised that lightships
form the only practical solution of the difficulty. It was at about the
close of the seventeenth century that the first effort to establish a
beacon was made; but the borings failed to reach any firm basis, and
the Sands were declared to be of unfathomable depth. Even in modern
times they have been held by marine surveyors to be of the great depth
of some eighty or ninety feet. Sir Charles Lyell, on the other hand,
stated them to be only fifteen feet deep, resting on a base of blue
clay. The opinion of the seafaring men of the Kentish coast, who are
not geologists, or by way of being scientific men, but who have at any
rate a practical acquaintance with the Goodwins in all weathers, is
that the depth is indeed very great.

[Illustration: THE EAST GOODWIN LIGHTSHIP]

The first lightship to mark the Goodwins was that on the North Sand
Head, established in 1795. The Trinity House placed a beacon on them a
few years later. It was a primitive affair: merely an old hulk filled
with stones, and was perhaps more dangerous than useful to shipping.
Several others were erected, from time to time, all short-lived and
ineffectual. The last was the “refuge beacon,” erected in 1840. This
was the invention of the then Captain (afterwards Admiral) Bullock, and
consisted of a tall mast strengthened by stays and provided with a kind
of “crow’s nest” into which wrecked mariners were supposed to climb. In
this refuge were stored supplies of food and restoratives. There do not
appear to exist any records of this beacon proving its usefulness in
any way; and in 1844 it was destroyed by a vessel running into it. The
growing traffic in the Channel has gradually led to the provision of
other lightships; the Gull in 1809, the South Sand Head 1832, and the
East Goodwin 1874.




CHAPTER XVII

THE DOWNS AND THE DEAL BOATMEN


It has been shown that the Goodwins have from the earliest times
greatly exercised the imaginations of all kinds of people, and that the
bones of countless dead have found sepulture there, but it would scarce
be supposed that any one would choose to be buried on the Goodwins. Yet
there are at least two instances known of such a strange choice; one
of them prominently recorded in the well-known--perhaps better known
by repute than actually read--Evelyn’s “Diary.” John Evelyn, in the
pages of that not very lightsome record, has an entry dated April 12th,
1705: “My brother-in-law Granville departed this life this morning,
after a long, languishing illness, leaving a son by my sister, and two
granddaughters. Our relation and friendship had been long and great.
He was a man of excellent partes. He died in the eighty-fourth year of
his age, and will’d his body to be wrapp’d in leade and carried downe
to Greenwich, put on board a ship, and buried in the sea betweene
Dover and Calais, on the Goodwin Sands, which was done on the Tuesday
or Wednesday after. This occasioned much discourse, he having had no
relation whatever to the sea.”

A similar interment took place forty-six years later, and forms the
subject of a paragraph in the _London Evening Post_ of May 16th, 1751:

“We have an account from Hamborg that on the 16th April last, about six
leagues off the North Foreland, Captain Wyrck Pietersen, commander of
the ship called the _Johannes_, took up a coffin made in the English
manner and with the following inscription upon a silver plate: ‘Mr.
Francis Humphrey Merrydith, died March 25th, 1751, aged 51;’ which
coffin the said captain carried to Hambourg and then opened it, in
which was enclosed a leaden one, and the body of an elderly man,
embalmed and dressed in fine linen. This is the corpse that was buried
in the Goodwin Sands a few weeks ago, according to the will of the
deceased.”

Much has already been said of the dangers of the Goodwins, but they
are not altogether evil. Like human beings, they are compact of good
and ill. Their useful and beneficent function is to provide a kind of
natural breakwater forming the roadstead famous for centuries in naval
and mercantile shipping annals as “the Downs”:

    “All in the Downs the fleet lay moored,”

as the song goes, in Gay’s “Black-eyed Susan.”

Here, in the comparatively smooth water of this anchorage, stretching
from Walmer, past Deal, nearly to Sandwich, the navies of Rodney’s and
Nelson’s times gathered, either for strategical reasons or in stress
of weather. The Downs--whose name comes from _dunes_, referring to
the Goodwin Sands and the wild wastes of sand-dunes between Deal and
Sandwich--are safe and sheltered in all winds, except a southerly
gale; and thus in old times, when tempests blew from any other quarter,
all the shipping in the Channel made haste to ride out the storm in
these waters. In those times four hundred vessels were often seen
at once sheltering here; but steamships are less dependent upon the
weather, and, now that sailing-vessels are comparatively few, the Downs
are never so crowded as of yore.

The days when the Downs were crowded with many a ship that in the
fine old descriptive phrase--which really was description and not
imagination--“walked the water like a thing of life,” are long since
done, and now the vessels that in fewer numbers ride out the worst of
the Channel gales here are things of iron that sit deep and wallow
in the water like the tanks they really are; things of steam, with
a walking-stick by way of mast and quite innocent of bowsprit. They
are vessels in the truest and most exact form of the word, floating
tanks, made to hold things, not ships that sit upon the water, as the
old sailing-ships did, like swans, or, as the poet says, “walked the
water.” There are walks and walks, and I figure the gait of an old
frigate, or even of a barque or brigantine, under full canvas, not as
a pedestrian’s stride, but as the graceful carriage of a lady in a
spacious drawing-room.

The ’longshoremen of all these sixteen miles of roaring storm-bitten
coast between the Forelands are men of a courage and endurance proved
so long ago that it has become proverbial. Nowhere have those fearless
and staunch qualities been displayed to such a degree as at Deal. The
“Deal boatmen” are a race famous in the troubled annals of the sea.
Between their windy and exposed foreshore, from whose unprotected
beach no howling gale has been fierce enough to daunt their putting
off, between their shore and the Goodwins they have earned a hard-won
livelihood, or have dared the worst of weathers in life-saving, for
no reward. There is a nice distinction between the ’longshoremen of
Ramsgate and Margate and Dover, and those of Deal; for while all have
that “’longshore” appellation, only those of Deal are “boatmen.” All
own boats, it is true; but the boats of Deal are different from those
of the other towns, and only at Deal did the “hoveller” flourish.
It is to be feared the day of the hoveller is done, now that steam
is superseding sails. There are those who consider that the word
“hoveller” is a corruption of “hoverer,” and it was the business--
and a highly remunerative business too--of these men, in their stout
luggers, to put forth in stormy weather and cruise about amid the
tempest-tossed waters in search of distressed vessels that might wish
to be navigated into port. In these modern times of surveillance and
overmuch governing no man may, without a licence from the Trinity
House, or other port authorities, take a piloting job, and pilots
form a class of men who are chosen by examination and may only charge
according to scale. This is by no means to say that the law against
“illicit piloting” is not very frequently set at defiance. It is, in
spite of penalties; for, given a ship’s captain of a saving disposition
and a Deal boatman of pressing needs--and the boatmen of Deal are
too often in that category--a bargain is sure to be struck between
the two, when they are in hailing distance of one another, somewhere
out yonder in the Channel, for something under official rates; and
although the offender be not, in fact, licensed and has never gone up
for examination, he commonly knows the coast round between Deal and
Gravesend, and all its many shoals, swins, and swatchways, as well as
the certificated pilots, though it is not in human nature--in official
human nature, at any rate--to allow the truth of it.

But there is a vast difference in taking a vessel round the North
Foreland into London River, and in snatching her off the very edge of
the Goodwins on to which she is blundering in fog or storm. _That_
was the hoveller’s ostensible business of old, in conjunction with
the undeclared addition of smuggling. It was ever the smuggling, with
a good deal of rascally cable-slipping and prowling the seas for
wreckage, that made hovelling the fine and conscienceless trade it
may most fitly be described, and incidentally made the Deal boatmen
the finest sailors in the world. Their present-day representatives
are fallen upon the worst of times, and now that days and nights of
cruising these waters at their worst yields but an occasional job, the
Deal lugger is becoming something of a rarity, and even that other
peculiarly localised craft, the “knock-toe,” or galley-punt, does not
seem to be as numerous on the beach as of yore. The Deal lugger is no
longer built. It was a sailing craft, of some fifteen to twenty tons,
undecked except for a forepeak. The galley-punt is built to combine the
qualities of a rowing-boat and a sailing-vessel, and is thirty feet
long, with a beam of five feet, a single mast, stepped amidships, and
four oars.

The old story of Deal shows the boatmen of some two hundred years ago
to have been as thorough a crew of scoundrels as might have been found
along our coasts, except perhaps in the West, where the wreckers of
Cornwall were unsurpassed in cold-blooded, calculating ferocity. We
do not read of the ’longshoremen of the Kentish coast luring vessels
ashore, but we hear a very great deal of their heartless leaving the
shipwrecked to perish on the Goodwin Sands and busying themselves in
searching for valuable wreckage the while. Defoe, one of the greatest
and most industrious journalists who ever lived, whose amazing
fecundity staggers research, wrote and published a book called “The
Storm” in 1704. It described the great storm of 1703 and reflected
with just severity upon the inhumanity displayed here. “I cannot omit,”
he says, “that great notice has been taken of the townspeople of
Deal, who are blam’d, and I doubt not with too much reason, for their
great barbarity in neglecting to save the lives of abundance of poor
wretches; who, having hung upon the masts and rigging of the ships,
or floated upon the broken pieces of wrecks, had gotten ashore upon
the Goodwin Sands when the tide was out. It was, without doubt, a sad
spectacle to behold the poor seamen walking to and fro upon the sands,
to view their postures and the signals they made for help, which by
the assistance of glasses, was easily seen from the shore. Here they
had a few hours’ reprieve, but had neither present refreshment nor
any hopes of life, for they were sure to be washed into another world
at the reflux of the tide. Some boats are said to have come very near
them in quest of booty and in search of plunder, and to carry off what
they could get, but nobody troubled themselves for the lives of these
miserable creatures.”

   “Those sons of plunder are below my pen,
    Because they are below the names of men;
    Who from the shores presenting to their eyes
    The fatal Goodwin, where the wreck of navies lies,
    A thousand dying sailors talking to the skies,
    From the sad shores they saw the wretches walk;
    By signals of distress they talk:
    Here with one tide of life they’re vext,
    For all were sure to die the next.
    The barbarous shores with men and boats abound,
    The men more barbarous than the shores are found.
    Off to the shatter’d ships they go,
    And for the floating purchase row.
    They spare no hazard, or no pain,
    But ’tis to save the goods, and not the men;
    Within the sinking suppliants’ reach appear,
    As if they mock’d their dying fear,
    Then for some trifle all their hopes supplant
    With cruelty would make a Turk relent.”

And thus, with indignation, he concludes:

   “If I had any satire left to write,
    Could I with suited spleen indite,
    My verse should blast that fatal town,
    And drowned sailors’ widows pull it down.
    No footsteps of it should appear,
    And ships no more cast anchor there.
    The barbarous hated name of Deal shou’d die,
    Or be a term of infamy.
    And till that’s done, the town will stand
    A just reproach to all the land.”

A bright contrast was afforded by the noble conduct of the Mayor of
Deal, one Thomas Powell, a slop-seller, who appealed successfully to
these callous wretches’ hopes of gain by offering five shillings a
head for every life saved. He had in the first instance entreated the
Customs House officials to put out to save them, but without success,
and the boats were refused; whereupon he and his mercenaries took them
by force. More than two hundred of the shipwrecked were thus rescued;
but even when brought ashore there was no shelter or food to be
procured for them by appealing to officials, and the generous Powell
was at the costs and charges of feeding, sheltering, and clothing the
castaways. Further, he buried those who died, and paid the travelling
expenses to Gravesend of the survivors.

Defoe’s biting indictment came home to the inhabitants of Deal, and,
after a considerable time for thinking it over, they grew angry and
resentful about it, in proportion to the truth of the charges. Thus we
find them on June 21st, 1705, despatching the following letter:

“Whereas there has been this day produced to us a book called the
‘Storm,’ printed in London in the year 1704, for G. Sawbridge, in
Little Britain, and sold by J. Nutt, near Stationers’ Hall, pretending
to give an account of some particular accidents that happened thereby.
We find, amongst other things, several scandalous and false reflections
unjustly cast upon the inhabitants of the town and borough of Deal,
with the malicious intent to bring a disreputation upon the people
thereof, and to create a misunderstanding between her Majesty’s
subjects which, if not timely confuted, may produce consequences
detrimental to the town, and tend to a breach of the peace. To the
end thereof, that the person who caused the publication thereof may
be known, in order to be brought to condign punishment for such his
infamous libel; we have thought fit, therefore, to appoint our Town
Clerk to proceed against him in a Court of Law, unless he shall within
the space of ten days thereof make known to us the person or persons,
and where he or they may be found, who furnished the libellous article
in the book commencing page 199 to the end of page 202, to which we
expect a truthful answer within the time specified.”

There followed upon this hectoring document the signatures of the then
Mayor, Jurats, and Corporation of Deal. But it proved to be all sound
and empty fury, for nothing came of it.

Such men as these were the ancestors of the Deal boatmen of to-day;
a race now very much down on its luck. The very town of Deal, one
may almost say, is a survival. The causes that conjured it up, or at
any rate, brought about its growth from a mere village, along the
unprotected stark shingle beach, have ceased to operate, and great
ships no longer sit for weeks in the Downs, awaiting a breeze, or
in any numbers ride out storms in that once providential anchorage,
all immensely to the profit of the purveyors of ships’ stores and to
that of the boatmen. Deal in those times was one vast general shop,
in which the mariner might buy anything, from anchors and cables,
down to “salthorse” and ships’ biscuits. Those days of pigtails,
hemp, and sails brought Deal to its time of greatest prosperity, and
the present-day appearance of the town still tells the tale of it.
Smuggling was then in its prime, and many a lugger constantly made
successful runs on dark starless nights, or crept cautiously across
Channel when the air was thick as a blanket with fog, under the very
bows of the frigates at anchor in the roadstead.

I do not know that the Deal boatmen of to-day think much of this
ancestry of theirs, or set much store by it. They are too much
concerned, poor fellows, in considering how they are to get a living in
these hard times; times particularly hard for them. But their daring
and accomplished launching of a galley-punt and their handling of it in
a seaway are exhibitions of craftsmanship impossible to be demonstrated
except by these men, who have the hereditary aptitude.

To a landsman, the launching of one of these heavy, lug-sailed,
undecked boats off such a beach as this, in a raging surf such as these
shores alone can know in time of storm, is a marvel. The breakers are
coming in snarling and screaming, in cruel, curving walls of water from
whose crests the wind whips off the stinging brine that flies through
the hurrying air in particles half in the likeness of sleet and half in
that of fog. Here, and at such times, if anywhere, is--

    “The scream of a madden’d beach dragged down by the wave”--

so finely phrased by Tennyson, in _Maud_, to be heard.

A launch would seem impossible, but down the beach the galley-punt is
run, her keel scrunching through the pebbles with a hurrying roar that
rises even above the clamour of wind and waves, and in a moment she
is off, her crew of three leaping or tumbling in like jumping-jacks,
and in another moment she is clear of the breakers and heading out
to where some steamer is dimly seen rolling and pitching yonder in
the obscurity, flying a signal for the landing of the pilot, who has
brought her round from the port of London and has now finished his job
and is going home by train, as the custom is with pilots.

To such work as this did the Deal boatmen’s lives come: hard work, and
often hazardous; and, considering the casual nature of it, not well
paid. Landing a pilot is, or was, worth twenty-five to thirty shillings
or thereabouts, and it is obvious that this sum, casually earned and
divided among a crew of three, is a poor recompense. But even this
standby has been snatched away from the Deal boatmen since the Trinity
House has established a steam pilot-cutter at Dover, which cruises
about to land pilots from outward-bound ships at a fixed charge of £1.
It is an excellent institution from the pilots’ point of view, but it
is the last blow to the boatmen of Deal. Steam has ever been their
enemy.

Dirty weather is, perhaps, more than ever the opportunity of this hardy
and hard-bitten race, of whom it has been said that “every finger is a
fish-hook, every hair a rope-yarn, and whose blood is pure Stockholm
tar.” Mother Carey’s chickens--by which I mean, of course, the gulls--
are not more at home amid the mountainous waves at such times. They
cruise about in these dangerous seas in search of some captain who has
lost his way. It is exquisitely true that other people’s misfortunes
are their opportunity, and a ship likely without the aid of their
expert knowledge of these waters to come to grief on the Goodwins, or
other shoals, to say nothing of getting under the unkindly cliffs, is
like a choice bone to a hungry dog. I hope I do no injustice to these
men in the comparison. It simply discloses the measure of their needs
and of their prize. It is a desperate livelihood for these days for
them. The winter is hard, the summer season is short, and the fishing
and the money earned in taking visitors for a sail form but a scanty
and uncertain support for wives and children. Therefore, a ship in
difficulties is a godsend that is worth a good deal of cruising for,
and worth a good deal of hardship endured and bitter disappointments
suffered. But when that ship is picked up there are no more savage
and determined men to be found than these. They are embittered by
much fruitless quartering of violent seas, and spurred by the thought
of weeks of enforced idleness ashore, and by the spectre of empty
cupboards at home. A shipmaster in peril out there is their legitimate
prey, and they bear down upon him out of the driving spindrift as
saviours, at a price. These men, who would, and do, man the lifeboats
for life-saving with no after-thought for profit, are close dealers in
these cases, and if a ship-master declines, for reasons of economy,
their help, he may drive on sands or under cliffs or lose his ship in
any way that chance may dictate, and they will not lend a helping hand.
And quite rightly, too. Help under such circumstances is well worth the
paying for.

“Want any help, sir?” Thus, or in some such way, comes their hail as
their craft comes round in the eye of the wind and manœuvres carefully
in the swashing seas. It is odds whether the captain, asking perhaps
where he is, will be told, or whether he is flatly invited to “find
out,” in the extremely strong language of these parts. Perhaps he asks
“how much to take her into Ramsgate,” or whatever port he is making for.

“Twenty pounds”--or ten or fifteen, as the case may be, according to
his emergencies.

Bargaining is little use. An offer of half, or more, is pretty sure to
be curtly rejected, with “So long, captain; no time to waste.”

And then the bargainer almost invariably submits, ungraciously enough
with “All right, you ---- pirates,” or “beachcombers,” or something
equally offensive. Strong language is cheap on the seas, and no one
resents it, least of all the hovellers and the boatmen who have thus
gained their point: it is all the harassed master has left him, and
he may put his tongue to what strange curses he will, if it be any
satisfaction.

And then, at a carefully chosen moment, as the vessels large and small
set to one another in a peculiarly violent kind of maritime dance and
the boatmen’s little craft swings dizzily up on a wave alongside, a
rope is thrown and one of the galley-punt’s crew clambers breathlessly
aboard, dashes the brine from his eyes, and is ready to navigate his
charge through the seething waters as surely as a cab-driver takes a
fare through well-known streets. His companions, sitting like statues
in the boat, in streaming yellow oilskins, fade away like ghosts in the
turmoil, and make for home.

Such are at those times the men you will see lounging the summer days
on Deal beach and suggesting to visitors that it is a “fine day for
a sail.” It looks a lazy life, this lounging, with hands in pockets,
day after day, varied by an occasional turn with the tar-brush or
paint-pot upon boat or timbered shanty; but it is really a life of one
long waiting for something to turn up, and there is nothing else for it
but to lounge hands in pockets. And to do the Deal boatmen the merest
justice, they lounge extremely well. Do not mistake me: I do not mean
that they do it elegantly. The figure of your typical ’longshoreman,
bargelike and extremely solid, does not permit of that. No, I mean
that he absolutely abandons himself to it. There used to be in London,
and in society, the Bond Street and the Hyde Park lounge. I believe
the exquisite _insouciance_ thus indicated is long since extinct. No
one lounges now, in these days of motor-cars and general hustle; no
one, that is to say, except the ’longshoremen of Deal and elsewhere,
but here at Deal it is perfected. The lounge of Hyde Park--you may
see it represented in _Punch_, in many of du Maurier’s drawings--was
a graceful droop over the railings of the Row; but the lounger had
always in the look of him a curious mixture of world-weariness and
self-consciousness. He knew he was beautiful, as beautiful as his
tailor and toilet-club could make him. Now the ’longshoreman cannot
droop, gracefully or otherwise. He is not built that way. There is
about him a breadth of beam and an appalling negation of waist that
vehemently forbids the very thought of it. He is not beautiful, nor, on
the other hand, is he self-conscious. He is of that solid bulk, despite
his privations, poor chap, which makes the crazy old capstans on the
beach creak and complain, and the tarred shanties shiver when he leans
against them. And his costume has been the delight of serious artists
and comic for at least a century. His trousers, of some astounding
dreadnought material that might almost stand by itself, come a much
longer distance up his body than such articles of attire commonly do,
and end, according to the caricaturists, under his armpits. According
to the same unveracious authorities, they are invariably re-seated, and
with materials of an altogether alien colour from the original fabric
and generally with some uproarious pattern.




CHAPTER XVIII

WALMER CASTLE--KINGSDOWN--ST. MARGARET’S BAY


The low, beachy shore of Deal continues westward through Lower Walmer,
the chief part of Walmer lying inland where the road begins to take its
rise towards the high rolling downs which fill the miles on to Dover.
The beach road runs on for two miles and a half, past Walmer Castle to
Kingsdown, where it abruptly ends.

The historic part of Walmer Castle, which is now under the direct
control of His Majesty’s Office of Works, may be inspected for the
modest fee of threepence, at times when the Lord Warden is not in
residence. The plainly furnished little bedroom in which the great
Duke of Wellington died in 1852, and the room where Pitt and Nelson
planned those naval operations which put an end to Napoleon’s designs
upon this coast, are shown. The approach is imposing, the entrance
by a bridge across the deep, dry moat made more picturesque by the
early eighteenth-century additions of a bell-cupola and an oriel
window above the gateway. Some of the ivy which too thickly covered
the fine old stonework has now been removed. It has never been the
fate of Walmer Castle to fight the enemy, and its castellans for a
hundred years past have been those ornamental officials, the Lords
Warden, who have no duties and receive no emoluments. Thus, as a
residence, it has received certain accretions which rather lessen its
character as a stern, business-like fortress; although, to be sure, the
ingenious planning of the interior, with its massive brick passages and
unexpected turns, would result in any enemy who succeeded in entering
at once losing his way. It is very curious to note, in the construction
of this sixteenth-century castle, the survival of mediæval ideas,
with a difference. Thus, while ancient Gothic castles had projecting
machicolations over the exterior of their gates whence melted lead,
boiling oil, and such-like deterrents could be poured upon the enemy,
here are great holes overhead, _within_ the entrance, for the same
purpose; an exquisite refinement upon the original idea, which was
merely to check the enemy and persuade him to retire. Here you first
caught the enterprising foe, and, having got him within one of the
artfully contrived bastions, you simply overwhelmed him at leisure.

[Illustration: WALMER CASTLE.]

Among the greatest of the Lords Warden was William Pitt, who was here
throughout the Napoleonic scare. The beautiful wooded park owes much of
its charm to his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept house for her
bachelor uncle, and in particular planted the fine Portugal laurels
which are among its chief ornaments. Pitt’s own avenue of sycamores
has grown to great nobility. Cobbett, who could pen the most wonderful
descriptions of scenery and the most virulent personal abuse, describes
in one of his “Rural Rides” how he came from Dover to Walmer and Deal,
and handles Pitt pretty severely on the way. “I got to this place
(Deal) about half an hour after the ringing of the eight o’clock bell,
or curfew, which I heard at about two miles’ distance from the place.”
This was the curfew, still rung nightly from the Norman church-tower
of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe. From the town of Dover you come up the
Castle Hill, and have a most beautiful view from the top of it. You
have the sea, the chalk cliffs of Calais, the high land at Boulogne,
the town of Dover just under you, the valley towards Folkestone and
the much more beautiful valley towards Canterbury; and, going on a
little farther, you have the Downs in full view, with a most beautiful
corn country to ride along through. The corn was chiefly cut between
Walmer and Dover. The barley almost all cut and tied up in sheaf.
Nothing but the beans seemed to remain standing along here. They are
not quite so good as the rest of the corn, but they are by no means
bad. When I came to the village of Walmer, I inquired for the Castle--
that famous place, where Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, and all the whole
tribe of plotters against the French Revolution had carried on their
plots. After coming through the village of Walmer, you see the entrance
to the Castle away to the right. It is situated pretty nearly on the
water’s edge, and at the bottom of a little dell, about a furlong or
so from the turnpike-road. This is now the habitation of our great
Minister, Robert Bankes Jenkinson, son of Charles of that name. When
I was told by a girl who was leasing in a field by the roadside that
that was Walmer Castle, I stopped short, pulled my horse round, looked
steadfastly at the gateway, and could not help exclaiming, ‘O! thou who
inhabitest that famous dwelling! thou who hast always been in place,
let who might be out of place! O thou everlasting placeman! thou sage
of “over-production,” do but cast thine eyes upon this barleyfield’--
and so forth.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO WALMER CASTLE.]

Onward from Walmer Castle, along the beach to the “Ville and Hamlet
of Kingsdown,” we come at length to the end of the coastwise road.
Kingsdown is a fishing village on a very wide bank of shingle-beach,
with scattered shanties built on it, and old windlasses and a very
abandon of quaint seashore properties. It is perhaps possible at low
tide to scramble along under the lofty cliffs all the three miles or
less to St. Margaret’s Bay but it is dangerous, and there is no means
of climbing its cliffs. Old people still talk of a road that once ran
all the way; but encroachment of the sea has long destroyed it.

It is therefore necessary to climb the exceedingly steep and very
pretty leafy lane from Kingsdown to the high road and the grim bare
downs. Against the sky, as you proceed, is the tower of Ringwould
church, crested with its Dutch-like cupola. Looking backwards you see,
peering over the verge of the naked fields, the little bell-turret of
Kingsdown church, seeming pitiably insignificant; the church so small,
the sea out beyond so immeasurable, and such an aching void.

Passing the beautiful woods of Oxney Court, in a sharp dip of the road,
and coming up to the cross roads called “Martin Cross,” the village of
St. Margaret-at-Cliffe is one mile to the left. It has a particularly
fine Norman church with lofty interior and an enriched western doorway.
Here the curfew-bell is still rung in the winter months; but this is
not the genuine curfew of Norman times; dating only from 1696, when
the income from five roods of land was bequeathed by a shepherd for
this purpose. By the chance ringing of this bell he had been saved from
walking over the cliff in the dark.

[Illustration: WALMER CASTLE, FROM THE SEA.]

From this windy cliff-top village of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe whose
inhabitants appear to live by selling picture-postcards to the stranger
and each other, an amazingly steep road zigzags down four hundred feet
through the chalk and flint to the beach of St. Margaret’s Bay. I envy
the explorer his first discovery of this exquisite little spot, that
rare, nay, almost phenomenal thing along the crowded, over-exploited
coast of Kent--a sequestered and little-known place! Well do I
remember my own first discovery of it; the more delightful inasmuch
it was unexpected. This is the purest joy of journeying without a
guide-book: that you have no certain expectations, and commit yourself
in a complete ignorance to absolute chance. Every explorer knows that
it is sometimes the most joyous thing to wend your way uninformed
beforehand, without map or description. On the other hand, to fare in
this fashion may bring you the most harrowing adventures. Try it both
ways, and see what fortune sends you!

[Illustration: ST. MARGARET’S BAY.]

Every man should be his own discoverer. It matters nothing to me that
numerous others must either intentionally or by chance have come down
here into St. Margaret’s Bay--seeing that there is an hotel on the
beach: an hotel with a singular name, whose meaning, although I have
stayed there myself, I by no means fathomed. It is called the “St.
Margaret’s Bay and Hotel Lanzarote.”

There is not, I think, so much actually of a bay down here below the
towering cliffs of the South Foreland, which rise to a height of 500
feet. If you glance at the map, it will be noticed that the coastline
at this spot exhibits the merest setback from the bold front between
Deal and Dover; and a bay (this is a dim memory from school-days)
should be something in the nature of a semicircle, large or small,
should it not, with enfolding horns, capes, or headlands? To the
ordinary observer, this so-called bay appears to be just about a
half-mile length of narrow shingly foreshore along a stretch of coast
where the cliffs for the most part descend precipitously to the sea
at high water; and at either end of this unusual selvedge here it is
either impossible to proceed further, or else the doing so is a more
or less difficult and dangerous matter. Hence the seclusion of St.
Margaret’s Bay; which, however, if plans and schemes of the last few
years come to pass, will at no distant date be exchanged, in certain
foreshore reclamation works, for a three-miles undercliff drive from
Dover. Woe the day!

I do not mean to hint, even remotely, that because St. Margaret’s Bay
does not figure forth the typical bay of a geographical primer, it is
any the worse for it. Not at all; perhaps, I am willing to allow, it
is even the better. At any rate, it is entirely delightful as it is.
And what, in detail, is it? Let it first be premised that no one has
ever yet succeeded in conveying the subtle charm of the place. It is
easy enough to describe the surroundings; the South Foreland above,
the little beach below, with its modest selvedge of grass; the cosy,
home-like hotel, the little “Green Man” inn, and the scattered twenty
or so little houses; but the spirit of the place is elusive and refuses
to be captured and written down and printed.

St. Margaret’s Bay claims much: “the air of Margate and the sun of
Torquay, the position of Ramsgate and the quiet of Ventnor,” and I
think all these varied charms may well be conceded. Certainly it is
quiet, and surely it is warm, sheltered, and sunny.

Wild-flowers grow in abundance down here, amid what may at first sight
seem the sterile chalk: St. John’s Wort, feather-grass, convolvulus,
scarlet poppies, hare-bells, the lovely borage, an exquisite blue, the
speedwell, a lighter blue, hawkweed, and many others.

The place is recommended as “a quiet retreat for tired brain-workers,”
and certainly there is nothing here to disturb or startle. Those who
want to be amused--that great desideratum of the brainless and the
uncultivated--will not come to St. Margaret’s Bay, or, if by any
chance they do so, they speedily climb out of it again; that is to say,
as speedily as the extravagantly steep road permits; but to those who
have resources within themselves this untroubled strand has an enduring
charm. I do not think a motor-car has ever been down here, which is so
much to the good; plenty of them fuss and stink along the road above.

No parade, or esplanade, or such formality affronts the dignity of the
sea here, and although the more or less interesting fact may be gleaned
that the London and Paris telephone-cable, completed in March 1891,
lands here from Sangatte, on the French coast, one might well go in
ignorance of it, so far as any visible evidence goes.

One simply idles here, and reads and rests those tired brains--if one
is happy enough to possess any. Almost unconsciously, like Mr. Silas
Wegg, the idler drops into poetry:

   “Here spreads a little sheltered bay,
      Beneath the tall and windy downs,
    All undisturbed by nigger lay;
      Far from the clustered seaside towns.

   “Here haply by the world forgot
      I linger on the pebbly beach,
    And seat me where the sun is hot,
      And colour like the ripening peach.

   “Here workers come to rest their brains,
      O’erwrought in search of fame and pelf--
    And so would I, to ease such strains,
      Did I possess some brains myself.”

They have a saying down here in St. Margaret’s Bay that “the Channel
is as well lighted as Regent Street,” and it is indeed on some dark
evening a striking and a beautiful sight to gaze out across these
waters upon the many lights flashing and sparkling out there; including
not only those of the lightships and the lighthouses, but the lights
of Ramsgate eleven miles away, twinkling quietly, the riding-lights of
vessels at anchor in the Downs, and the brilliant illumination of some
great liner surging past.

Beyond the clustered lamps of Ramsgate flashes the occulting North
Foreland light; and out to sea the position of the Goodwin Sands is
marked by the Gull Lightship, with its recurrent flash every twenty
seconds; the North Goodwin Lightship, with three flashes in quick
succession; the brilliant South Goodwin, with its double flash every
thirty seconds; the South Sand, visible ten miles; the East Goodwin,
easily distinguished from its fellows by flashing a green light every
fifteen seconds; and the Varne Lightship, far away in the south-west,
a crimson flash. To these add the electric beam of the South Foreland
lighthouse overhead, the distant radiance of Dover town; the similar
every five seconds’ flash of Cape Gris Nez and the more frequent gleam
of Calais Harbour, and you have an extraordinary galaxy, not easily to
be matched elsewhere.

[Illustration: WESTCLIFFE.]

The South Foreland lighthouse has always been used more or less
experimentally. Here magnifying lenses were first installed, in 1810,
and here Faraday, in 1853, experimented with the electric light. In
1862 lime-light was tried. It now displays from its height above the
sea of 374 feet a powerful electric occulting beam distinguishable at a
distance of twenty-six miles. The lower lighthouse, used in conjunction
with the upper light before the installation of the present brilliant
flash, was discontinued in 1905, and the building has since been let
as a private residence.

Some day in the near future, when St. Margaret’s Bay is joined to
Dover by the foreshore road at the foot of the cliffs--a road now
in the making--it will be a magnificent route of some three miles
between those now sundered places. But again, woe the day! At present
to climb up out of the bay and up across the foreland, and so along
the coastguard path, and past the Convict Prison and by the North Fall
Meadow behind the Castle, to Dover is a weariful business. Less weary,
perhaps, but longer, and along by-roads, is the way past the tiny
secluded village of Westcliffe; and then down the main road, past the
Duke of York’s School, and still steeply down Dover Castle Hill, into
the town, lying there, seething populously in the constricted valley of
the Dour.




CHAPTER XIX

DOVER--THE CASTLE AND ROMAN PHAROS--“QUEEN ELIZABETH’S
POCKET-PISTOL”--THE WESTERN HEIGHTS


The great and growing town of Dover looks forward to a greater fame
than even the historic past has conferred upon it. The measure of
Dover’s greatness is not the usual measurement, that of population, for
the town numbers only some 44,000. Rather does it lie in its defensible
and strategic situation. Dover has ever, from Roman times, been a place
of arms, and was, an old chronicler tells us, the “lock and key of the
whole kingdom.” That being so, it has always behoved us to make it one
of the most strongly fortified places on our coasts. On either side
of the deep and narrow valley in which the town lies, the great chalk
downs and cliffs rise steeply and massively, and all are in military
occupation. The morning drum-beat reverberates from the Western Heights
to welcome the rising sun, and the Last Post from the Castle sounds
the requiem of the departed day; and in between them the tootling and
the fifing, the words of command, the gun-firing, and all the military
alarms and excursions of a garrison-town help to convince even the
most timid that we are being taken care of.

Dover offered more opportunities for the artist in those far-away days
when Hollar made his view of it from near the castle heights. At that
time the river Dour flowed visibly into the sea, through a valley
so sparsely settled that the ancient church of St. Mary, now almost
hidden amid the clustered houses of the thronged town, stood out with a
cathedral-like prominence. Hollar shows us the ships clustered at the
river mouth, but at an earlier time they ascended far up the valley
and anchored where the busiest streets are now found. Leland, somewhat
earlier than Hollar, speaking of the Dour and the ancient inland haven,
says, “The ground which lyeth up betwixt the hilles is yet, in digging,
found wosye”--by which he meant “oozy”; and in modern times there
have been discovered, in the course of excavations, relics of Roman
occupation, when the inhabitants of the Dour Valley crossed the river
and the marshes by boats and wooden causeways.

[Illustration: DOVER CASTLE.

                        _After W. Daniell, R.A._
]

No one who has not viewed Dover from the sea can have a full
appreciation of the majesty of its site. But you must not merely
glimpse it from the pier-heads or from a boat. Nothing less than the
home-coming from continental travel, when the sentiment of “home” gives
an added value to the impressive scene, will serve.

The “white cliffs of Albion” have rightly been the subject of comment
and description from the earliest times, for there is nothing in the
rest of the whole wide world in the least resembling them. Except for
a little of the same chalk formation on the other side of the Channel,
at this narrow pass, we in England have a world-monopoly of chalk,
and a brave show of bastioned chalky heights the Kentish coast makes.
Nowhere else are they so stately as at Dover, for here military art has
crowned and set a seal upon the defensible works of nature. But to see
those white walls at their best, in whiteness and in rugged grandeur,
you must see them from the Channel. Coming across from France, they do
indeed gleam milk-white, and the Castle and the Roman pharos beside it
seem to be neighbours almost with the clouds. But, examined close at
hand, the cliffs of Dover have been plentifully smirched, and I think,
from personal observation, that the chalk cliffs of the South Coast are
actually at their natural whitest at Seaford, in Sussex.

[Illustration: COLTON’S TOWER, DOVER CASTLE.]

Dover Castle, that “great fortress, reverend and worshipful,” sits
regally on the lofty cliffs and looks (what it has several times proved
not to be) impregnable. It occupies a site of thirty-five acres within
its ceinture of curtain-walls, studded at intervals with twenty-six
defensible towers, of every size and shape. The chief entrance to the
Castle precincts is by the great “Constable’s Tower,” also variously
styled Fiennes, or Newgate Tower, to distinguish it from the Old Tower,
formerly the principal entrance. The others have, for the most part,
names sounding as strangely as those of Arthurian romance: Abrancis,
or Rokesley Tower; Colton’s; Arthur’s, or North Gate; Armourer’s; Well
Tower; Harcourt’s; Chilham, or Culderscot; Hurst; Arsic, or Sayes
Tower; Gatton; Peveril’s Gate, also called Beauchamp, or Marshal’s
Tower; Porth’s, Gasting’s, or Mary’s Tower; Clopton’s; God’s-foe;
Crevecœur’s, Craville’s, or the Earl of Norfolk’s Tower; Fitzwilliam or
St. John’s; Avranches, or Maunsel’s; Veville, or Pincester; Ashfordian
Tower; Mamimot, or Mainmouth Tower; Palace, or Subterranean Gate;
Suffolk Tower; and the Arsenal Tower. Besides this imposing array there
were, and there remain still, profoundly deep ditches outside the
walls. In midst of all these outworks, rising bold and massive as the
great keep of the Tower of London itself, is the Palace Tower, or Keep.
This is not the actual “castellum Dofris” which Harold, under stress
and durance, was made to swear on the bones of the saints that he would
yield to William Duke of Normandy, “with the well of water in it,” but
a later array of buildings; the Keep being Norman work of about 1153.
The actual well is the one now arched over and covered up in the north
angle of the Keep.

The last occasion on which Dover Castle was the scene of warlike
operations was when it was captured from the Royalists on August 1st,
1642. This successful enterprise was the work of a mere merchant, one
Drake, and a dozen men, who at dead of night, by means of ropes and
scaling-ladders, climbed the cliffs at an “inaccessible” point; as such
left unguarded. Seizing the sentinel, the gates were thrown open, and
the officer on duty, thinking the invading party was a much larger one,
surrendered.

[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY-IN-THE-CASTLE, WITH THE ROMAN
PHAROS, DOVER.]

The most ancient and venerable object here--it is the oldest building
in England, supposed to have been built A.D. 49--is the Roman
pharos, or lighthouse, one of two that once guided the ships of the
Roman emperors into the haven that was situated where the Market-place
of Dover now stands. The other, of which only the platform and one
fragment of stone have been found, was situated on the western heights.
The fellow-tower at Boulogne, the _Gessoriacum_ of the Romans, still
remains. The rugged, roofless tower of this venerable beacon curiously
neighbours the quaint early church of St. Mary-within-the-Castle,
itself of great and uncertain age, and both contrast strangely with the
modern evidences of casemated batteries and the sentry-go of soldiers.
Many generations have tinkered and repaired the Roman pharos, whose
original tufa blocks and courses of red tiles still defy the elements
and the ravages of mischievous hands, while the casing of flint and
pebbles set in concrete, added some two centuries ago, long since began
to decay. The Roman windows were altered by Gundulf, and the upper
story would seem to be the work of Sir Thomas Erpingham, Constable of
Dover Castle in the reign of Henry the Fifth, for his sculptured shield
of arms appears on it.

The church of St. Mary in 1860 experienced a narrow escape from
complete destruction by the War Office, and was only with difficulty
rescued by dint of urgent protests from antiquaries. The Department has
experienced the like elsewhere, and doubtless wishes all antiquaries at
the devil. The building had at that time been reduced to the condition
of a coal-bunker, a process begun about a hundred and fifty years
before, when it had been ruthlessly cleared out and converted into a
storehouse. Among other ejected objects was the monument of the Earl
of Northampton, already noticed at Greenwich. The building was opened
again in 1862, after restoration.

The twenty-four-foot long brass cannon within the castle grounds, known
as “Queen Elizabeth’s Pocket-pistol,” is by far the best-known and
most popular object here. It is not given to every one to appreciate
the Roman pharos or the Norman architecture of the keep, but this
long, slender piece of ordnance makes a direct and easily understood
appeal to the sympathies of the crowd, largely on account of the rhyme
associated with it, supposed to be a translation of the inscription in
Low Dutch that is to be seen on the cannon itself, amid the arabesque
devices that decorate its whole length. This familiar jingle runs thus:

   “Load me well and keep me clean,
    And I’ll carry a ball to Calais Green.”

It could, of course, do nothing of the kind, nor anything like it; and
the inscription says nothing of the sort. Here it is, in its original
grotesqueness:

   “Breeck scuret al muer ende wal bin ic geheten,
    Deor berch en dal boert minen bal van mi gesmetem.”

The literal translation is:

   “I am bid break all earthworks and walls.
    Through hill and dale bores the ball flung by me.”

But it has been well put metrically, without departing to any degree
from exactness:

   “O’er hill and dale I throw my ball;
    Breaker, my name, of mound and wall.”

This beautiful work, enriched, together with its wheels, with
elaborate ornament, was cast at Utrecht in 1544, and presented by the
States-General of the Netherlands to Queen Elizabeth, defender of the
reformed religion.

It is fitting in the completest degree that Dover should have figured
in the quarrel that sent the patriot Englishman Earl Godwin, into
revolt and exile. The true story of Godwin and his stand for the rights
and liberties of Englishmen is well known to history, but it has never
been made sufficiently intimate, and the memory of that great man,
blackened by lying Norman monks, suffers to this day. The fame of the
weak and alien-loving King Edward the Confessor, has, on the other
hand, been well cared for, and he has long been regarded as a saint.
The trouble arose from a visit in 1051 of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, a
brother-in-law of the King, one of the arrogant Normans who even thus
early conceived themselves able to insult and ill-treat the people of
that Saxon England they were destined to conquer in the succeeding
reign. The outrage was deliberate. Halting his party within a mile of
Dover, the Count of Boulogne left the saddle of his travelling palfrey,
and, putting on his armour and his helmet adorned with the two long
whalebone aigrettes that marked his authority along the seashores of
Boulogne, he mounted his war-horse, and, with his followers armed in
like manner, entered the town. Arrived there, they thrust themselves,
uninvited and undesired guests, upon the chief burgesses. Such was
the custom in feudal Normandy, but it was unknown in England, and as
greatly resented as unknown. One indignant Englishman promptly thrust
out one of these unwelcome guests who had taken veritable “French
leave.” In return, the stranger drew his sword and wounded his “host,”
but was promptly set upon and slain. When this incident became known
Eustace and his party stormed the house, and the brave defender of
the sanctity of his hearth was murdered. An armed foray through the
town followed, in which the foreigners fared ill, for nineteen of
them were slain by the infuriated townsfolk, and the departure of the
remainder across sea was prevented. The King was at Gloucester, and to
that city Eustace and those who remained of his retinue hastened, to
seek revenge. Edward was enraged, and ordered Godwin to waste the town
of Dover with fire and sword. That, you perceive, was the quality of
the Confessor’s saintliness! Godwin, one of the greatest in the land,
himself father-in-law of the King, who had married his daughter Edith,
refused to punish without a hearing the men who had merely resented
insolence. They should be tried lawfully, and punished only if guilty.

This refusal led directly to Godwin and his son Harold being outlawed,
to the raising of rebellion, and eventually to the larger issue, after
the death of Edward the Confessor, of the invasion and conquest of
England by William of Normandy.

Dover Castle is in most respects, with its pierced and honeycombed
cliffs, an up-to-date fortress, but it was realised over a hundred
years ago that the corresponding cliffs on the other side of the town
required to be fortified; and thus the gun-galleries, the barracks,
and the many military developments of the “Western Heights” came into
being. One reaches these lofty altitudes most conveniently, but up
infinite staircases, by that extremely dirty and dismal specimen of
engineering skill, “the Shaft,” in Snargate Street. Some three hundred
(or is it 3,000?) steps lead up to those heights, where the Romans had
a companion pharos to that on the castle cliffs, and where the Knights
Templar founded a twelfth-century church with a round nave, built in
imitation of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Here are the foundations,
all now left, of that church, the smallest of the “round churches” in
England, carefully preserved by the Office of Works, and here King
John’s shameful homage to the Pope was made, “Apud Domum Militiæ Templi
juxta Doveriam,” May 15th, 1213.

The spot is not, nowadays, of romantic appearance. Modern military
barracks are utilitarian rather than beautiful. Sometimes they have
even a note of squalor.

Some large fragments of concrete, reared up on end in the Drop
Redoubt, form what is called the Bredenstone, or Braidenstone, once
sometimes called the “Kissing Stone,” for ages an object of traditional
veneration; why, none knew. They combined something of the majesty of
the unknown, like that belonging to the Coronation Stone in Westminster
Abbey, with a good deal of the half-humorous importance of the famous
Blarney Stone. Really, they were, and are, after all, remaining
portions of the vanished Roman pharos buried in the eighteenth century,
when the Drop Redoubt was constructed, on the spot called the “Devil’s
Drop.” From time immemorial the Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports had
been sworn in upon this Ara Cæsaris, as antiquaries styled it; and
after the platform and the “Bredenstone” were exhumed, about 1854,
Palmerston was sworn in on the spot, in 1861; and Lord Dufferin in
1891. Lord Salisbury, however, and later holders of the office, were
installed in the town, in the grounds of Dover College, on the site
of the ancient Priory of St. Martin; but on July 18th, 1914, the old
traditional site was resumed, when the new Lord Warden, Earl Beauchamp,
was installed on these heights.

In 1823 Cobbett found Dover “like other seaport towns; but really much
more clean, and with less blackguard people in it than I ever observed
in any seaport before.” Things have changed since then, in a woeful
way, and with Dover’s growth has come squalor and dirt.

He visited the Western Heights, to see with his own eyes, as he tells
us, “something of the sorts of means that had been made use of to
squander away countless millions of money. Here,” he continues, “is a
hill containing, probably, a couple of square miles or more, hollowed
like a honeycomb. Here are line upon line, trench upon trench, cavern
upon cavern, bomb-proof upon bomb-proof; in short, the very sight of
the thing convinces you that either madness the most humiliating, or
profligacy the most scandalous must have been at work here for years.
The question that every man of sense asks, is: What reason had you to
suppose that the _French would ever come to this hill_ to attack it,
while the rest of the country was so much more easy to assail? However,
let any man of good, plain understanding, go and look at the works that
have here been performed, and that are now all tumbling into ruin. Let
him ask what this cavern was for; what that ditch was for; what this
tank was for; and why all these horrible holes and hiding-places at an
expense of millions upon millions? Let this scene be brought and placed
under the eyes of the people of England, and let them be told that Pitt
and Dundas and Perceval had these things done to prevent the country
from being conquered; with voice unanimous the nation would instantly
exclaim: Let the French, or let the devil take us, rather than let us
resort to means of defence like these.

“This is, perhaps, the only set of fortifications in the world ever
framed for mere _hiding_. There is no appearance of any intention
to annoy an enemy. It is a parcel of holes made in a hill, to hide
Englishmen from Frenchmen. Just as if the Frenchmen would come to this
hill! Just as if they would not go (if they came at all) and land in
Romney Marsh, or on Pevensey Level, or anywhere else, rather than come
to this hill; rather than come to crawl up Shakespeare’s Cliff. All
the way along the coast, from this very hill to Portsmouth, or pretty
nearly all the way, is a flat. What the devil should they come to this
hill for, then? And when you ask this question, they tell you that it
is to have an army here _behind_ the French, after they had marched
into the country! And for a purpose like this; for a purpose so stupid,
so senseless, so mad as this, and withal, so scandalously disgraceful,
more brick and stone have been buried in this hill than would go to
build a neat new cottage for every labouring man in the counties of
Kent and Sussex!”

Cobbett here gives way to a fit of senseless vituperation; the more
obviously senseless since this rabid tirade comes only two days later
than his ride along the coast from New Romney to Hythe and Folkestone,
where of course he encountered the martello towers; erected there for
the purpose of guarding those levels against a threatened invasion. He
raves at them equally as he raves at the works on the Western Heights,
and, in short, behaves on the principle of the Irishman who acted
on the policy of “whenever you see a head, hit it.” It is very fine
fighting form, but it is the very negation of logic.




CHAPTER XX

THE CHANNEL PASSAGE--THE NATIONAL HARBOUR AND ITS STRATEGIC PURPOSE--
SWIMMING AND FLYING THE CHANNEL


Dover has ever been a favourite port with travellers. The advantage
of lying near to the opposite coast determined its fortunes from the
earliest times, for sea-sickness has naturally always rendered the
shortest passage the most popular. Little need, then, it might be
thought for proclamations and Acts of Parliament insisting upon this
being the port of arrival and departure. Yet we find enactments in the
reign of Edward the Third not only regulating “the fares of the passage
of Dover” (1330), but in 1335 a law passed that “no pilgrim shall pass
out of the Realm, but at Dover.” This was supplemented in 1464–5 by an
ordinance, “For compelling persons to take passage and land at Dover.”

They well knew, those old travellers, the miseries of _mal-de-mer_;
the rich and powerful among them no less than the poorer sort, and it
was one of these--none other than the great Hubert de Burgh, Earl
of Kent and Chief Justiciar of Kent, who, about 1208, founded the
Maison Dieu, with its establishment of Master, brethren, and sisters,
for the lodging, and entertainment of “poor strangers and pilgrims on
their way beyond seas.” It may be supposed that pilgrims coming as
well as going were guests of this charitable establishment. In fact,
they did you so well at this place that several shabby-minded monarchs
and their retinues, and others who were certainly not poor, did not
scruple to quarter themselves here. King John, who was mean enough
for anything, set this fashion. A somewhat older place of sojourn for
travellers was in St. Martin’s Priory, where the Strangers’ Hall, of
Late Norman architecture, is still to be seen. The manor of Archer’s
Court, some three miles out of Dover, is associated with the sea, in a
quaint tenure, by which the owner held it of the King on condition that
“he should hold the King’s head when he passes to Calais, and by the
working of the sea should be obliged to vomit.”

Dover has regained in the last few years all its ancient importance--
and more, and has in four or five respects bulked largely in public
affairs. The completion of the great National Harbour stands easily
foremost; and next in importance comes the story of the proposed
Channel Tunnel; followed by the long-drawn search for coal that is
still being prosecuted; by the many attempts to swim the Channel; and
the several successful flights across it, to and from this point.

The first attempt to make a national harbour at Dover may be traced to
the reign of Henry the Eighth, when a long pier formed of timber piles
and heavy stones was built out to sea on the site of the modern arm
known until recently as the “Admiralty Pier.” It cost some £80,000, but
seems never to have been quite completed, and was, like the Admiralty
Pier itself, until the completion of the great harbour in 1910, merely
a breakwater, not a harbour. It broke to some extent the force of the
strong set of the currents that sweep towards the east through the
narrow Straits, but was washed away at last. The loss of Calais, the
last relic of the English possessions in France, during the reign of
Mary, led to renewed activities here, for in the words of Raleigh, “no
promontory, town, or harbour in Europe is so well situated for annoying
the enemy, protecting commerce, or sending and receiving despatches
from the Continent”; but the English seamen of that great age dealt
roundly with the enemy on the high seas, outside harbours, and,
although other works were casually undertaken, the making of Dover a
great war-harbour and place of assemblage was not yet.

The great works now happily completed originate in the foresight
displayed by the Duke of Wellington, who, convinced of the strategical
value of Dover, strongly urged the construction of a harbour here,
where the Navy could rendezvous at the threat of war. In 1840, and
again in 1844, a Royal Commission sat upon the subject, took evidence,
and issued a report; but the estimated cost of such an undertaking,
then placed at two millions sterling, appeared to be too great, and
only a portion of it was built. This, the Admiralty Pier, was begun
in 1847. It occupied twenty years, and was built largely by convict
labour. In its well-remembered original form it extended a distance
of 2,000 feet, and was finished off at the seaward end with a fort
mounting two big guns, which were but rarely fired, because the
concussion generally smashed all the windows along the front.

[Illustration: THE NATIONAL HARBOUR, DOVER.]

It was not until 1894 that the old question, then mellowed by half a
century, of providing a National Harbour was revived. The Admiralty
were urged to consider it anew, in view of the altered conditions
of naval warfare brought about by the gradual perfecting of that new
engine of destruction, the torpedo, which had rendered the Downs, that
old rendezvous of the fleet, no longer safe from attack. The result
of these new deliberations was the letting of a contract in November
1897 to Messrs. Pearson & Sons, by which enormous works, costing
considerably over £3,500,000, and taking twelve years to complete, were
embarked upon.

To construct a deep-sea harbour at Dover, open at all states of the
tide, was an anxious work. Nature has appeared to sternly deny to any
of the South Coast towns between Ramsgate and Portsmouth anything of
the kind, and such small havens as existed have been mostly silted up.
That is the familiar tale of Hythe, of Winchelsea, and of many another.
Ramsgate harbour has been kept open only by dint of constant and costly
dredging, which has made its harbour-dues almost prohibitively heavy.
The natural haven of Dover, in the hollow of the hills, long ages
ago became a portion of the town; and the inset of the coast is so
insignificant that it is fighting elemental forces in the open to build
strong granite piers and breakwaters in deep water, ranging to a depth
of forty feet at low tides, which rise eighteen feet nine inches and
through which runs a five-knot current. But the contest is ended, and
the eye now ranges from the heights of Shakespeare’s Cliff or those of
the Castle upon such a harbour as Raleigh never dreamed. The length
of the old Admiralty Pier has been doubled; an eastern arm stretches
out from under the Castle to a length of 2,942 feet, and between their
seaward extremities stretches, parallel with the shore, a breakwater
4,212 feet long, enclosing, together with the Commercial Harbour,
the vast area of 685 acres. The eastern and the western entrances,
at either end of the breakwater, are respectively 650 feet and 740
feet wide. The entire Navy can assemble comfortably in Dover Harbour,
without fear of torpedo or submarine attacks, and guarded by the
frowning forts of the Castle and the Western Heights while other forts
and searchlight stations are placed on the piers and breakwaters. In
addition, there are torpedo and submarine stations here for attacking
any foe.

The proverbial luck of England is very marked here. When the great
harbour was decided upon, the menace of a German Navy and of the
remarkable German war preparations at Emden had not arisen. The Germans
themselves were still enjoying the fun of calling the German Emperor
“gondola Willy,” in ridicule of his desire to create a fleet. No one
laughs now at the spectacle of a German Navy, which is emphatically
“a fleet in being”; and the strategy of the Board of Admiralty is
now directed, in consequence of that new factor, rather to guarding
the North Sea than the seas patrolled by the old Channel Fleet.
Bismarck once rightly described the Baltic Sea as “a hole,” in which
a German fleet could be easily shut up. The Baltic Canal was cut by
the Germans as a way, and a short way, out of that hole; but the new
British strategic base at Dover, closing the English Channel to the
passage either way of a hostile fleet, has, together with other naval
bases, constructed, or constructing, along the East Coast and up to
the extreme north of Scotland, and in the Orkneys, rendered the North
Sea itself something of a “hole,” on a larger scale. If we take a map
and look at the relative positions of Great Britain and Germany, we
shall clearly see that Britain, with the will to do it, can stop the
way, and in the event of war close both the Channel and the way round
by the North; thus preventing an attack upon the British possessions
over-seas, even though we bear the shock of war along our whole eastern
face. But Harwich, Grimsby, and the Tyne; Rosyth, Dundee, Wick, and
Scapa Flow, will in due course be able to stiffen the new front of our
position. That the rise of the German Navy has made the North Sea our
front is seen in the new dispositions, by which the Channel and the
Mediterranean have lost their relative importance, while the North Sea
is now the cruising-ground of some thirty of the foremost ships of the
Navy.

The last word, the final appeal, is with the land and sea forces of
the nation. Orators in Parliament, or stumping the country, may thrill
audiences with enthusiasm or indignation, but there is no thrill
to equal that which comes of conscious power. Such a thrill the
Englishman may experience here. Let us hope politicians, in their party
juggling, may not starve our defences too often, so that they be found
wanting in our hour of need.

We have beheaded a King, with some justice, we have shot an Admiral,
without justice or sense in the doing of it, and we have from time to
time degraded Generals; but, strange to say, we have never yet hanged
a statesman, although the occasion has warranted, often enough. It
seems a strange immunity! Yet in the coming great struggle, if we be
unprepared, it may well be that this immunity will no longer hold.
Tennyson, many years ago, contemplating some such national disaster,
had a vision of the mob’s way with recreant ministers:

    “The wild mob’s million feet shall kick you from your place.”

It was mildness itself--that is to say, if we take the million kicks
figuratively. The proper treatment in such an eventuality would be,
not merely to remove those ineffectual persons from their place, but
to hang them from the most prominent lamp-posts available; no adequate
revenge, but as earnest of popular feeling.

In these later and more striving and hard-working times for the
Navy, and in the new strategical dispositions necessitated by modern
political developments, the new harbour of Dover is destined to
play a prominent part. The old--but still quite recent--days of
the Channel Fleet are done. The English Channel was never an ideal
cruising-ground: it has its moods--some of them extremely vicious
and surly--but the proximity of the kindly coastwise towns and their
snug harbours, and the entertainings and courtesies and general social
amenities of a sailor’s lot that were generally to be enjoyed ashore
savoured life in that fleet with a pleasant flavour. Things are
something more Spartan in the North Sea, or--horrid alternative--
“German Ocean,” and although courtesies are given and received, they do
not bulk so largely as in the days when the generous hospitality aboard
sent many a guest ashore incoherent but voluble in praise of the way
they had with them in the “Flannel Sheet.”

The Government works here are by no means the only great undertakings
that have been in progress for some years past. The Dover Harbour
Board, in conjunction with the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway
Companies, has been engaged in providing a great new Commercial Harbour
within the shelter of the Admiralty Pier. It was long before those
bodies obtained parliamentary sanction for their proposal to widen
the pier at its landward end, and to build wharves and a great new
station, rather larger than Charing Cross, where for many years past
weatherbeaten travellers have been landed in all the discomforts of
what was at its best a makeshift arrangement. The railway and steamship
companies had for long, by special permission, used the Admiralty
Pier as a landing-stage; but the great increase of traffic, no less
than the discontent of passengers put ashore in the open, on a narrow
breakwater exposed to the full fury of sea and wind, led them to seek
powers for very ambitious new works. The difficulties encountered in
dealing with no fewer than seven Government Departments interested:
the Treasury, Admiralty, War Office, Board of Trade, Home Office,
Post Office, and the Board of Works--give a comic-opera touch to the
negotiations; they were at last overcome, and now close upon £2,000,000
has been spent upon the works, a sum provided largely by the income
derived from the proceeds of a poll-tax levied on all passengers
embarking or landing at Dover. When first introduced, in 1891, it was a
shilling a head; but in the way usual with most taxes not strenuously
resisted, this proved only the modest beginning of things, and it was
raised in 1900 to half a crown.

I have read somewhere a funny story, which really appears to be true as
well as funny, of a witness in the local police-court, who, asked his
occupation by the Bench, replied that he was a professional man.

“What profession?” inquired the magistrate.

“Well,” said the witness diffidently, “I walk on the pier of an
afternoon, and see the boats in!” This sly humorist--if that is his
proper description--narrowly escaped committal for contempt of court.

But the Admiralty Pier has ever been the resort of people, resident
in Dover, whose chief interest in life has seemed just this same
seeing in the boats; and now that the Admiralty Pier and the great
new harbour-works have provided a much more extended promenade, the
“profession” has become correspondingly enlarged.

Dover is an ambitious place, and intends to compete vigorously with
Southampton, Plymouth, and Liverpool for overseas traffic. That is all
very enterprising, but what it gains as a strategic base, as a place of
arms, and as a great commercial port, it will inevitably lose in its
capacity as a residential and seaside town. For the rest, it is rapidly
becoming a place of monuments. Prominent among these is the bronze
portrait-bust of Captain Webb, the first person to swim the Channel.
It was unveiled early in 1910, and stands upon a red granite obelisk
bearing an inscription recording his famous swim from Dover to Calais,
21 miles in 21 hours 55 minutes, August 24th, 1875.

Many attempts--much advertised and conducted with every aid to
success--have since been made to rival Webb’s fine performance; but
all proved failures until September 6th, 1911, when Thomas William
Burgess, after numerous disappointments, swam from near the South
Foreland, Dover, to Le Chatelet, near Calais, in 22 hours 35 minutes:
40 minutes longer than the time taken by Captain Webb. It was his
sixteenth attempt. The occasion was made the very most of, in the
hysterical manner of the age; from a congratulatory telegram from the
King down to the excited comments of the halfpenny press. Webb’s finer
performance of thirty-six years earlier was a comparatively obscure
affair. It is a rather saddening instance of the decay of the national
character, under the lead of advertisers and half-educated journalists,
bent upon sensation-mongering.

The Channel crossing is no longer solely concerned with tunnelling,
swimming, or steamboat travelling. The conquest of the air provides a
newer way. So long ago as March 22nd, 1882, Colonel Burnaby crossed
in a balloon from Dover. Starting at 10 a.m., he landed at Montigny,
Normandy, at 2.15 p.m.

Burnaby knew Dover well. An out-of-the-way association with him will
be found in the hill-top cemetery, where one epitaph at least has the
rare quality of true sympathy. It was placed by him over the grave of
his servant, George Radford, and runs: “True as steel. This stone is
erected by the man he served so well.”

Nowadays, in flying matters--in aviation, as the new word has it--it
is the aeroplane, the heavier-than-air machine with the petrol-engine,
that attracts attention and performs most of the marvels. Already,
at the present time of writing, there have been numerous successful
attempts to fly the Channel by aeroplane. It was on Sunday, July 25th,
1909, that the pioneer, M. Blériot, voyaged by monoplane from Calais,
landing on Dover cliffs in thirty-seven minutes. A monument, in the
shape of a concrete model of his machine, has been let into the grass
of the North Fall Meadow. On May 21st, 1910, the Comte de Lesseps, from
the same starting-point, landed near St. Margaret’s Bay, in two minutes
less. These exploits were followed on June 2nd, 1910, by the Honourable
C. S. Rolls, flying from these Dover cliffs to the French coast near
Sangatte and back again; and on August 17th by Mr. J. B. Moisant,
an American, of Spanish extraction, who, in the course of an effort
to fly from Paris to London, crossed the Channel from Calais with a
passenger, and landed at the inland village of Tilmanstone, midway
between Sandwich and Dover. With the flight of eleven airmen across the
Channel, on July 3rd, 1911, on their way from Calais to London, the
brief era in which such things were regarded as marvels may be said
to have ended. Already the newspapers have ceased to decorate their
accounts of these doings with the startling headlines first accorded
them; and there now appears to be no reason why more astonishment
should be exhibited at such sights than at the familiar one of a
motor-car careering the road: itself a spectacle thousands of people
assembled to see, not so many years ago. Wonderful! But some things--
really, after all, the essential things--are as impossible as ever to
combat. Age and pain, poverty, sorrow, and death, remain the lot of
mankind, and none may make flight from them.

A fine bronze statue of Charles Stuart Rolls, “the first man to cross
the Channel and return in a single flight,” stands on the Parade of
Dover, looking seaward. It is a good likeness, in a characteristic
pose, of that ill-fated airman, killed little more than a month later
at Bournemouth, July 12th, 1910. He is represented standing, in his
well-remembered stooping pose, hands behind his back, and gazing with
a peculiar intensity out across the sea, towards the misty coast of
France; with rather a fateful look, as though with prescience of his
end. Something of the sculptor’s romantic imagination is in that, for
Rolls was essentially of a joyous and forceful nature.




CHAPTER XXI

SHAKESPEARE’S CLIFF--SAMPHIRE--THE CHANNEL TUNNEL--COAL IN KENT--
THE WARREN


“Dost thou know Dover?” asks Gloucester, in the pitiful tragedy of
_King Lear_.

Aye; and knowing Dover, we cannot but be well acquainted with that--

   “Cliff whose high and bending head
    Looks fearfully in the confinèd deep.”

It is Shakespeare’s Cliff. “Here’s the place,” says Edgar.

            “... Stand still. How fearful
    And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
    The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
    Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down
    Hangs one that gathers samphire--dreadful trade!
    Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
    The fishermen that walk upon the beach
    Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark
    Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
    Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
    That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes,
    Cannot be heard so high.--I’ll look no more,
    Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
    Topple down headlong.”

[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE’S CLIFF.

                        _After W. Daniell, R.A._

]

The height of Shakespeare’s Cliff is said to be 365 feet; but it looks
more, owing to the grand outline it presents to the sea. It was once
much taller, but for centuries the waves have been nibbling at it. In
1847 some 48,000 tons of chalk fell, and numerous other falls have
taken place since.

Not even the ugly tunnel by which the South-Eastern Railway penetrates
it can spoil the majesty of Shakespeare’s Cliff, whose bastioned steeps
present so romantic a profile to the surges. It stands boldly out
before you, as you essay the toilsome cliff-walk, by way of Archcliff
Fort, to Folkestone.

Samphire, the gathering of which, as Shakespeare truly says, is a
“dreadful trade,” still grows plentifully here; and is also found
growing amid the shingle by Shoreham Harbour, near Brighton, well above
the reach of high water. It has been much esteemed from early times as
a pickle. Thus we find, in Gerald’s “Herbal,” of 1596, “Rock samphire
groweth on the rocky cliffs of Dover, Winchelsea, about Southampton,
and the Isle of Wight. The leaves, kept in pickle and eaten in salads,
with oil and vinegar, is a pleasant sauce for meat.”

This curious aromatic plant, with the fleshy, glaucous leaves and
yellow flowers, is not uncommon, but at the same time it is very
choice and selective in its habitat. Although to be found in the
crannies of coastwise cliffs, there are few among the great crowds of
holiday-makers by the sea, other than botanists, who have ever set
eyes upon it. Curiously enough, although it looks upon the sea from its
favourite spots, it will only grow in situations well out of the reach
of salt water.

Samphire is said to be “St. Peter’s plant,” and to derive its name from
“St. Pierre.” It is nowadays known in France as “Passe-Pierre,” or
“Christe marine,” and in Italy is called “Herba di San Pietro.”

Samphire-picking is carried on in May, when the leaves of the plant are
young and succulent. One must needs be young or active, and of a good
nerve, to be a samphire-picker, for it is generally only in the more
dangerous and inaccessible situations that it is to be found; and many
have in years gone by lost their lives in the “dreadful trade,” not in
these latter days so greatly followed, although, to be sure, bottles
of samphire pickle are to be purchased at Pegwell Bay. The samphire
nowadays more generally appeals to the collecting instincts of those
devastating persons, the amateur botanists, and enthusiasts in what is
known, in the latest fashion, as “Nature Study,” who are stripping the
country of all its ferns and desirable wild plants; and many must be
the narrow escapes every year of those who climb cliffs in search of it.

The “samphire pickle” sometimes to be bought is not always what it
pretends to be, for here, as so often elsewhere, adulteration’s artful
aid is called in, and the more plentiful and much more easily gathered
glass-wort, which grows on mud-flats, and greatly resembles samphire,
without its aromatic qualities, is bottled with vinegar, to the
deception of a trustful public.

The cliffs along the way to Folkestone are of quite extraordinary
interest, so numerous are the schemes and exploitations they display.
Here, looking over the edge, you see, on a scrap of foreshore where
the railway emerges from the tunnel, a siding with works of sorts and
a smoking chimney. This is the site, not only of the Channel Tunnel
works, but also of the Shakespeare Cliff Colliery.

The idea of a Channel Tunnel, under consideration so long ago as 1867,
was originally received with great favour in both France and England,
and an agreement upon the subject was arrived at in 1876, by which it
was to be begun simultaneously from either side.

It was, however, regarded as a commercial project and in no sense as
a Government undertaking, the respective Governments merely adopting
a benevolent attitude toward the scheme. Some years passed before the
Channel Tunnel Companies on either side commenced operations from
Dover and Sangatte. It was due to the energy of that arch-contriver,
Sir Edward Watkin, that the scheme at last took definite shape and was
translated into action. As chairman of what was then the Manchester,
Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway (now the Great Central) and of the
South-Eastern Railway, he was generally credited with a bold plan for
creating a through trunk line from Manchester to London and Dover,
and thence beneath the Channel and so on to France, without change
of carriage. Like many another Moses, he saw his Promised Land, but
could not enter upon it. He brought the old M. S. and L. to London and
lived to see it the “Great Central,” but his Channel Tunnel, begun
so bravely, was stopped by a nervous Government in 1886, when it had
progressed 5,500 feet. A like distance had been tunnelled from the
French coast.

It was an alarmist article in the _Nineteenth Century_ that spoiled
his pet scheme, and although Watkin on several occasions went to the
great trouble and expense--or perhaps it would be more correct to say,
saddled the South-Eastern Railway shareholders with a great expense--
of inviting parties of statesmen and influential personages to inspect
the works and to partake of costly luncheons on this spot, he never
gained any return for his outlay on chicken and champagne.

The plans for the Tunnel had originally provided for starting actually
from the Dover side of Shakespeare’s Cliff, instead of from the present
obscure situation; but the War Office insisted upon the change,
although it is the simplest proposition in strategy that the mouth of
the Tunnel, placed where at first intended, would have been easily
controlled by the Dover forts. The selected spot, supposing the work
ever to be completed, is far more capable of being used by an enemy,
being relatively away from observation and masked from gun-fire by the
intervening shoulders of the hills.

The plan for tunnelling the twenty-three miles was for parallel
tunnels, each carrying a single line. The original estimate was
£10,000,000, but the work, as it progressed through the chalk, proved
so easy that these figures were reduced to £4,000,000, largely because
it was found that the chalk was watertight and required no casing.
The abandoned works remain quite dry to this day. The scare, shared
though it was by Lord Wolseley and other eminent authorities, does not
seem very creditable, and there can be little doubt but that, sooner
or later, the Government bar upon the progress of the work will be
removed, and the Tunnel become an accomplished fact. Meanwhile the
Channel Tunnel Company continues to hold its annual meetings, and new
Parliamentary Bills are duly promoted. “Public sentiment has been
aroused against the Tunnel,” remarked the chairman recently, “and it
must abide its time and opportunity.”

From railway tunnelling to coal-mining the transition, for the scheming
brain of Sir Edward Watkin, was easy. An idea had long been current
that coal existed under the Kentish chalk. Geologists considered
that the French and Belgian coalfields naturally continued under the
Channel, and that borings would disclose coal-measures, probably at
considerable depths. Many borings were made at various places, among
others at a spot north of Battle, in Sussex, in 1872, where a depth of
1,905 feet was reached, without result.

[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE CLIFF COLLIERY, AND THE COAST TOWARDS
FOLKESTONE.]

The selection of Dover as a likely place was due to the stopping of the
Channel Tunnel works by the Government, in 1886, when the tunnelling
machinery was thrown idle and the employment of it in shaft-sinking
for coal on the same site was suggested. Coal-seeking was thereupon
begun, in spite of the already long-expressed opinion of Sir Roderick
Murchison, one of our most eminent geologists, that the existence of
any _productive_ coalfields in the south-eastern counties was in the
highest degree improbable. The results of some thirty years’ boring and
shaft-sinking at Dover seem to amply justify his view, for since March
1905, when a number of journalists were invited to inspect the works of
the Consolidated Kent Collieries Corporation, little has been heard of
coal at the Shakespeare Cliff shafts. On that memorable occasion the
chairman of the company pointed triumphantly to a small stack of what
undoubtedly was coal, and the journalists gazed, awe-stricken, upon the
sight. It was not coal that would commend itself to a householder, for
kitchen, or indeed any other use, being soft and easily to be crumbled
between thumb and finger. The heap weighed about twelve tons, and was
the sole result, to that date, from one and a half millions sterling
subscribed by the public to the successive companies seeking coal here.
It had thus cost £125,000 per ton; and, being so rare and costly, the
chairman was very properly indignant when it was proposed to burn
some. Since then; notably in 1912, other coal has been raised here and
has been triumphantly exhibited in Dover shop-windows; but, up to the
present, a very great deal more of that mineral has been expended upon
working the machinery of the shafts than has been brought up from them.

There is a vast deal of exhausting up-and-down walking along the
lofty cliff tops on the way from the Shakespeare Cliff Colliery to
Folkestone. The Dover to Folkestone road itself, running somewhat
inland, at first in the lap of these downs, climbs continually for more
than five miles, and is a profoundly wearisome highway. It is an effect
of vastness which obsesses the traveller here, and, where the road
leaves the sheltered, tree-clad hollow, one of stark and uncomfortable
surroundings; horribly bleak in winter, and hot enough to fry you in
summer. But at a point a mile and a half along the cliffs’ edge, where
they rise to a great height beside a coastguard-station, the explorer
on foot may, at the cost of another considerable output of exertion,
descend to the beach in a very fine, romantic, and absolutely secluded
nook. Rarely will you find any one down here: the spot is too little
known, and the effort of descending and climbing up again is too great.
No fewer than 530 steps lead, roughly, and with many zigzags, down the
face of the cliffs to the beach. The spot is known as Lydden Spout,
from a clear spring which used to gush from the chalk, and, later, was
made to issue from an iron pipe. It spouts no longer; but this is still
a place worth all the trouble of getting at. Gulls down here, screaming
and chorusing like so many party politicians (but much more sincere),
take little notice of the rare stranger. If you like, you can walk
back along the beach, all the way to the Colliery. Which is the more
exhausting, the shingle walk, or remounting those more than 500 steps,
I will not pretend to say.

The pedestrian’s way into Folkestone lies along the Warren, that
ancient, tumbled expanse of wild undercliff, two miles long, which
you see spread out before you on reaching the “Royal Oak” inn, by the
roadside. Resisting the hospitalities of the tankards held out by
the beery votaries of the wayside public, let us descend through the
Warren into the town. On the way down we shall pass by the gorsy hollow
called “Steddy Hole,” a spot of horrific interest a good many years
ago, for here, in the Crimean War period, August 1856, a soldier of the
Foreign Legion, one Dedea Redanes, a Neapolitan, murdered “sweet Maria
and lovely Caroline,” as a stone formerly to be seen here described
them: two sisters, Caroline and Maria Buck. He was duly executed at
Maidstone. The stone is no longer to be seen, and the tragic hollow to
such a degree been forgotten that on summer days happy lovers may be
found in the ill-omened spot, unconscious of its tragedy.

There is a large area of Warren, appearing the larger by reason of its
tumbled nature. The South-Eastern Railway runs through its midst, and
the two most easterly of the old martello towers on the Kentish coast
stand on guard, aloof, grim, grey, and solitary, with all Folkestone
for a background. The Warren is full of wild life, and is thus the very
antithesis of Folkestone’s stuccoesque conventions. I believe, on the
authority of the late Rev. J. G. Wood, that the “rare earwig, _Labidura
riparia_,” is to be found here. The information came to him by way of a
courageous lady who, wandering over these hummocky hollows, discovered
the fearsome thing roaming about in happy ignorance of its Latin
name or its exceeding rarity, and, with a courage beyond her sex in
dealing with creeping objects, captured it and sent it to that eminent
naturalist.




CHAPTER XXII

FOLKESTONE--THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW--DICKENS AND “PAVILIONSTONE”--
SANDGATE


We come into Folkestone by way of the mean streets that immediately
fringe the Old Town, that survival of the fisher-village which existed
many centuries before ever the modern pleasure-resort was thought of.

No one has with any certainty penetrated the mystery of Folkestone’s
name. As the Lapis Populi of the Romans, the “Folcanstane” of the
Saxons, and the “Fulchestane” of Domesday Book, it remains a puzzle.
No one knows who these “folk” were, nor what was their “stone.” The
situation of the town is really, when you come to consider it, of the
most extraordinary kind; but no one who has not approached it either
way along the coast, or from inland, can quite sum up this situation,
for the growth of modern Folkestone is so great that, when in it, the
natural features of the spot are obscured by many houses. Perhaps the
best point of view whence to sum up Folkestone is at the rear, along
the road from Canterbury. Up there, on the lofty downs, those bold,
grassy chalk-hills, you look down across a mile or so of apparently
level land, at whose seaward extremity the clustered houses of the town
are massed against the sea. But, coming down into those levels, it is
seen that the Old Town lies in a hollow on the shore, while fashionable
Folkestone occupies a lofty cliff-top; the famous “Leas,” intermediate
between them being the business districts, including Tontine Street and
Rendezvous Street.

Not all Old Folkestone survives, nor is even that which remains exactly
as it was. The old open stream which dashed down into the harbour
has been piped; because, they say, its odour became too strong. That
is as may be; but the remark is permissible that the super-smells of
Folkestone Harbour at low-water outclass anything possible in streams.
Still, enough remains of Old Folkestone to show the inquisitive
stranger what the old-time fishermen’s and smugglers’ haunts were
like. No one is in the least inquisitive about the new town, because
it displays itself most prominently to the view, hiding nothing.
Thus viewed, it is seen to be chiefly in that manner of building
which prevailed in South Kensington’s early days, before that region
became a byword for culture. It is in the greyest of grey stucco, and
exceedingly dismal.

[Illustration: THE STADE, AND OLD TACKLE-BOXES, FOLKESTONE.]

But down by the Harbour, where Old Folkestone sits and partly squatters
in the water and for the rest climbs up and slides down amazing
acclivities and declivities, a great deal of interest survives; with
shy corners and alleys that seem shun observation. Ingoldsby’s
description of the Folkestone of his day, early in the nineteenth
century, still in part holds good. To him it was “a collection of
houses which its maligners call a fishing-town, and its well-wishers
a watering-place. A limb of the Cinque Ports, it has (or lately had)
a corporation of its own and has been thought considerable enough to
give a second title to a noble family. Rome stood on seven hills--
Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy. Its streets, lanes,
and alleys--fanciful distinctions without much real difference--are
agreeable enough to persons who do not mind running up and down stairs;
and the only inconvenience at all felt by such of its inhabitants as
are not asthmatic is when some heedless urchin tumbles down a chimney
or an impertinent pedestrian peeps into a garret window.”

These remarks about precipitous streets may well be supplemented by
the description given by Dickens, who, visiting Folkestone in 1855,
wrote to Wilkie Collins and spoke of “a steep, crooked street, like a
crippled ladder,” a comparison which well fits the High Street to this
day.

The chief picturesque asset of this region is the exceedingly quaint
group of old tarred tackle-boxes, or rigging-lofts, fronting the Fish
Market, on the Stade. This is the last stronghold of the picturesque
here, and very well worth preserving. Elsewhere in the Old Town there
are interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century red-brick houses,
but they are woefully slummy. High above this lowly region and the
harbour is the old parish church of St. Eanswythe, that famous lady,
daughter of Eadbald, King of Kent, who founded a convent here on the
hill-top and caused water to run miraculously uphill to supply it. It
is not surprising that she was made a saint. Rome could scarcely do
less. A leaden reliquary containing relics of her was discovered in a
wall of the church in 1895.

I have already remarked that modern Folkestone, as distinguished
from the old fishing-port, wears in its most prominent residential
parts the appearance of an unregenerate South Kensington; of the
South Kensington before the cult of the sunflower and of Queen Annean
architecture banished white brick and stucco. That it should so closely
resemble the South Kensington of the Cromwell Road district, built soon
after the Great Exhibition of 1851, is not remarkable, seeing that it
was Cubitt, that great conjurer with bricks and mortar (not forgetting
the plaster) who was the author of both. He bade arise both Cromwell
Road and the intensely respectable and extremely expensive mansions
that front upon the Folkestone Leas--or Lees, as I grieve to find them
frequently spelt--and Dickens was in 1855, or thereabouts, the prophet
of all these things. Dickens, in this setting, is a figure of absolute
rightness. You cannot imagine him, even had he lived long enough, in a
Morris and Burne-Jones _milieu_.

He came to Folkestone when the new town was of the newest and still
in the making, and when the original Pavilion Hotel, the predecessor
of the existing hotel of that name, was fresh-built. He described
Folkestone under the name of “Pavilionstone,” and one may still see
in Albion Villas the house he rented for a time; a thoroughly typical
house.

“I am myself,” he wrote, “of New Pavilionstone. We are a little mortary
and limey at present, but we are getting on capitally. Indeed, we
were getting on so fast, at one time, that we overdid it, and built
a street of shops, the business of which may be expected to arrive
in about ten years. We are sensibly laid out in general; and with a
little care and pains (by no means wanting, so far), shall become a
very pretty place. We ought to be, for our situation is delightful, our
air is delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild
thyme, and decorated with millions of wild-flowers, are, on the faith
of a pedestrian, perfect. In New Pavilionstone we are a little too much
addicted to small windows, with more bricks in them than glass, and we
are not over-fanciful in the way of decorative architecture, and we get
unexpected sea-views through cracks in the street doors; on the whole,
however, we are very snug and comfortable, and well accommodated.”

Dickens had, however, not the remotest conception of what the place
he was pleased to style “Pavilionstone” would become. He saw only
the beginnings of the lordly and exclusive pleasure-resort on the
lofty cliff-tops, one hundred and twenty feet above the sea; and
the people who made holiday at Folkestone in his time were frankly
people who “went to the seaside” and descended to the beach, and
sometimes even paddled in the sea, and did the like undignified
things. Now the Folkestone that in these times centres upon the Leas
does nothing of this sort. It notices sometimes that the sea does, in
fact, incidentally stretch away out and down there, and it knows--
ah, yes--that there is a harbour. Sometimes you start from it for
the Continent, don’t you know! But from the austere and exclusive
Leas the tripper element is entirely banished, and those sedate and
dignified fashionable visitors who promenade beside the lawns between
the old church of St. Eanswythe at the eastern extremity and the huge
Hotel Metropole and the Grand at the western end seem to take their
pleasure as solemnly as though it were one everlasting Church Parade.
There are people, it is true, of a lower social status, and of a more
primitive and joyous nature, who come to Folkestone, and patronise the
very fine pleasure pier, and do not disdain the beach and the simple
old delights of the seashore; and there are still other people who
patronise a “switchback” contrivance down below; but these are folk who
stay somewhere in back streets, who have no sort of commerce with the
refined life which distinguishes the Leas. Sometimes, it is true, some
of the Olympians of these heights descend by the lifts that communicate
directly with that geographical and social underworld, and occasionally
the primitive people of down yonder ascend by the same means from the
Lower Road to explore this rarefied region, and both are impressed by
what they see and hear. But they mingle no more than oil and water will
do. The very bands understand to a nicety the differences of ideals and
outlook, and render Grieg, Wagner, and classical music above, while to
the Lower Road audiences they discourse strains of a simpler and more
popular kind.

It is distinctly strange to observe in midst of the drab,
smug, commonplace setting of the Leas the statue of an early
seventeenth-century celebrity. It stands at the opening of Castle Hill
Avenue, and looks painfully out of place. The effigy represents William
Harvey, Folkestone’s one and only celebrity, holding a heart. He was
born here in 1578, and for the rest of his life had little connection
with Folkestone. It is quite certain that Folkestone’s visitors are
incurious about him, and that, while some can identify him as the great
physician who discovered the circulation of the blood (which they
consider to be a perfectly obvious thing, anyway), others have a dim
notion that he was the originator of Harvey’s Worcester Sauce. It is
high time that this statue received a thorough cleansing from the oxide
which the salt sea-breezes have deposited on its bronze, covering the
distinguished man with green, leprous-looking blotches.

The extreme Western end of Folkestone touches a more pleasing note than
the rest. There neutral tints and unimaginative Middle Victorian ideals
give place to red-brick and terra-cotta houses of tasteful design, and
thus point the moral that most of Folkestone was built too early.

[Illustration: INTERIOR, SANDGATE CASTLE.]

From this point the cliffs die suddenly down to Sandgate, and
from the edge you get wonderful views away across Romney Marsh to
Dungeness, whose light is at nightfall a prominent object from the
Leas. Sandgate, as its name duly suggests to the reflective mind,
is situated on a level shore, and is a mile-long street of mingled
shops and residences. A martello tower looks down upon Sandgate
from the Leas, and down upon the seashore stands an older defence,
Sandgate Castle, a coastwise fortress built by Henry the Eighth for
the defence of these low-lying shores against the foreign foe. We
know more about the building of Sandgate Castle than about any of its
fellow fortresses, for the “Ledger” containing the building-accounts
is preserved in the British Museum. By those pages it appears that it
was completed in 1540, and cost £5,584 7_s._ 2_d._ The time occupied
in the work was eighteen months, an astonishingly short space when the
massive character of it is seen. The ground-plan is similar to that
of Walmer, but much of the building has disappeared; still, what is
left of it is massive and forbidding, and although the sea thunders
upon the beach and washes its walls, it will be long before the fury
of the waves brings them to complete ruin. Although the exterior of
the keep is faced with masonry, the substantial core is brick, eight
feet in thickness. The central chamber is vaulted in brick, in a
plain barrel-vault, from the centre, the roof thus formed having been
intended for use as a gun-platform. The vast number of 147,000 bricks
went to the building--a work of great technical excellence. The stone
came largely from the religious houses of St. Radigund’s, near Dover;
Christ Church, Canterbury; and Horton Priory.

Finally, after a long, untroubled history, without ever having
encountered an enemy, Sandgate Castle was abandoned. It became at last
the property of the South-Eastern Railway, and was then sold into
private ownership. To-day it contains a most interesting museum, and
may be inspected for the extremely modest fee of one penny.

Sandgate, some years ago, considered itself to be the victim of an
earthquake, and the London papers one morning were full of terrifying
accounts of the dangers awaiting this part of the south coast. But it
was, after all, nothing more than a landslip; and no volcanoes nor
craters, nor any other evidences of subterranean disturbance, have
since fluttered the dovecotes of Sandgate, Folkestone, or Hythe. The
landslip happened on March 4th, 1893, or at any rate culminated on
that day; but for some days earlier cracks had been noticed in walls,
and after the great subsidences of the 4th some further days passed
before the soil resettled itself. Landsprings in the sandy heights at
the back of the town were the cause of the trouble.

Although the terror caused by the affair was afterwards seen to have
been greater than the happening warranted, still the damage caused
was very considerable, and scarcely a house in Sandgate escaped some
damage, while some were utterly wrecked. The damage was estimated at
£5,000.

Sandgate has greatly changed since then, and has been almost entirely
rebuilt.




CHAPTER XXIII

SHORNCLIFFE CAMP--THE ROYAL MILITARY CANAL--HYTHE--ROMNEY MARSH--
THE MARTELLO TOWERS--THE “HOLY MAID OF KENT”


From Sandgate the seashore goes level for many miles, through Seabrook
and Hythe, and across Romney Marsh to Dungeness. Not until Sussex is
reached and Winchelsea passed do the cliffs again rise, confronting the
sea.

Hard by Sandgate Castle stands the centenary monument on the modest
parade to Sir John Moore, the hero of Coruña, unveiled November 19th,
1909. The spot is appropriate because, at the back of Sandgate, up
away out of sight, is Shorncliffe Camp, closely associated with that
distinguished soldier. The military works in these parts, along a coast
so peculiarly exposed to foreign invasion, are many and important.
Henry the Eighth, as we have seen, was diligent in fortifying these
low-lying shores, and there came a time, two hundred and sixty-five
years later, when the Government of that day was equally concerned
about a possible French attack. Then, in 1805, was constructed the
famous “Royal Military Canal,” which extends a distance of about
twenty miles from Rye to Hythe, with its sluices here at Seabrook,
adjoining Sandgate railway-station. The canal is thirty feet wide and
nine feet deep in the middle. Its function was, in connection with a
regular line of martello towers on the beach, to hamper and impede a
landing-force.

“Mr. Pitt’s Military Canal,” as it was in those days styled, formed
the target for many shafts of ridicule. “The French,” said Ingoldsby,
“managed indeed to scramble over the Rhine and the Rhone, and other
insignificant currents, but they never did, or could, pass Mr. Pitt’s
‘Military Canal.’”

Here, where the Canal’s sluices pour their waters into the sea, are
remains of military works, intended to defend this vital spot, with
Shorncliffe Camp above. The world wags still with an amiable slowness
here, the old horse-tramway through Sandgate to Hythe, belonging to
the South-Eastern Railway, leaving the main road and progressing along
the beach. The only trouble is the constant succession of motor-cars,
generally racing at illegal speeds along these flat roads and producing
clouds of dust.

[Illustration: HYTHE.]

Seabrook melts insensibly into Hythe, that quaint old place whose
name, signifying “the harbour,” proves how changed are the local
conditions from those remote times when the little town first arose.
Then ships came up to it. To-day the sea is distant across a mile-long
waste of shingle, and, of all the four parishes in it, but one now
remains; with but one church. This, the noble Early English church
of St. Leonard, is of much architectural interest; but it is sadly
to be supposed that the average holiday-maker is more attracted by
the gruesome collection of ancient skulls, exhibited in the crypt,
or undercroft. You may see these poor relics, if you have a mind to
it, for the fee of threepence, and the curiously morbid taste widely
distributed among sightseers brings in a plentiful harvest of pennies
and threepenny-bits, all through the summer. The collection at present
consists of some six hundred skulls and a neatly arranged stack of
bones that once formed the framework of about seven thousand men. They
are supposed to be the remains of men of some distant age who fell in
battle by the seashore; and, whether they died in the hour of victory
or of defeat, we may perhaps assume, now that their bones, so many
centuries later, bring a modest income to the church of Hythe, that
they did not die in vain. But whether they would have chosen to be a
show for the curious and the vulgar is another matter. For myself, I
think it a scandal and an indignity, and consider that the clergy of
Hythe, past and present, deserve the greatest censure for holding and
continuing the exhibition.

Were it not that scientific men, examining the skulls, have declared
them all to be those of men, we might most fittingly assume that this
undercroft was merely a charnel-house, like those seen in Brittany,
to which the bones of the older occupants of the churchyard are from
time to time removed; but since the remains _are_ only those of men,
and as many of the skulls exhibit gashes, the vague ancient legends
of some great battle appear to be not without foundation. But at what
period that great fight was fought, and between what opposing races, is
uncertain. Hasted, in his “History of Kent,” tells us that the battle
was fought A.D. 456, between the Britons and the Saxons, and that the
Saxons were utterly defeated: “Vortimer still followed the retreating
Saxons, and, coming up with them again on the seashore near Folkestone
in the year 456, fought a third battle with them between that place
and Hythe, gaining a complete victory. Nennius and others say it was
fought in a field on the shores of the Gallic Sea, where stood the
Lapis Populi.”

Another historian places the date of the battle three hundred and
eighty-seven years later. “A.D. 843,” he says, “in the reign of
Ethelwolf, the Danes landed on the coast of Kent, near to the town of
Hyta, and proceeded as far as Canterbury, great part of which they
burnt. At length Gustavus (then Governor of Kent) raised a considerable
force, with which he opposed their progress; and, after an engagement
in which the Danes were defeated, pursued them to their shipping on the
sea-coast, where they made a most obstinate resistance. The Britons,
however, were victorious, but the slaughter was prodigious, there being
not less than thirty thousand left dead. After the battle the Britons,
wearied with fatigue, returned to their homes, leaving the slain on
the field of battle, where, being exposed to the different changes of
the weather, the flesh rotted from the bones, which were afterwards
collected and piled in heaps by the inhabitants, who in time removed
them into a vault in one of the churches of Hyta, now called Hythe.”

Hythe owes a great deal to the memory of William Pitt, whose Military
Canal has, in the more than a hundred years since it was made, become
one of the loveliest of waterways, on which splendid boating, under
the shade of century-old trees, may be had. Leaving the town, the road
comes at once, past the bridge over the Canal and by the “Duke’s Head”
inn, into the romantic region of Romney Marsh.

Romney Marsh was in merry Tom Ingoldsby’s time so out of the way that
he could find it possible to say, with that humorous exaggeration
which enshrines some little truth, “the world, according to the best
geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Romney
Marsh. In this last-named, and fifth, quarter of the globe a witch
may still be occasionally discovered in favourable, _i.e._ stormy
seasons, weathering Dungeness Point in an eggshell, or careering on her
broomstick over Dymchurch Wall.”

The last witch eloped with the ultimate smuggler, full seventy years
since, but Romney Marsh remains, a beautiful open expanse of wide
horizons, clear skies, and succulent pastures. The coastwise road runs
across its levels, seven miles to New Romney, with the village of
Dymchurch in between, Dymchurch Wall keeping out the sea. This, viewed
from the inner side, is a lofty grassed earthen bank, faced seawards
with a masonry “apron,” as engineers style it; while at regular
intervals the martello towers of an olden scheme of coast-defence are
features of the way. Cobbett, writing in 1825, was very severe upon
them:

“I had baited my horse,” he writes, “at New Romney, and was coming
jogging along very soberly, now looking at the sea, then looking at the
cattle, then the corn, when my eye, in swinging round, lighted upon a
great round building, standing upon the beach. I had scarcely had time
to think about what it could be, when twenty or thirty others, standing
along the coast, caught my eye; and, if any one had been behind me,
he might have heard me exclaim, in a voice that made my horse bound,
‘The _martello towers_, by ----!’ Oh, Lord! To think that I should be
destined to behold these monuments of the wisdom of Pitt and Dundas
and Perceval! Good G--! Here they are, piles of bricks in a circular
form about three hundred feet (_guess_) circumference at the base, and
about one hundred and fifty feet circumference at the top. There is a
doorway, about midway up, in each, and each has two windows. Cannons
were to be fired from the top of these things, in order to defend the
country against the French Jacobins!

“I think I have counted along here upwards of thirty of these
ridiculous things, which, I daresay, cost five, perhaps ten, thousand
pounds each; and one of which was, I am told, _sold_ on the coast of
Sussex, the other day, for two hundred pounds! There is, they say, a
chain of these things all the way to Hastings! I daresay they cost
millions. But far indeed are these from being all, or half, or a
quarter of the squanderings along here. Hythe is half _barracks_; the
hills are covered with barracks, and barracks most expensive, most
squandering, fill up the side of the hill. Here is a canal (I crossed
it at Appledore) made for the length of thirty miles (from Hythe, in
Kent, to Rye, in Sussex) to _keep out the French_; for, those armies
who had so often crossed the Rhine and the Danube were to be kept back
by a canal made by Pitt, thirty feet wide, at the most! All along the
coast there are works of some sort or other, incessant sinks of money;
walls of immense dimensions; masses of stone brought and put into
piles. Then you see some of the walls and buildings falling down; some
that have never been finished. The whole thing taken together,” he
concludes, “looks as if a spell had been, all of a sudden, set upon the
workmen; or, in the words of the Scripture, here is the ‘_desolation of
abomination, standing in high places_.’”

The martello towers seem to have thoroughly obsessed Cobbett, for he
presently bursts forth again, to tell us how they were “erected to keep
out the Jacobin French, lest they should come and assist the Jacobin
English. The _loyal_ people of this coast were fattened by the building
of them. Pitt and his loyal _Cinque Ports_ waged interminable war
against Jacobins. These very towers are now used to keep these _loyal_
Cinque Ports themselves in order. These towers are now used to lodge
men, whose business is to sally forth, not upon Jacobins, but upon
_smugglers_. Thus, after having sucked up millions of the nation’s
money, these loyal Cinque Ports are squeezed again: kept in order, kept
down, by the very towers which they rejoiced to see rise to keep down
the Jacobins.”

Seventy-six of these martello towers were erected along the flat places
of the Kent and Sussex shores in the first years of the nineteenth
century, when Napoleon threatened us with invasion. They cost,
according to their size, from £10,000 to £20,000 apiece, and were
constructed of such a thickness of brick, with a vaulted brick roof,
that they were thoroughly bomb-proof. The thickness of the brick walls
varies from six feet on the rear, or landward, side, to nine feet
facing the sea. The interior consists of a base, intended to serve as
the magazine, with two rooms above, for the garrison. On the roof was
mounted a swivel-gun, while on either side of each tower a howitzer was
planted, as a flank defence. The martello towers are said to have been
introduced from Italy, on whose Mediterranean coast, we are told, they
had first been built for the purpose of defending the seaboard against
the pirates who once infested those seas. It is even said that their
name, “Torri di Martello,” derives from the warning to neighbouring
villages sounded on the approach of a pirate ship by striking a bell
with a hammer, in Italian _martello_; but another derivation is given
from a circular fort on the seashore at Martella, in Corsica, reduced
only after severe fighting in the time of Nelson.

At any rate, they do not deserve the ridicule that has been showered
upon them, from the time of their building until the present day.
They had never an opportunity of being put to the test, for Napoleon
thought better of his projected invasion; but time has been on the side
of these much-abused forts, for Lord Kitchener’s blockhouses on the
African veldt, not altogether remotely resembling them, were largely
instrumental in bringing the weary and inglorious great Boer War to a
close.

The history of the martello towers during the last few years, forms
an interesting footnote to Cobbett’s denunciations. Some, near Hythe,
have been undermined and split in half by the sea, and others have
been, at great labour and expense, demolished. Others yet have been
let by the War Office at modest rentals to romantic people on the look
out for something unconventional in the way of a seaside bungalow.
Should any romantic reader of these pages desire to do the like, I have
no doubt the War Office will be quite ready to let others of these
forts that have never fought the foe. Indeed, now and again official
advertisements may be seen, inviting tenders for renting some of them,
for twelve months. The Department has by no means extravagant notions
as to the value of them as “desirable residences,” and an offer of
£4 or £5 is pretty sure to win acceptance. It is not an extravagant
rental, but, on the other hand, there are obvious drawbacks from a
residential point of view. It is not every one who would be content
with a home that looks externally like a gigantic pork-pie and has
the defects of possessing but three rooms, one on the ground-floor
(originally intended for a powder-magazine) with no windows, and two
above, dimly illuminated by loopholes in the walls. Indeed, in the
winter months life in a martello tower must be almost as gloomy as
in a prison. But summer, to be sure, brings compensations, for the
interior is then apt to be delightfully cool, and the concreted roof,
originally designed to hold a swivel-gun and other ordnance, forms an
ideal platform for deck-chairs. Nor need this open-air life on the roof
be at all exposed to the gaze of the public, for a four-foot parapet
runs round, screening it from too great publicity.

We shall, however, better judge what Romney Marsh is like by mounting
to the high lands that overlook it; that ridge which is crested
picturesquely by Lympne Church and Castle on the right, marking the
ancient coast line in the times of the Romans. What is now the Marsh
was then a shallow lagoon where the Roman vessels rode at anchor; and
to this day the remains of the Roman seaport of _Portus Lemanis_,
called “Studfall Castle,” strew the tumbled grassy slopes beneath
Lympne Castle, in fragments of massive masonry. It is an excessively
steep climb, past Botolph’s Bridge, up to Lympne; that “Lymme Hill, or
Lyme,” of which Camden wrote. He tells us, truly enough, that this “was
sumtyme a famose haven, and good for shyppes that might come to the
foot of the hille. The place is cawled Shipway or Old Haven. Farther,
at thys daie the lord of the V ports kepeth his principal court a lytil
by est from Lymme hill.”

The Court of Shepway, to which Camden thus alludes, was the chief
legislative and executive body of the Cinque Ports. It made the laws
governing that confederacy of ports, and pronounced decrees.

A subsidiary court of the Cinque Ports, inferior to the Court of
Shepway, was in remote times held in the open air on Dymchurch beach.
This was the “Court of Brodhull,” and was later removed to Romney.

Shepway Court also was an open-air assembly, presided over by the
Lord Warden. Here offenders were tried upon charges of high treason,
failure of ship-service, false judgment, and treasure-trove. Process
upon conviction was summary. Convicted disturbers of the King’s peace,
debasers of coin, and plunderers of ships or ships’ gear to the
value of twenty pence were at once drawn around Shepway on hurdles
and afterwards hanged. An even more terrible fate awaited any jurat
disclosing the King’s counsel, his fellows and his own. He was bound
hand and foot to a stake set upon the seashore where the tide ebbed and
flowed, his throat was cut, and his tongue drawn out through the slit.

The Lord Warden was always, from the earliest times, sworn in at the
Court of Shepway upon his appointment. The first Lord Warden was Earl
Godwin. This ceremony continued here until 1597, when Lord Cobham took
the oath at Bekesbourn. Meanwhile the business of the ancient Court had
been transferred to Dover. The composition of this open-air assembly
was, the Lord Warden, with the Mayor of Sandwich on his right and the
Mayor of Dover on his left; on the right of the Mayor of Sandwich,
the Mayor of Hastings; and the Mayors of Romney, and Hythe, Winchelsea
and Rye, Faversham, Folkestone, or Fordwich, Lydd, Pevensey or Seaford,
and Tenterden, respectively in succession, right and left.

[Illustration: LYMPNE.]

At Shepway Cross, on the hill-top, we turn left into Lympne, which was
once pronounced locally as a two-syllabled word, “Limn-ey”; obviously
derived from the old Roman _Lemanis_. How or why the intruding “p” came
into the place-name is unknown, and cannot be traced back further than
Morden’s map of Kent, about 1680.

The great Early English church adjoins the castle, originally one of
the numerous seats of the Archbishops of Canterbury, and afterwards
for centuries a farmhouse. This interesting building, with remains of
fourteenth-century work, was sold about 1907 to Mr. F. J. Tennant,
the millionaire brother-in-law of Mr. Asquith. Until that time the
public had access to the place; but it has since been restored and
huge additions made, wholly changing the aspect of the spot. Before
these developments it was possible to wander anywhere at will about
the ruins of the castrum on the undercliff; but now one is restricted,
and goes between limits of barbed-wire, and hedged in with threatening
prohibitions. It is to be observed that never before in all its history
had the castle suffered siege or violence, until this transformation
had been effected. And then its warlike history began, in the
determined irruption of a band of those “bold, bad ones,” the silly
suffragettes, who stormed the terraces and flung stones through the
dining-room windows during one of Mr. Asquith’s visits. The great gods
laugh at the exquisite irony of the situation!

From the ridge on which Lympne is placed one looks down over the whole
extent of Romney Marsh, with the Military Canal down in the foreground,
and out in middle distance the curving sweep of the shore, accented at
intervals by the line of martello towers. It is beautiful by day, but
touched to nobility at night, under the gleam of the harvest moon.

[Illustration: LYMPNE CASTLE AND CHURCH.]

Half a mile out of Lympne, on the way to Aldington, a rough and obscure
lane turns to the left, out of the road, between some new residences
which have just been built. It is not at first a particularly inviting
way, but it leads to a singular undercliff scene, where an ancient
cottage, completely wrapped in creepers, even to roof and chimneys,
stands on a plateau which has the appearance of having slid bodily
half way down the cliff. This indeed is exactly what, in the words of
Hasted, the historian of Kent, did happen one night in the year 1727.
So evenly and silently did this take place that the farmer and his wife
knew nothing of it until they awoke next morning to the new point of
view presented from their windows. The cottage is known as the “French
House,” from the fine view hence of the coast of France.

Immediately at the end of the next hamlet, Court-at-Street, a steep,
rough lane deeply sunk between rugged banks and overhung with trees
leads down to the Marsh, or rather, to a little plateau or undercliff
looking upon it. It is a beautiful view you get hence, a variant of
other beautiful glimpses on the way from Lympne to Appledore, taking
in the flat Marsh and the Royal Military Canal and the long sweep of
coast curving to Dungeness. But something other than a mere view-point
makes the spot interesting. It is a little building, roofless and
otherwise in ruins, that stands there; a building with one remaining
architectural feature in the shape of a late doorway, probably of the
time of Henry the Seventh. This was anciently a chapel. The reason
of its being placed in a situation so obscure is lost, but there must
have been an excellent one for such a choice, for mediæval chapels
commonly stood, as shops do now, in positions that commanded traffic,
and for the same reason: that they should secure the notice and the
custom of wayfarers, by whose alms and offerings they were largely
supported. At the time when the story presently to be told was enacted
this chapel had already fallen upon evil times. Whatever relics it had
possessed had--as modern theatrical managers say of their unsuccessful
plays--“failed to attract”--and the hermit who once had lived there
was gone.

[Illustration: ROMNEY MARSH: THE MARTELLO TOWERS AND MILITARY CANAL:
MOONLIGHT.]

But it has a late story of its own, a tragical story of the tragic and
epoch-making age of Henry the Eighth. In those last few years when it
was still roofed and weather-proof it was used by the cunning priests
of a declining and damnable creed for the purpose of keeping alive
their almost exploded superstitions. Reformation was in the air, in
things spiritual and temporal alike, and the religious houses were
presently to be dissolved and to be made loose their hold upon the
large proportion of English soil they had accumulated by centuries of
bequests. Some sign, any sign, was required by the doomed clergy of
that age by which the pretensions of their class could be bolstered
up and the actions of a King bent upon reform discredited; and such a
sign, the religious of Canterbury acutely believed, could be made to
appear from the strange possession, demoniacal or angelic--that had
suddenly befallen a peasant girl in Aldington, one Elizabeth Barton,
at that time a servant in the employ of Master Thomas Cobb, bailiff to
the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Cobb lived in the little house still
standing at Aldington, and now known as “Cobb’s Hall,” and was startled
when his maid-servant suddenly developed strange and terrifying
behaviour, and began to rave on religious matters. To modern ideas the
symptoms detailed in the lengthy old accounts of Elizabeth Barton’s
career would seem to point to epileptic fits, followed by religious
mania; but the simple folk of those times thought her inspired, and
those others who were not so simple, and knew a good deal better,
took excellent good care that the notion of her inspiration should
be well nursed. Religious mania is generally the product of outside
influences acting upon a diseased body and an ill-balanced mind; and
it may be suspected, since the crisis in the affairs of the Church was
then the chief topic in the mouths of all men, that Elizabeth had been
influenced by the talk she heard, and by the preaching of the then
rector of Aldington, Richard Masters. In her trances and somnambulistic
exploits and in her ravings the ordinary people thought her possessed
of evil spirits; but Richard Masters declared she had always been a
devout girl, and he now professed, when called to her bedside, to have
heard her say “very godly certain things concerning the seven deadly
sins and the Ten Commandments.” This, in the view of the Church,
was inspiration. Masters journeyed to London, and at Lambeth Palace
acquainted the old and failing Archbishop Warham with this strange
portent, and was encouraged to keep diligent account of all her
utterances.

And then Elizabeth Barton suddenly recovered, and was in the scullery
again, cleaning pots and pans and dishes. We may picture the
disappointment Masters experienced, on his return, to find his prodigy
become suddenly so commonplace.

But it was too late for this poor Elizabeth to be allowed to return
obscurely to her domestic duties. Cobb’s house was besieged by the
curious, who came merely to look at her, and by the superstitious, who
had heard she could prophesy, and by the ailing, who thought that a
laying on of hands would cure them.

Two monks were brought over from Canterbury, to make a religious seer
and prophetess of her, and Cobb was persuaded that the best room in
the house, and not the scullery, was her proper place. These two
emissaries, Doctor Bocking and Dan William Hadley, gave her a course
of instruction in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and taught her to believe
herself of the company of saints and equal to such miraculous deeds
as theirs. Thus arose the title by which she is known in history, the
“Holy Maid of Kent.” She now experienced a recurrence of her cataleptic
states, but appears more often to have made a pretence of them. Her
instructors removed her at this juncture to this lonely Chapel of Our
Lady at Court-at-Street, which had for some time past, with the general
decay of pilgrimage and the growing disbelief in relics, been doing
very badly. The removal was made the occasion for a great and striking
religious procession, and two thousand persons assembled to witness
a promised miracle: a promise said to have been made to Elizabeth by
the Virgin Mary that she should be cured if she visited that shrine.
Elizabeth was carried to the place, with every appearance of severe
affliction, “her face wondrously disfigured, her tongue hanging out,
and her eyes being in like manner plucked out and lying upon her cheek.
There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had been
in a tunnel, her lips not greatly moving; she all that while continuing
by the space of three hours or more in a trance.”

And the voice spoke of the joys of heaven and the torments of hell and
of the efficacy of pilgrimage and the beauty of giving to Holy Church.

“And,” continues the account, “after she had lyen there a long time,
she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole.” It was, in short,
a very clever and successful exhibition of acting and ventriloquy, and
completely captured the crowd.

The Virgin now desired her to repair to the Priory of St. Sepulchre
at Canterbury, and to assume the name of Sister Elizabeth and take
Dr. Bocking for her spiritual instructor. There she was gradually
coached into religious and political prophecies, and began to launch
threats against the King in respect of his divorce and of his proposed
marriage with Anne Boleyn. She declared--and forced her way into
his presence at Canterbury, on his return from France, to declare
it--that he should not reign a month after that marriage and should
die “a villain’s death.” But the King, quite unmoved, married as he
had intended, and a month passed, and he seemed none the worse. The
Holy Maid, like many another prophet before and since, was obliged to
move the date of the anticipated retribution forward, and still the
vengeance of Heaven did not descend. The obvious inference is that
Elizabeth was not in the confidence of Providence; but through the
reports of the monks of Canterbury, who spread the most extraordinary
accounts of her life in the Priory, in which the devil in person was
said to have appeared, in an attempt to commit an indecent assault
upon her, she was widely looked upon as divinely inspired. Sir Thomas
More, regarded by all competent persons as one of the most learned and
cultured persons of that age, believed in her.

For three years she continued her extraordinary career of fraud and
blasphemy, and then the heavy hand of the King descended upon her and
her accomplices. One can only feel surprised that it had been delayed
so long, for Henry the Eighth was not usually long-suffering under
insult.

She was hanged, with Doctor Bocking and others of her accomplices
in religious deceptions and political offences, April 21st, 1534, at
Tyburn. “Hither,” said she, in her dying speech and confession, “I am
come to die. I have been not only the cause of mine own death, which
most justly I have deserved, but am also the cause of the death of all
these persons who at this time here suffer. And yet I am not so much
to be blamed, considering that it was well known unto these learned
men that I was a poor wench without learning, and therefore they might
have easily perceived that the things which were done by me could not
proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right
well judge that they were altogether feigned. But because the things
which I feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised
me, and bare me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost, and not I that did
them.”

This, with much else, she confessed, admitting among other things that
a letter purporting to have been written by the Virgin Mary, in heaven,
and sent to a widow in London, was written by a St. Augustine’s monk
named Hawkhurst.

Aldington church tower rises in stately massiveness amid the plain
of Aldington Frith--“Aldington Fright,” as the country people call
it. It is a noble, though an unfinished building, begun about 1507,
and in progress until 1537. Those were not favourable times for new
church works, and the Archbishop’s palace--one of his many palaces--
close by, dated its decay from the same period. Nothing is left of
his park of more than a thousand acres, and of the palace itself,
its five kitchens, eight dove-houses, six stables, nine barns, and
other appurtenances on an equally generous scale, nothing now remains
but some few architectural fragments built into the walls of a
comparatively modern house.

Aldington is notable not only from its connection with the story of
the Holy Maid, but also because Erasmus was rector here for a short
period. His appointment in 1511 by Archbishop Warham was something in
the nature of a scandal, however well-meaning its object, which was
to provide him, as a learned, but poor, scholar, with a livelihood.
Erasmus was a Dutchman, quite ignorant of the English language, however
well versed in Latin; and either his awakened conscience, or the
growing indignation of the people of Aldington at having a tongue-tied
alien thrust upon them, presently led to his resigning. A charge of £20
per annum, then a large sum, fully equal to £200 present value, was
then made upon the living, and paid by his successor for his support.
After a short interval, Richard Masters, who figured prominently in the
affair of the Holy Maid, was appointed, and with varying fortunes he
held the rectory until his death, in 1558.

Beyond this we may fitly turn down again to the Marsh, past Bonnington
church, a tiny building standing close beside the Military Canal.
Thence across the levels, by winding roads, the way goes to Newchurch,
“new” so long ago that the origin is lost in antiquity. It is a
typical Marshland village, and the heavy tower of the church itself
leans forward in a manner suggesting imminent collapse. It has probably
suggested the same idea for three hundred years, or more; and so there
is certainly no immediate danger. Hereabouts the sheep are the chief
animate objects. Romney Marsh was ever a region famous for its flocks,
and from the earliest times the smugglers who smuggled wool out of the
country, regardless of the strict penal laws against the exportation
of fleeces, were more important than those who smuggled goods inwards.
They had their own special designation, and were known as “owlers,”
probably in the first instance from their signalling in the night with
calls like those of the owls.

[Illustration: BONNINGTON CHURCH.]

There are no “shepherds” here, on the Marsh. They are, in local
parlance, “lookers.” When the agricultural labourer in these parts
takes up with “ship,” he announces, “I be a-going a-lookering”;
lookering being, in fact, a variety of shepherding peculiar to these
surroundings, with special terms and conditions.

To trace these byways of the Marsh in spring, say in the third week
of May, when the thorn-trees are in bloom, is an experience to be
remembered; it is the best time of all the year to see Romney Marsh.
Then such remote spots as Ivychurch, in the very middle of it, seem
idyllic. “Ivychurch” does not, by the way, take its name, as might
be supposed, from ivy, but has its root in “ea,” for water, having
originally been situated on an islanded knoll ever so little raised
above the level of the wet marshes. The term “Marsh,” it should be
said, survives although the roads and byways are now as dry as those
of other scenes, thanks to the constant care of the jurats and other
officers whose functions are to keep the dykes deeply delved, the
sluices in order, and Dymchurch Wall in repair. In default of these,
Romney Marsh, or the greater portion of it, would again be drowned, for
it is at a lower level than the sea.




CHAPTER XXIV

NEW ROMNEY--SMUGGLING DAYS--BROOKLAND--FAIRFIELD--SMALLHYTHE


The town of New Romney, new nine hundred years ago, is located afar
off, not by its houses, which are few indeed, but by the trees that
encircle it, and give a very direct denial to its urban claims. Founded
to replace Old Romney, deserted by the sea, as a seaport, the sea
began again to retreat so long ago as Queen Elizabeth’s time, and is
now a mile and a half to two miles distant, at the melancholy and
hopeless-looking cluster of houses known as Littlestone-on-Sea, where
there are golf-links on which Parliamentary matches are played. There
the opposing champions in the House of Commons contend amicably, much
to the surprise of the general public, who imagine--poor fools--that
all the fury and tub-thumping at Westminster is honest emotion, and do
not realise that it is all part of the great Game of Make-Believe for
which, whether amused or not, we have all to pay.

There were once no fewer than five churches at New Romney. Now there
is but one. “Here,” wrote Cobbett, in 1825, “there is a church (two
miles only from the last, mind!) fit to contain one thousand five
hundred people, and there are, for the people of this parish to live
in, twenty-two or twenty-three houses! And yet the _vagabonds_ have
the impudence to tell us that the population of England has vastly
increased.”

[Illustration: NEW ROMNEY CHURCH.]

The “vagabonds” pilloried in this wrong-headed outburst were quite
correct; the population had indeed greatly increased, but that of New
Romney and Old Romney alike had, for the best of reasons, declined.
Moreover, Cobbett did not know--nor do people generally stop to
consider--that the numerous and roomy old churches throughout the
country do not necessarily give the measure of the ancient population.
As even now, the size or frequency of churches depended to a great
extent upon the comparative piety and wealth of the neighbourhood.

The great church of St. Nicholas, the surviving one of New Romney, is
a fine specimen of the late Norman style, with tombs of the old Mayors
and jurats. The floor-level is so much below the level of the ground
outside that one descends several steps into the building. The town
itself is scarce less quiet and undisturbed than the interior of the
church itself. It is still technically a Cinque Port, and a Mayor is
annually elected. Also there is something in the nature of a town gaol;
but it is a curiosity rather than a necessity.

I cull this interesting item from a newspaper of October 1913, to show
something of the quiet that has now descended upon the place.

“SINLESS CINQUE PORT.--During the last six months the fines and fees
at the police court of New Romney, the ancient borough and Cinque Port,
have amounted to 2_s._ In this time only one minor case was heard,
although the borough, which includes Littlestone-on-Sea, has a Mayor
and eight magistrates, as well as three policemen.”

A very different New Romney from that of centuries ago, which was a
place such as Longfellow wrote of, with--

   “... The black wharves and the slips,
        And the sea-tides tossing free;
    And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
    And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
        And the magic of the sea.”

But the town, although reduced in size, experienced a gorgeous time
centuries later; a time that ended only in the early years of the
nineteenth century. The sea had gone out of sight, but the smuggling
trade brought much wealth here.

This was indeed an ideal district for the smugglers who infested the
coasts of Kent and Sussex. Every dyke--or “dick,” as the country
people pronounce the word--was a temporary storehouse for tubs of
contraband spirits, placed there on hurried occasions, until leisure
could be found to convey them into more private hiding; and those
enterprising revenue officers who on fine days wandered the marshes
with iron rods, probing at a venture among the reeds and bulrushes, not
infrequently made lucky discoveries.

But it was when night had shut down, thick and rimy, over these
levels that in those old times they woke to business. Many a cargo
of gin or cognac, successfully landed along the coast on the Kentish
or the Sussex side of the Rother, was conveyed by the smugglers’
labourers across Guilford Level and Walling Marsh, and no one in
the neighbourhood who observed how usually flush of money were the
agricultural labourers of the surrounding villages was in the least
mystified as to the source of their gains. Those men knew better than
any others the obscure paths and short-cuts of the levels, and could in
any weather pick their way with certainty in places where those less
expert would presently find themselves at the best confronted by an
impassable dyke; or, at the worst of it, floundering in profound depths
of mud and water. History informs us very fully of the ferocious nature
of the Kentish and Sussex smugglers, who were by no means afraid of
blood-guiltiness; but there can be no doubt that most of the mysterious
disappearances of revenue men from time to time from this neighbourhood
were caused by mischances at the dykes in foggy weather, and not by
violence.

The marsh-men, the shepherds, and the agricultural labourers around
Brookland took part in an exceptionally furious encounter between
smugglers and a force of preventive men and naval blockaders that was
fought one night in February 1821. The goods had been landed to the
west of Rye, near Camber Castle, and a party of two hundred men had
assembled on the beach, to carry the tubs inland, when the landing was
rather belatedly discovered by the Naval Blockade look-out. An alarm
was raised, and a force of sailors from the Blockade, led by officers,
was sent in pursuit. The conduct of the smugglers sufficiently shows
their effective organisation. They did not fling away their tubs and
run. Not at all. Their march inland, past the solitary Great Cheyne
Court, towards Brookland was carried out with all the precision of a
well-ordered military retreat. They were not unprepared for attack,
and, besides those who did the carrying, there were the “batsmen,”
armed with the formidable weapons called “bats,” stout poles from
six to eight feet long, and other men who carried firearms. These
protectors fought a kind of rearguard action, covering the disposal of
the contraband, and did it so well that although the naval officers
frequently dashed forward, sword in hand, at the head of their men,
they made little impression. The retreat, in good order, and the firing
lasted until daybreak, when the tubs had all been hidden and it was
only left for the fighting men to disperse. An officer named Mackenzie
was killed in this affair, together with four smugglers, while the
wounded comprised three officers, six sailors, and sixteen smugglers.
Two smugglers, Cephas Quested and Richard Wraight, were captured, the
first mistaking an officer in the dark for a comrade, the other losing
touch with his fellows and walking into the arms of the enemy. Quested
was hanged at Newgate.

[Illustration: BROOKLAND CHURCH.]

Old Romney, two miles inland from Romney the new, is so immemorially
old that the days when the sea flowed to it, and the ships came to
its quays, are altogether forgotten. Sheep graze in fertile pastures,
and never a sign of the sea is evident. Yet there was a time when the
waters flowed inland to Appledore and Tenterden, a matter of eight
miles, and it is an historical fact that the Danish fleet sailed to
Appledore in A.D. 893. The very road by which the marsh is crossed
between New Romney and Appledore is a Roman causeway, or embankment,
still known as the Rhee Wall, along whose sides the waters lapped.

Beyond Old Romney, in the midst of Walland Marsh, is Brookland, whose
church is notable for its detached wooden tower, leaning to one side,
painted or tarred black, and in the shape of three extinguishers,
placed each upon the other. The windows are provided with wooden
shutters as a protection against the winds that blow, unrestrained,
across these levels. The ancient leaden font, one of the twenty-nine
leaden fonts in England, is of the early part of the thirteenth
century, and is decorated in relief with the signs of the zodiac,
and with figures illustrating the labours of the months. It is a
curious relic, and by far the most interesting of the twenty-nine. The
inscriptions above each month are in Norman-French: “Janvier, Fevrier,
Mars, Avril, Mai, Juin, Juillet, Avovt, Setenbre, Vitovvre, Novenbre,
Desenbre.” January is represented by a two-faced Janus, seated at a
table; February by a man sitting by a fire; March, a husbandman pruning
a vine; April, a bare-headed figure, robed, and in either hand a
blossoming branch; May, a sporting knight on horseback, carrying a hawk
on his left wrist; June, a mower; July, hayraking; August, reaping;
September, threshing; October, wine-pressing; November, a swineherd
knocking down acorns, while a pig feeds on them; and December, a man
with an axe, killing a pig.

Among the monuments in Brookland church is a table-tomb to John and
Thomas Plomer, father and son, jurats of New Romney, and their family.
One, we learn, was “Captain of ye selecte board, sometime burgis at
ye parliament for ye same towne, who was one of the portes Barons
in carrying ye canopie at the coronation of King James ye first of
England.”

[Illustration: FAIRFIELD CHURCH.]

Among the curious churches of this region, that of Fairfield, two miles
north-west from Brookland, is well worth visiting. It is not a large
church, nor beautiful, being, indeed, one of that very numerous company
popularly supposed to be the “smallest,” and of a quaint, rather
barn-like, appearance. It is not, in fact, the “smallest church in
England,” that distinction belonging to the little church of Culbone,
in Somerset, which is thirty-three feet in length. The length of
Fairfield church is about forty feet, and it is thus somewhere about
the same size as Bonnington. But it is very much less ecclesiastical in
appearance, being chiefly of seventeenth-century red brick.

There is no village of Fairfield, and there are but two houses in
sight in the flat marsh-land. Away in the distance you see the church
of Stone in Oxney, cresting the uplands; the skylarks are singing
madly in the May skies, and sheep are grazing; but it is a solitary
spot. Dykes with tall rushes encircle the church, which for some years
before 1913 had been closed, and was fallen into a ruinous condition.
In the roof of this little building, dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket,
there were holes; the small timber bellcote was all on one side, and,
of its three bells, one of them was cracked. The windows were broken,
the wind-shutters hanging down from them, forlorn. Through the broken
casements one might see the whitewashed interior, with the tiny
chancel, scarcely lofty enough for a man of average height to stand
in, upright, and the tall wooden pews: the whole a roosting-place for
birds. The deserted building was at last restored, chiefly from funds
granted by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Fairfield is in summer
a prime curiosity; in winter, the church is generally inaccessible,
through being entirely cut off by flood-water. “A dark place,” said a
contemplative, solitary man, met in these wilds. Spiritually dark, he
meant. In other ways, Fairfield, standing amid clear, wide horizons,
with not a tree near it, is a place of exceptional light and sunshine.
The colour of the marshes is vivid and lovely; and not less lovely is
the golden hue of the lichened, red-tiled old roof of Fairfield church
itself, seen from a little distance.

[Illustration: SMALLHYTHE TOLL-GATE.]

There was a time when even Tenterden, now more than ten miles from the
sea, was by way of being in touch with it, through the little port
of Smallhythe, whose name is sometimes seen spelled on maps “Small
Hithe.” This remote little place, some two miles south of Tenterden, on
a by-road, stands strangely at a passage into the so-called “Isle of
Oxney,” which nowadays presents the appearance of an inland island, so
to speak. Looking at a map, no one would at the first glance suspect
Oxney of being an isle, but close inspection discovers the fact that it
is indeed surrounded by the Rother and its tributaries, and a canal. In
olden times, when the Rother was a broad estuary, Oxney was an isle in
very sooth, and it was possible for the not very large vessels of those
ages to be navigated to Smallhythe. In the reign of Edward the Third,
according to tradition, the harbour dues were greater than those of
Liverpool at the same time; and the sea is recorded to have flowed to
its quays certainly so late as 1508.

“Smallhead,” as the country people call it, is nowadays little like a
port. Its street is blocked by a toll-gate leading to a ferry across
the narrow stream. Here the pedestrian is mulcted of one farthing. If
he have a cycle, his total expenditure is one halfpenny. Toll for a
horse and cart is 6_d._; for a traction-engine with one truck attached,
10_d._; for a horse, mule, or ass, 1_d_.; bullock, cow, calf, or pig,
½_d_.; and sheep, 4_d_. per score. “We make everything pay,” says
the gatekeeper, “’cept a dog.” The gate is private property, and was
purchased some years ago for £600. The tolls then yielded over £1 a
week; but the income has greatly fallen since the other ferries into
the isle were freed.

Smallhythe has the unusual privilege of electing its own vicar, instead
of running the risk--sometimes the very real risk--of having to
receive a _persona non grata_ foisted upon the parish by a patron not
in touch with the needs of the place. The electors are the householders
and occupiers of land in the parish. This privilege arose out of the
establishment of the church in 1509. Until then, the nearest was
Tenterden church, but Warham, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, was
induced to license one here because of the complaints made by the
inhabitants of the bad state of the roads.

[Illustration: SMALLHYTHE CHURCH.]

The election takes place always on a Sunday, and the voting is given in
the church-vestry. Should an election not be held within six months of
the living becoming vacant, the privilege lapses and the presentation
becomes the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The last election was held May 7th, 1899, when the Rev. C. E. Pizey
was chosen, by a majority of one, to succeed his father, deceased. He
afterwards resigned, and the unsuccessful candidate, Mr. Raven, was
appointed in his stead.

[Illustration: SMALLHYTHE.]

The church is a small building of red brick, with red-brick mullions
to its windows--a curious example of early sixteenth-century work. Of
the charming old black-and-white half-timbered houses adjoining, that
next the toll-gate is the residence of Miss Ellen Terry.




CHAPTER XXV

LYDD--DUNGENESS--CAMBER-ON-SEA


Three miles from New Romney, across the levels, is the remote little
town of Lydd, in the midst of Dunge Marsh. Its remoteness rendered
Lydd a suitable place for artillery-camps and the surrounding wastes
a favourable location for practice with high explosives. It was here,
indeed, that “Lyddite” was invented. The town nestles within a group
of trees--whether planted for shelter, or just by chance, it would be
difficult to say. Its chief glories are the fine old church, well known
as the “Cathedral of the Marsh,” and the brewery. In the vast interior
of the church lie the old Mayors and jurats of the brave times of yore.
In the churchyard one may read the epitaph of

                  “LIEUT. THOS EDGAR of the Royal Navy
                 who departed this life Oct^r 17th 1801
                             Aged 56 years.
                He came into the Navy at 10 Years of age
                    was in that memorable Engagement
                with Adm^l Hawk & sail’d round the World
                    in company with the unfortunate
                     Captain Cook of the Resolution
                 in his last Voyage when he was killed
                 by the Indians at the Island of O whie
                  in the South Seas the 14th Feby 1778

    Tom Edgar at last has sail’d out of this World
    His shroud is put on & his top sails are furld
    He lies snug in deaths boat without any Concern
    And is moor’d for a full due ahead & a Stern
    O’er the Compass of Life he has merrily run
    His Voyage is Completed, his reckoning is done.”

Here too, is an epitaph on a smuggler, one George Walker, who was shot
in 1819:

   “Let it be known that I am clay,
     A bace man took my life away;
     Yet freely do I him forgive.
     And hope in Heaven we both shall live.

   “Wife and children I’ve left behind,
     And to the Lord I them resign.
     I hope he will their steps attend
     And bring them to a happy end.”

The ancient Chamberlain’s accounts of about 1475 show that
misdemeanants had the very worst of times at Lydd. First we find it
ordered “That anyone found cuttyng or pikeyng purses, or other goods
of lytille value, be brought to the high strete and there his ere
nayled to a post or cart whele.” Then follows: “Paid for naylyng of
Thomas Norys is ere _12d_” There was a grim quality about the justice
of those times. A knife was handed to the offender, so that he might
release himself by cutting off his ear whenever he chose. The term of
imprisonment therefore depended entirely upon himself.

The conservative qualities of Lydd may perhaps be judged by the fact
that the Mayor, Alderman Edwin Finn, brewer, has been elected to
the office thirty-one years; thus far outdistancing the record of
FitzAilwyn, Mayor of London twenty-two years.

[Illustration: LYDD CHURCH.]

Lydd is the place whence Dungeness, four and a quarter miles distant,
is most readily arrived at. The best-advised explorers go by train.
Others, who walk it, generally wish they had not. It is a specious and
alluring road, starting fairly enough, and at the end of two miles
still fairly easy walking; but thenceforward all road disappears. Even
the track vanishes, and the pedestrian plunges wistfully on, through
loose shingle, guiding his course by the more seaward of the two
lighthouses. Knowing ones walk along the railway line; but that is not
an inspiriting exercise.

Dungeness, as described by Lambarde in 1567, is a “Neshe, called in
Saxon nesse, which seemeth to be derived of the Latin Nasus, and
signifieth a Nebbe or Nose of the land extended into the Sea.”

“Before this Neshe,” he continues, “lieth a flat into the Sea,
threatening great danger to unadvised Sailers.” It is indeed the most
remarkable projection--hardly to be called a promontory, for that
indicates also a height--along the coast of Kent, and makes a bold
figure on the map, thrusting itself in a striking manner well into
the Channel. In that, and in the singularity of it being merely a
flat, shingly extension of Dunge and Walling marshes, lies its great
menace to all shipping. A promontory, such as either of the Forelands,
could be easily distinguished from the sea; but at night and in hazy
weather this land is readily to be mistaken for water, as many ships
for centuries past have disastrously found. A great aggravation of
these sufficient perils is constituted by the remarkable depth of water
existing close inshore. The shingle rises steeply, twenty-two feet out
of the sea, and large steamers of deep draught can, and do, come quite
close in.

The natural perils of Dungeness were greatly aggravated from the middle
of the sixteenth century onwards by the new lofty tower of Lydd church,
built by Cardinal Wolsey. Complaints were bitterly made of it. The
tower, it was said, in the reign of James the First, resembled from the
sea “the forme of the saile of some talle shippe,” leading unfortunate
mariners in uncertain lights to steer directly for the shore and
destruction.

From this and other causes Dungeness became as dangerous and fatal a
flat as the Goodwins, and it was stated that in one winter no fewer
than a thousand bodies had been collected on the shore, and £100,000
value of merchandise had been lost. These facts attracted speculators
in the era of the first James, and Sir Edward Howard, the King’s
Cupbearer, about 1615 erected a lighthouse here, petitioning the King
to grant him a patent for levying dues upon passing shipping. The
Trinity House, of course, opposed--it was the _métier_ of the Trinity
House in those times to oppose every new proposition for lighting
the dark and dangerous places; but Sir Edward secured his patent. He
soon, however, found it difficult to collect his dues, and disposed of
his interest to one William Lamplough, Clerk of the King’s Kitchen.
This person soon bestirred himself to secure the full advantage of
the rights he had thus acquired, and through his influence at Court
obtained the aid of the customs officers for the enforcement of them,
a strenuous course of action which in turn stirred up the ship-owners
and the Trinity House, who made common cause and jointly promoted
a Parliamentary Bill in 1621, providing for the suppression of the
light, described by them as a nuisance to navigation. It will be
clearly perceived that the light only began to be a “nuisance” to the
ship-owners when they were required to pay something towards the upkeep
of it. On the other hand, Lamplough--entirely in keeping with his
name--neglected the quality of his illumination--a thing commonly
done in those times and long after by lighthouse-keepers. He was warned
to snuff his candles more diligently, and to improve the light in
general. The Bill was thrown out and Lamplough continued in possession.
Then the town of Rye caused a Bill to be drafted, seeking to take
possession of the lighthouse, on the plea that the first idea for such
a light had emanated from Rye, and promising to devote the income from
the dues collected to the improvement of the harbour. But this attempt
to deprive Lamplough also failed, and in 1635 he is found rebuilding
his lighthouse on a larger and more substantial plan.

Dungeness light gradually proved its great usefulness, but by some
means Lamplough’s successor fell into difficulties and could not, or
would not, pay his ground-rent to his landlord, the Earl of Thanet,
who went so far as to threaten to pull down the lighthouse. This was
in the time of the Commonwealth, and the resourceful lighthouse-keeper
appealed to Cromwell, who decided that it “was not right that the
safety of many lives and of the State’s ships should be left to the
will of the Earl of Thanet.” The upshot of this trouble between the
defiant tenant and the baffled landlord is obscure.

The next building, dating from 1792, was, an inscription on it states:
“Erected by Thomas William Coke, Esq., in the county of Norfolk,
instead of the old lighthouse, which originally stood 540 yards to the
northward, and which, by means of the land increasing from the violence
of the sea, became useless to navigation.”

This old building was but 100 feet from the sea at low water. It is now
more than a quarter of a mile distant, and the point of shingle still
steadily accumulates, in the strong eastward drift, at the rate of six
feet a year.

A newer lighthouse was built in 1904, and rises to a height of 130
feet, with a low light, fifty-five feet. The tower is of brick, and is
distinguished by being painted chocolate, relieved with a deep white
band. The light displayed is a fixed oil-beam, replacing the electric
light, whose white glare, installed a good many years ago, was found to
be incapable of penetrating fogs so easily as the more yellow rays of
oil. The lower light exhibits a flash; and a foghorn, working on a high
and a low note, forms an auxiliary warning in thick weather.

Dungeness, one of the most remarkable places in England, is like no
other place than itself: a waste of shingle, with here and there a
sparse patch of gorse stretching as far as the eye can reach, and with
a little single-track railway running out from Lydd and expiring close
by the Lighthouse, at Dungeness “station”: a primitive hut without
booking-office, signals, or any other of the usual appurtenances of
ordinary railway management. The guard of trains in-coming or departing
collects and issues tickets, and is, in his many other small duties, a
host in himself. It is generally a source of surprise among strangers
to find the South-Eastern Railway Company has considered it worth
while to build a line to Dungeness at all; but the explanation is
found in the ballast-trucks frequently despatched with loads of the
inexhaustible shingle, for use along the line and elsewhere.

[Illustration: DUNGENESS: LIGHTHOUSE AND RAILWAY STATION.]

The loose shingle comprising this vast waste of Dungeness is some eight
or nine feet deep, and most difficult and exhausting to walk upon.
Indeed, the only way to progress for any distance upon it is by wearing
upon the feet the contrivances called “backstays,” which are simply
boards five inches wide and some nine or ten inches long. They serve
exactly the purpose fulfilled by snow-shoes, and prevent or stay one
from slipping back. They are sometimes called “beach-pattens.” They are
fastened either by straps over the boots, or are worn on the naked feet
by passing the straps over the instep and round the big toe. Carts have
their wheels cased in wood to a width of eighteen inches.

Wild-birds still make the shingle-wastes of Dungeness their
nesting-place. In two marshy and reedy ponds near the sea the
blackheaded gull breeds, and the stone-curlew and the rare Kentish
plover linger, protected by the Wild Birds Act, and by the appointment
of a watcher to see that no one takes the eggs. It requires, as a rule,
a trained eye and sharp eyesight to detect the eggs, simply laid among
the large and small pebbles, and scarcely distinguishable from them;
but many might search for them were it not for this specially appointed
guardian of these now rare species.

Among the few houses--the coastguard-station, the general-shop (whose
proprietor is also Dutch Consul), and the half-dozen others that
constitute this settlement under the illimitable, uninterrupted sky--
one walks about on old railway-sleepers laid down in the shingle: the
only paths in the place.

The most disastrous happening connected with Dungeness was the wreck of
the _Northfleet_ on the night of January 22nd, 1873. The _Northfleet_
was a sailing-vessel of 940 tons, built about 1853 Northfleet near
Gravesend, and was bound for Hobart, Tasmania, with a cargo of railway
material and some 300 navvies and their wives and children. There
were in all some 400 people aboard. The _Northfleet_ passed Deal “all
well,” and although the weather was rough, the sky was clear when the
vessel anchored for the night two miles off Dungeness. By half-past
ten all the passengers had turned in, and all seemed comfortable for
the night, when a steamer was observed coming at full speed directly
for the _Northfleet_. Shouts were raised, in vain, and the strange
vessel crashed into the _Northfleet_ amidships. Instantly a terrifying
panic arose, and in the midst of it the steamer that had caused the
disaster cleared off and steamed away, without offering a helping hand,
and leaving the unfortunate people to drown. Captain Knowles, of the
_Northfleet_, had only just been promoted to the position, from that of
chief officer, in succession to Captain Oates, who had been required
by the Treasury as a witness in the Tichborne Case. He had been served
with a subpœna, and prevented at the last moment from sailing. The
last seen of Captain Knowles, who went down with his ship, was a view
of him, revolver in hand, endeavouring to stay the frantic rush of
passengers for the boats and to secure first place for the women and
children.

The _Northfleet_ sank in three quarters of an hour, and over 300 people
went down with her. Eighty-five were saved by the _City of London_
steam-tug, the Kingsdown lugger _Mary_, and the pilot-cutter _Princess_.

There seems no reasonable doubt that the cause of the disaster was
the Spanish steamer _Murillo_, bound from Antwerp for Lisbon, Cadiz,
and Gibraltar with iron rails. The affair was denied by the Spanish
captain, officers, and crew of the _Murillo_, but stated positively by
the two engineers and a passenger, the only three Englishmen on board,
who, as the newspaper reports at the time stated, proved superior
to the threats and intimidation which had closed the mouths of the
rest. The _Murillo_ was examined by the Spanish authorities, and
declared to bear no traces of the collision, and so was released. That
unsatisfactory finding was the last ever heard of the affair.

Nine miles of coastline lead from Dungeness to Camber-on-Sea,
passing on the way the solitary “Hope and Anchor” inn, and three
coastguard-stations. At Camber the recently opened light railway from
Rye is reached, together with the channel of the river Rother. There,
ahead, stands the old town of Rye, perched upon its hill, in Sussex.
The Kentish Coast is ended.




INDEX


  Abbey Wood, 26

  Acol, 136

  Aldington, 333, 336, 340

  Allhallows Fort, 48

  Augustine, St., 67, 180, 182–5


  Barton, Elizabeth, 336–41

  Bell’s Hard, 48

  Beltinge, 121

  Beluncle, 50

  Belvedere, 26, 28

  Birchington, 136–8, 142

  Bonnington, 341

  “Botany Bay,” 156

  Broadstairs, 158, 160–4, 227

  Brookland, 348–51


  Cæsar, Julius, 3, 219

  Camber-on-Sea, 369

  Chalk, 40

  Channel Tunnel, 285, 301–3

  Charles II, 4, 16, 18, 52, 157

  Chatham, 52, 58–62

  Chislett, 124

  Cinque Ports, The, 168, 194–201, 281, 310, 326, 330, 346

  Cliffe, 41

  Cliffs’ End, 178, 185

  Cliftonville, 156

  Coal in Kent, 285, 303–5

  Cobbett, William, 219, 259, 281–3, 324–6, 344

  Cobb’s Hall, 336, 338

  Conyers Quay, 100, 101

  Cooling, 42–5

  Court-at-Street, 334

  Crayford, 29


  Dandelion, 141

  Dartford, 29, 31

  Davington, 88, 102, 122

  Deal, 3, 197, 214–27, 234, 241

  Denton Wharf, 38

  Deptford, 2, 5–14

  Dover, 3, 4, 196, 243, 259, 269–98, 330

  Downs, The, 241

  Dungeness, 38, 197, 324, 334, 361–9

  Dymchurch, 324, 330, 343


  Eastchurch, 81

  Ebbsfleet, 3, 178–80, 182–5

  Egypt Bay, 47

  Elmley, 84

  Erasmus, 341

  Erith, 2, 26, 29

  Evelyn, John, 11, 13, 53, 240


  Fairfield, 352

  Faversham, 3, 86, 88, 91–3, 102, 103, 197

  Folkestone, 4, 197, 301, 306–15

  Funton, 66


  Gillingham, 63

  Godwin, Earl, 104, 231, 278, 330

  Goodnestone, 104

  Goodwin Sands, 158, 227–52, 267

  Grain, Isle of, 3, 49

  Grange, or Grench, 64

  Graveney, 104

  Gravesend, 2, 36–8

  Greenhithe, 32

  Greenwich, 2, 5, 15–23

  ---- Hospital, 15–18

  Grove Ferry, 124


  Harty, 83, 86

  Hengist and Horsa, 3, 179

  Henry VIII, 9, 15, 200, 220–2, 228, 286, 316, 319, 339

  Herne, 118–21

  Herne Bay, 3, 116–18

  High Halstow, 47

  Hillborough, 121

  Holy Maid of Kent, 336–41

  Hoo, Hundred of, 47–56, 59, 63

  ---- St. Mary, 47, 48

  ---- St. Werburgh, 50–52

  Huggens’s College, 34

  Hythe, 196, 197, 320–3, 325


  Ingress Abbey, 33

  Ivychurch, 343

  Iwade, 66, 94


  James II, 83, 86, 88–91


  Kingsdown, 234, 256, 260

  Kingsferry, 66, 68

  Kingsgate, 156–8

  Kingsnorth, Medway Airship Base, 50


  Lesnes Abbey, 26–8

  Leysdown, 82

  Littlestone-on-Sea, 344

  Lower Halstow, 65

  Lower Rainham, 64

  Lower Stoke, 49

  Luddenham, 102

  Lydd, 197, 359–61

  Lydden Spout, 306

  Lympne, 329–33


  Margate, 1, 130, 141, 144–56, 197, 227, 243

  Martello towers, 316, 324–9

  Martin Cross, 261

  Medway River, 2, 50, 52, 56, 59

  Military Canal, The, 319, 323, 325, 333, 334, 341

  Milton Regis (or Milton-next-Sittingbourne), 94, 95–9

  Minster-in-Sheppey, 70, 73–8

  Minster-in-Thanet, 125, 130–6, 185

  Monkton, 129, 130

  Murston, 99


  Newchurch, 341

  New Romney, 196, 197, 207, 283, 324, 344–7, 350, 351

  Northfleet, 33, 368

  North Foreland, 157, 158–60

  North Woolwich, 24


  Oare, 88, 92

  “Old Fubbs Yacht” inn, 18–20

  Old Romney, 207, 344, 350

  Old Wives’ Leaze, 104

  Otterham Creek, 64

  Oxney, Isle of, 354

  Oyster Fishery, 108–14


  Parksore, 65

  Pegwell Bay, 1, 168, 169, 177, 300

  Pepys, Samuel, 8, 11, 53, 72

  Perry Street, 29

  Peter the Great, 11–13

  Pett, Peter, 8

  Plumstead, 26

  Port Victoria, 50

  _Princess Alice_ disaster, 25


  Queenborough, 71

  Quex, 136–40


  Ramsgate, 1, 130, 142, 144, 167–76, 197, 210, 233, 234, 237,
          243, 267, 288

  Reculver (_Regulbium_), 118, 121–3, 124, 186, 195, 197

  Richborough (_Rutupium_), 124, 125, 186, 195, 202

  Ringwould, 261

  Rochester, 2, 56–60

  Romney Marsh, 282, 324, 329, 333, 341–3

  Romney, New, 196, 197, 207, 283, 324, 344–7, 350, 351

  ---- Old, 207, 344, 350

  Rosherville, 35

  Royal Military Canal, 319, 323, 325, 333, 334, 341


  St. Augustine, 67, 180, 182–4

  St. Augustine’s Cross, 178

  St. Lawrence, 177

  St. Margaret-at-Cliffe, 261

  St. Margaret’s Bay, 262–9

  St. Nicholas-at-Wade, 129

  St. Peter’s, 165, 197

  Samphire, 298–301

  Sandgate, 315–18

  ---- Castle, 223, 316

  Sandown Castle, 223

  Sandwich, 121, 125, 127, 168, 185, 188–213

  Sarre, 124, 126, 129, 185, 197, 210, 229, 241, 330

  Scrapsgate, 79

  Seabrook, 319

  Seasalter, 105

  Shakespeare’s Cliff, 283, 288, 298, 302, 305

  Sheerness, 50, 52, 66, 70–72, 101

  Shellness, 83, 84, 89, 106

  Sheppey, 2, 66, 68–87, 94, 106

  Shepway, Court of, 329–32

  “Ship” inn, Greenwich, 21

  Shorncliffe Camp, 319

  Shornemead Battery, 39, 40

  Shurland Castle, 74, 82

  ---- Sir Robert de, 74

  Sittingbourne, 94, 96–9

  Smallhythe, 355–8

  “Steddy Hole,” 307

  Stoke, 50

  Stonar, 179, 188–90, 197

  Stone, 31

  Stone-in-Oxney, 353

  Strood, 56

  South Foreland, The, 264, 268

  Swale, The, 3, 66, 67, 83, 87, 88, 94

  Swalecliffe, 115


  Tankerton, 114

  Teynham, 94, 101

  Thames, River, 2, 5, 15, 50, 52

  ---- and Medway Canal, 39

  Thanet, Isle of, 121, 124, 125, 130, 132, 156, 168, 179, 227

  Tilbury Fort, 37, 52

  Tonge, 94


  Upchurch, 64

  Upnor Castle, 52–6

  Upper Deal, 215


  Wainscot, 52

  Walmer, 197, 210, 222, 234, 241, 256

  ---- Castle, 256–60, 316

  Wantsum, 121, 124–9, 179, 185, 189

  Warden, 80, 114

  Westgate, 3, 132, 140, 142, 227

  Whitebait, 21–3

  Whitstable, 3, 83, 106–15

  Woolwich, 2, 23–6

  Worth, 215


  Yantlet Creek, 49




  PRINTED AND BOUND BY
  HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
  LONDON AND AYLESBURY.




Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.