CHARING TO GODMERSHAM
From Lenham the Pilgrims' Road threads its lonely way along the
hill-side, past one or two decayed farmhouses still bearing the name of
the great families who once owned these manors--the Selves and the
Cobhams; and the view over the level country grows wider, and extends
farther to the south and east, until we reach Charing Hill, one of the
highest points along this range of downs. The windmill, a few hundred
yards above the track, commands a far-spreading view over the valley,
stretching from the foot of the ridge to the Quarry Hills, where the
towers of Egerton Church stand out on its steep mound above the hazy
plains of the Weald. We look down upon Calehill, the home of the Darells
for the last five centuries, and across the woods and park of Surrenden
Dering, which has been held by the Dering family ever since the days of
Earl Godwin, to the churches and villages of the Weald. Beyond a
foreground of swelling hill and dale we see the flat expanse of Romney
Marsh and Dungeness; and then for the first time we catch a glimpse of a
pale blue line of sea--that sea across which Roman and Saxon and Norman
all sailed in turn to land upon the Kentish shore. On clear days you can
see the Sussex downs in the far horizon beyond the Weald, and near
Hastings, the hill of Fairlight rising sharply from the sea. Down in the
valley below, the tall tower of Charing Church lifts its head out of a
confused mass of red roofs and green trees, with the ivy-grown ruins of
the old palace at its feet.
Many are the venerable traditions attached to the churches and villages
which we have seen along our road through this pleasant land of Kent,
but here is one older and more illustrious than them all. Here we have a
record which goes back far beyond the days of Lanfranc and of Athelstan,
and even that king of Mercia who gave Lenham to the Abbey of St.
Augustine. For Charing, if not actually given, as the old legend says,
by Vortigern to the ancient British Church, was at all events among the
first lands bestowed on Augustine and his companions by Ethelbert, king
of Kent. Saxon historians tell us how that this most ancient possession
of the church of Canterbury was seized by Offa, king of Mercia, in 757,
but restored again by his successor, Cenulph, in the year 788.
[Illustration: CHARING]
Long before the Conqueror's time, the Archbishops had a house here. In
Domesday Book, Charing is styled "proprium manorium archiepiscopi,"
being reserved by those prelates for their private use, and from those
days until the manor was surrendered by Cranmer to Henry VIII. it
remained a favourite residence of the Archbishops. In the thirteenth
century the Franciscan Archbishop John Peckham dates many letters from
his house at Charing, and Stratford, as Dean Hook tells us, was often
there, and found consolation in this quiet retreat for the troubles of
those stormy days. Chichele, Kemp, and Bourchier were also frequently
here. Stratford first obtained the grant of a three days' fair to be
held at Charing twice a year, on the festivals of St. George and St.
Luke. Leland tells us that Cardinal Morton made great buildings at
Charing, and the red and black brickwork still to be seen under the ivy
of the farmhouse walls may be ascribed to him, but the great gateway
with the chamber and hooded fireplace above, belongs to an earlier
period, and was probably the work of Stratford in the fourteenth
century. Some of the older stonework is to be found in the stables and
cottages now occupying the site of the offices on the west of the court.
The chapel, with its pointed arches and large windows, which in Hasted's
time stood behind the modern dwelling-house, was taken down eighty
years ago, but the great dining-hall, with its massive walls and fine
decorated window, still remains standing. This hall, where archbishops
sat in state, and kingly guests were feasted; where Henry VII. was
royally entertained by Archbishop Warham, on the 24th of March, 1507,
and where Henry VIII. stayed with all his train on his way to the Field
of Cloth of Gold, is now used as a barn. But in its decay, it must be
owned, the old palace is singularly picturesque. The wallflowers grow in
golden clusters high up the roofless gables and along the arches of the
central gateway; masses of apple-blossom hang over the grey stone walls,
and ring-necked doves bask in the sunshine on the richly coloured tiles
of the old banqueting-hall.
Close by is the church of Charing, famous in the eyes of mediæval
pilgrims for the possession of one hallowed relic, the block on which
St. John the Baptist was beheaded, brought back, an old tradition says,
by Richard Coeur de Lion from the Holy Land, and given by him to
Archbishop Baldwin, when the King paid his devotions at the shrine of
St. Thomas. This precious relic went the way of all relics in the
sixteenth century, and is not mentioned in the long list of costly
vestments and frontals recorded in an inventory of Church property taken
at Charing in 1552. But Charing Church is still, in the words of the old
chronicler, "a goodly pile." It is cruciform in shape, and contains some
traces of Early English work, but it is mostly of later date. The
windows are interesting on account of their great variety. There are
three narrow lancets, several of Transitional and Perpendicular style,
and one large and very remarkable square-headed Decorated window. The
chapel of Our Lady, on the south side of the chancel, was built, towards
the close of the fifteenth century, by Amy Brent, whose family owned the
charming old manor-house of Wickens in this parish. The porch and fine
tower, which forms so marked a feature in the landscape, was also
chiefly built by the Brents, whose crest, a wyvern, is carved on the
doorway, together with a rose encircled with sun-rays, the badge of
Edward IV., in whose reign the work was completed. Through this handsome
doorway the Archbishop, attended by his cross-bearers and chaplains,
would enter from the palace-gate hard by, and many must have been the
stately processions which passed under the western arch and wound up the
long nave in the days of Morton and of Warham. A hundred years later
Charing Church narrowly escaped entire destruction. On the 4th of
August, 1590, a farmer, one Mr. Dios, discharged a birding-piece at a
pigeon roosting, as the pigeons do to this day, in the church tower, and
"the day being extreme hot and the shingle very dry," a fire broke out
in the night, and by morning nothing was left but the bare walls of the
church, even the bells being melted by the heat of the fire. Happily the
parishioners applied themselves with patriotic zeal to the restoration,
and within two years the fine timber roof of the nave was completed. The
date 1592, E.R. 34, is inscribed on the rafter above the chancel arch,
while that of the chancel roof Ann. Dom. 1622, Anno Regni Jacobi xviii.,
appears on the beam immediately over the altar.
The Pilgrims' Way winds on through Charing past the noble church tower
and the ancient palace wall, with its thick clusters of ivy and trailing
wreaths of travellers' joy, through the lovely woods of Pett Place, the
home of Honywoods and Sayers for some hundreds of years. The track
crosses the long avenue of stately limes which leads up to its gates,
and through the meeting boughs we see the red gables and tall chimneys
of the old Tudor house. In the fourteenth century the owners of Pett had
a chapel of their own, served by a priest whose name appears in the
Lambeth Register and other records as holding the living of
Pette-juxta-Charing; and Geoffery de Newcourt, who owned this manor,
together with the adjoining one of Newcourt, paid the king an aid on his
lands of Pett, when the Black Prince was knighted. A pleasant part of
the track this is dear to botanists for the wealth of ferns, flowers,
and rare orchises which grow along the shady path; pleasant alike in
May, when cowslips and violets grow thick in the grass and the
nightingales are in full song, and in June, when the ripe red fruit of
the wild strawberries peep out from under the moss and the hawthorns
are in bloom, but perhaps best of all in autumn, when the beeches are
crimson and the maples in the hedges are one fire of gold.
For the next three miles, the way lies through the lower part of the
great woods of Long Beech, which stretch all over these hills, and which
from very early times belonged to the see of Canterbury. It brings us
out at Westwell, close to another extremely interesting church, dating
from the middle of the thirteenth century, and almost entirely of one
period. The graceful steeple, nave, chancel, and aisles, are all Early
English, but the most striking feature is the high open colonnade which
forms the rood-screen. The effect of the chancel, with its side arcade,
its groined roof, and beautiful lancet window filled with
richly-coloured old glass, seen through these three lofty arches, is
very imposing. There is another curious fragment of stained glass,
bearing the arms of Queen Anne of Bohemia and of Edward the Confessor
and his wife, in the north aisle, and the chancel contains six stone
walls and a stone seat with a pointed arch, which were formerly used by
the monks and prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. For the manor of
Westwell, like so many others in this neighbourhood, belonged to the see
of Canterbury before the Conquest, and at the division of property
effected by Lanfranc was retained by the Priory. Its revenues were
allotted to the supply of the monks' refectory, _ad cibum eorum_, just
as the tithes of Lenham were used to provide meals for St. Augustine's
Abbey.
[Illustration: OLD YEWS AND OAK IN EASTWELL PARK.]
Half a mile above Westwell Church the Pilgrims' Way reaches the gates of
Eastwell. Here the track disappears for a time, but old maps show the
line which it took across the southern slopes of the park, which extends
for many miles, and is famous for the wild beauty of its scenery. The
hills we have followed so long run through the upper part of the park,
and magnificent are the views of the sea and Sussex downs which meet us
in these forest glades, where stately avenues of beech and oak and
chestnut throw long shadows over the grass, and antlered deer start up
from the bracken at our feet. But the lower slopes are pleasant too,
with the venerable yews and thorns and hornbeams dotted over the
hill-side, and the heights above clad with a wealth of mingled foliage
which is reflected in the bright waters of the still, clear lake. The
old ivy-grown church stands close to the water's edge, and contains some
fine tombs of the Earls of Winchelsea, and of their ancestors, the
Finches. But the traveller will look with more interest on the
sepulchral arch which is said to cover the ashes of the last of the
Plantagenets. The burial registers indeed record that Richard
Plantagenet, the illegitimate son of Richard III., died at Eastwell on
the 22nd of December, 1550, and a well, which goes by the name of
Plantagenet's Well, marks the site of the cottage where he lived in
confinement after the defeat of his father on Bosworth Field. Eastwell
House, for some years the residence of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, was
originally built by Sir Thomas Moyle, Speaker of the House of Commons in
the reign of Henry VIII., but has been completely altered and modernised
since it passed into the Winchelsea family. Leaving it on our left, we
come out of the Park at Boughton Lees, a group of houses on a
three-cornered green, and follow in the steps of the old track to
Boughton Aluph church, a large cruciform building with a spacious north
aisle and massive central tower, standing in a very lonely situation.
Boughton, called Bocton or Boltune in former times, belonged to Earl
Godwin and his son Harold, before the Conquest, after which it was given
to Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, and formed part of Juliana de Leybourne's
vast inheritance. It took the name of Aluph from a Norman knight,
Aluphus de Bocton, who held the manor in the reign of King John, and
became thus distinguished from the other parishes of Boughton in the
neighbourhood. From the church a grassy lane, shaded by trees, ascends
the hill to Challock on the borders of Eastwell Park, and is probably
the old track of the Pilgrims' Way which passed between these woods and
the park of Godmersham. This was formerly the property of Jane Austen's
brother, who took the name of Knight on succeeding to the estate, but it
has now passed into the hands of another family. Until the Dissolution
the manor and church of Godmersham belonged to Christ Church, and here,
in mediæval days, the priors of the convent had a fine manor-house,
where they frequently resided during the summer months. The hall was
pulled down in 1810, and nothing of the old house is now left except a
gable and doorway, adorned with a figure of a Prior wearing his mitre
and holding his crozier in his hand, probably intended for Henry de
Estria, the Prior who rebuilt the manor-house in 1290. The church of
Godmersham is remarkable for its early tower and curious semicircular
apse with small Norman lights, which are evidently remains of an older
building, and in the churchyard are some very ancient yews, one of which
is said to have been planted before the Conquest.
Under the shadow of these venerable trees there sleeps a remarkable
woman, Mary Sybilla Holland, whose father was at one time Vicar of
Godmersham, and afterwards moved to Harbledown, a larger parish near
Canterbury, a few miles further along the Pilgrims' Way. Both Mrs.
Holland and her distinguished brother, the lamented Sir Alfred Lyall,
retained a lifelong affection for this corner of East Kent. When Lyall
was far away in India, ruling over millions of British subjects, in the
north-west provinces, his verses tell us how passionately he yearned for
his old Kentish home.
"Ah! that hamlet in Saxon Kent,
Shall I find it when I come home?
With toil and travelling well-nigh spent,
Tired with life in jungle and tent,
Eastward never again to roam.
Pleasantest corner the world can show
In a vale which slopes to the English sea--
Where strawberries wild in the woodland grow,
And the cherry-tree branches are bending low,
No such fruit in the South countree."
Sir Alfred died on the 10th of April, 1911, at Lord Tennyson's house at
Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, and was buried in the churchyard of
St. Michael's, Harbledown. Now brother and sister are both sleeping
under the grassy sod of the Kentish land which they loved so well,
"where the nightingales sing heart-piercing notes in the silence of the
early summer night."
"Shelter for me and for you, my friend,
There let us settle when both are old,
And whenever I come to my journey's end,
There you shall see me laid, and blend
Just one tear with the falling mould."
[Illustration: THE PLACE, WROTHAM.]
[Illustration: CHILHAM.]