[Illustration: Map—DARTFORD to Borough Green Statn.]
There is an excellent route from Dartford to Rochester, avoiding the
Dover road, known to comparatively few cyclists other than local—a
road that, instead of passing through places so busy and populous as
Northfleet and Gravesend, is rural through the whole of its course,
from Dartford Brent to where it joins the better-known way at the top
of Strood Hill. The Dover road between these two points is, as just
remarked, the “better-known” route, but it is by no means the oldest.
That distinction can be claimed most emphatically by this, for it
follows the course of that old Roman military way, the Watling Street,
and was a portion of the route along which went the pilgrims to the
shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.
[Illustration: STONE.]
Coming uphill from where Dartford is seated in its deep hollow beside
the Darenth, a high tableland is reached, and with it a parting of
the ways. Our own route is plain to see—straight ahead—and is made
additionally clear by the aid of a specially informative sign-post. For
those, however, who would take the opportunity, when so near, of seeing
one of the most interesting parish churches in the country, it may be
hinted that two miles down the Dover road—the left-hand turning—is
Stone. Let the stranger be careful when inquiring for Stone, and ask
specifically for the church. Otherwise the gaping rustic is apt to
smile significantly, Stone being famed for its lunatic asylums.
The interior of the Early English church at Stone is a Westminster
Abbey in little, designed probably by the same architect, the stones
from the same quarries, and carved by the same masons. It stands on a
hilltop overlooking the busy estuary of the Thames, near Greenhithe,
and its immediate neighbourhood is made sordid with cement works and
chalk pits. A huge factory chimney, some six times the height of church
and tower, immediately adjoins the churchyard. When in the fulness of
time it falls, there will probably be little left of the church, even
as a picturesque ruin.
[Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH DOORWAY, STONE CHURCH.]
It is not possible to ride round Stone Church to Greenhithe. The lane
leading to it must be retraced, and the Dover road followed until
turnings right and left appear. To the left lies the little port of
Greenhithe, and on the right the road leads up again to our route for
Rochester.
[Illustration: INTERIOR, STONE CHURCH.]
Hasting from the scarred, chalky hillsides and the industries of Stone
and Greenhithe, one appreciates more fully the quiet of this fine
road; and coming in two miles to Springhead, the Saturday or Sunday
cyclist will find that there are others equally appreciative, for the
watercress beds and the picnic inns and tea-gardens of Springhead have
been famous in all Cockaigne during at least the last seventy years,
and the watercresses have by no means lost their freshness nor the
place its charm in that space of time. This week-end Arcadia, where
the succulent prawn, the cooling cress, and the poetic periwinkle are
partaken of in vast quantities, is still in great esteem. The manners
and customs of its clients are frank, if unrefined, and their appetites
robust, even though their methods be not particularly nice. To see
’Arriet extracting periwinkles from their shells with a hairpin is a
lesson in resourcefulness not a little trying.
It is a long climb up to the village of Shinglewell, which rejoices
in having an alias; for on all maps you will find the incertitude of
cartographers as to what it really should be called proved by the
legend “Shinglewell, or Ifield.” Still uphill, we come to a turning
that will take us off to the right into Cobham village; the retreat of
Tracy Tupman and his wounded love, where, in the “clean and commodious
alehouse,” he was discovered by Mr. Pickwick, discussing with a great
appetite and a mournful air a not very sentimental meal composed of
“roast fowl, bacon, ale, and _et ceteras_.”
The Leather Bottle is the sign of the inn, and it is to-day, perhaps,
the best known among Dickens landmarks. It is still the old-fashioned
country inn it was when the great novelist knew and described it, but
filled now with Dickens’ relics of every kind. A painted sign hangs out
from the front proclaiming this to be “Dickens’ Old Pickwick Leather
Bottle,” with a picture of that eminent personage in his “shorts” and
gaiters in the inevitable attitude of declamation. In the low-ceiled
parlour are many prints and portraits having reference to Dickens
and his works. An old “grandfather” clock stands in one corner and a
stuffed trout in his glass case (an object without which no country inn
is completely furnished) occupies a place of honour.
It is worth while leaving the cycle at the inn and to explore the
neighbourhood of Cobham village and park. The village church is well
known to antiquaries as containing the largest collection of brasses in
England. There are no fewer than twenty-four fine examples, principally
to members of the ancient and knightly family of the Cobhams, who
once were lords of this and many another manor in Kent, and lived at
the Cobham Hall which preceded the Elizabethan and Jacobean building
now standing, the seat of the Earl of Darnley. The Cobhams have been
extinct for centuries, and Lennoxes, Cliftons, and Darnleys have owned
the place since, but none of them have left anything like the impress
upon it that the old family achieved. Here, in the village, is that now
old almshouse, the New College, founded by a Cobham in place of the Old
College, the dissolved religious house founded many years before by an
ancestor; and there, on the floor of the chancel in the parish church,
are their memorials.
Cobham Park is a lovely expanse of lawns and woods and grand avenues,
open to the wayfarer freely to come and go. Deer roam about in great
herds, and wild life abounds in the tangled glades. The Hall is
shown only on Fridays. Tickets are to be purchased at Rochester and
Gravesend. To see the Hall and its great collection of pictures is a
quite separate undertaking from touring on a cycle, and so we will
journey on towards Rochester, regaining the road and making for a
landmark known in all this countryside as the “Three Crouches.” When
we arrive at the place, we discover it to be an inn called the “Three
Crutches,” displaying a shield of arms bearing a chevron between three
aces of clubs. The three aces, distinctly resembling crosses, are the
so-called “Three Crutches.” Compare with this the name of “Crutched
Friars,” who were originally the “crossed friars,” from the cross they
wore on their habits; and with that of the “Crouch Oak” at Addlestone
in Surrey, an ancient boundary tree standing at the “cross” roads. The
motto, _Sub umbra alarum Tuarum_—“under the shadow of thy wings”—is
seen below.
From this point it is chiefly downhill into Strood and Rochester; very
steeply downhill at Strood, too. Through its mile-long street and on
to Rochester Bridge, the rude ribs of the ancient castle rise boldly
up from the other side of the Medway, with the Cathedral beside it,
looking quite humble. Very maritime looks Rochester’s High Street,
with the great gilded model of a line-of-battle ship, fully rigged and
armed, that serves for vane, twirling over its Guildhall. Over all is
the bustle, roar, and rattle of the trains, rolling in thunder over the
railway bridge that cuts off the view downstream.
[Illustration: HIGH STREET, ROCHESTER.]
Rochester, adjoining as it does the busy dockyard town and seaport of
Chatham, is not one of the slumberous examples among cathedral cities,
for its narrow and, if truth be told, dirty streets are crowded with
the waggons and carts going to and from railways and wharves. The “Bull
Inn” still remains very much what it was when Jingle recommended it to
the Pickwickians.
The “Bull” itself is exactly hit off in Dickens’ description of it,
and in the hall the “illustrious larder with glass door, developing
cold fowls and noble joints, and tarts wherein the raspberry jam
coyly withdraws itself, as such a precious creature should, behind
a lattice-wall of pastry,” still develops good things for a later
generation. A latter-day stupidity had changed the name to the
“Victoria and Bull,” but this has been remedied recently, and it is the
“Bull” once more.
Other things noticed by Dickens in Rochester are much the same. He
calls the projecting clock of the Corn Exchange the “moon-faced” clock.
It still impends over the pavement, and its white dial does indeed
suggest the moon. But exquisitely exact is that other description in
the “Seven Poor Travellers,” where he speaks of the High Street “oddly
garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out
of a grave red building, as if Time carried on business there and hung
out his sign.” Also, although restorations have since taken place in
the darkling cathedral, no description of it, even now, matches that
concise and breathless commentary the novelist puts into Jingle’s
mouth: “Old Cathedral, too—earthy smell—pilgrims’ feet worn away the
old steps—little Saxon doors—Confessionals like money-takers’ boxes at
theatres—queer customers, those monks—Popes and Lord Treasurers, and
all sorts of old fellows with great red faces and broken noses, turning
up every day.”
You enter the Close directly from the High Street, beside or through
what all readers of _Edwin Drood_ know as “Jasper’s Gatehouse,”
although the real name of it is “Chertsey’s.” The old church of St.
Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen and thieves, who (the thieves,
not the fishermen) were from that circumstance known as “St Nicholas’
Clerks,” stands side by side with the cathedral, and opposite is the
churchyard. It is well known that Dickens’ own wish was to be buried
here, but a national desire that he should rest in Westminster Abbey
prevailed. This was recalled to the present writer’s recollection by a
stranger when recently at Rochester. “He wanted to be buried there,”
said the stranger, pointing with his walking-stick. “’Twould have done
Rochester a lot of good,” he added regretfully. “You see, he’s wasted
where he is; but if he was here, thousands more visitors would come,”
and he went away grumbling.
One of the chief Dickens landmarks here is, of course, the place he
calls the “Seven Poor Travellers.” This is the charity founded by
Richard Watts, in 1579, for the entertaining of “Six Poor Travellers,
who, not being Rogues or Proctors, may receive, gratis, for one night,
Lodging, Entertainment, and Fourpence each.”
But the old city of Rochester requires, at least, a day for its due
exploration, and so we will not linger now by cathedral, castle, or
waterside; but, turning sharply to the left, on returning towards
Rochester Bridge, steer for Borstal; not by any means because Borstal
is beautiful, because that is probably the very last thing anyone would
think of saying about this place of mean streets that intercept with
their dingy commonplace the beautiful views along the broad valley of
the noble Medway. Then, as though this were not sufficient, there is a
very grim prison at Borstal—or was, for it has now been converted into
a reformatory; and then, again, a number of riverside cement works, to
be succeeded at Wouldham by more of the same kind, and, finally, by
brick-kilns at Burham. Why, therefore (asks the reader), do we come
this way? For reasons of various sorts: because, despite all these
disadvantages, the views, as we cycle along with the broad bosom of
the Medway spread in front for miles and miles, bearing the rust-red
sails of the floundering deliberate barges, are invisible elsewhere,
and because the more rural road, by Kit’s Coty House, is an exceedingly
hilly one. Notice in the churchyard of Wouldham the tombstone of Burke,
the purser of the _Victory_, for “in his arms,” as the inscription
states, “the immortal Nelson died.”
Passing through Burham, take the road to the right leading down into
Aylesford, where the Medway narrows and is tamely conducted under the
fine old bridge and through a lock, just as though it were a tiny
river and unconnected with the imposing estuary just left behind.
The grouping of river, bridge, square church tower among the trees,
and the long row of gabled houses beneath is particularly charming.
When you have taken your fill of this characteristic Kentish scene,
proceed along the road leading from the bridge, and, taking the
right-hand turning, come to the broad highway that leads to Wrotham
Heath and Borough Green, a road that follows in part the valley of one
of the Medway’s affluents. Interesting villages lie on either side,
only slightly removed from the road, in particular that of Leybourne,
half a mile on the right hand. It derives its name from the little
stream just named, the Ley Bourne, originally the Lele or Little
Bourne. It is curious to observe that your true Kentish man, among
such odd enunciations as “d” for “th” (so that the definite article
“the” becomes “de”) still says “lil” for “little,” as the tourist may
discover. There are interesting remains of Leybourne Castle yet to be
seen by turning off the road to the right, and so to the park in which
they stand. But the long day closes, and we must not linger on the way;
and so, speeding on to Wrotham Heath and turning there to the left, we
make for the L. C. & D. R. station of Wrotham and Borough Green.