TAPPINGTON HALL
The central point of the Ingoldsby Country is, of course, the
Ingoldsby manor house of Tappington Hall. To discover this we must
leave Canterbury by the Dover Road, and, climbing up to the rise
of Gutteridge Gate, where a gibbet stood in ancient times and a
turnpike-gate until recent years, drop down into the village of Bridge,
whose name derives from an arch thrown at an early period across the
River Stour. At the summit of the corresponding rise out of Bridge,
the road, running exactly on the site of the Roman Watling Street,
comes to that bleak and elevated table-land known as Barham Downs, the
scene of Cæsar's great battle with the Britons on July 23rd, A.D. 56.
Twenty-seven thousand Roman soldiers, horse and foot, met the wild
rush of the Britons, who, with the usual undisciplined and untaught
courage of uncivilised races, flung themselves upon the invaders and
were thrown back by the impenetrable wall of the serried phalanxes.
Recoiling dismayed from this reception, they were instantly pursued
by the Roman cavalry and cut up into isolated bands, who fought
courageously all that fatal day in the dense woodlands. Protected
by mounds and trenches defended with palisades of stakes cunningly
interwoven with brushwood, they prolonged the hopeless contest until
nightfall, and then fell back. Cæsar, describing these woodland forts
as _oppida_, gives especial attention to one particularly troublesome
stronghold. "Being repulsed," he writes, "they withdrew themselves
into the woods and reached a place which they had prepared before,
having closed all approaches to it by felled timber." This retreat
was captured by the soldiers of the Seventh Legion, who, throwing up
a mound against it, advanced, holding their shields over their heads
in the military formation known as "the tortoise," and drove out the
defenders at the sword's point.
This, the last place to hold out, is, despite the eighteen and a half
centuries that have passed, still to be seen in Bourne Park, on the
summit of Bridge Hill, and is familiarly known in the neighbourhood
as "Old England's Hole." "Never forget," the old countryfolk have
been wont to impress their children--"never forget that this is Old
England's Hole, and that on this spot a last stand for freedom was made
by your British forefathers."
Everyone in the neighbourhood knows Old England's Hole. It is seen
beside the road, on the right hand, just where the cutting through
the crest of the hill, made in 1829, to ease the pull-up for the
coach-horses, begins. At that same time the course of the road was
very slightly diverted, and, instead of actually impinging upon this
ancient historic landmark, as before, was made to run a few feet away.
Now the spot is seen across the fence of the park, the old course of
the road still traceable beside it, as a slightly depressed grassy
track, plentifully dotted with thistles. The stronghold consists of a
crater-like hollow, encircled by earthen banks, still high and steep.
A great number of ash-trees and thorns, some very old, gnarled, and
decayed, grow on these banks, and cast a dense shade upon the interior.
[Illustration: THE VALE OF BARHAM.]
Barham Downs, stretching for three miles, windswept and bare, above
the valley of the Lesser Stour, form a tract of country that must
needs appeal strongly to the imaginative man. Only the bunkers and
other recent impudent interferences of some local golf club have ever
disturbed the ancient lines of Roman entrenchments.
Barham Downs are, of course, the "Tappington Moor," of that terrible
legend, the "Hand of Glory," which opens the collection of the
_Ingoldsby Legends_ in many editions:
On the lone bleak moor, At the midnight hour,
Beneath the Gallows Tree,
Hand in hand The Murderers stand,
By one, by two, by three!
And the Moon that night With a grey, cold light,
Each baleful object tips;
One half of her form Is seen through the storm,
The other half's hid in Eclipse!
And the cold Wind howls, And the Thunder growls,
And the Lightning is broad and bright;
And altogether It's very bad weather,
And an unpleasant sort of a night!
Barham village, a very different place, lies below, snugly embosomed
amid the rich trees of the Stour valley, sheltered and warm. From
this point its tall, tapering, shingled spire peeps out from among
the massed trees, and a branch road leads directly down to it and
to that park and mansion of Barham Court which, had his ancestors of
remote times done their duty by posterity, the author of the _Ingoldsby
Legends_ firmly believed would have been his.
[Illustration: THE "EAGLE GATES," BROOME PARK.]
But here we are come, on the high road, to a striking entrance to a
park. The place seems strangely familiar, yet the "Eagle Gates," as
the countryfolk call them, of this domain of Broome Park are certainly
unknown to us. The mystery is only explained by referring to the
woodcut which prefaces most editions of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, and
purports to be a view of "Tappington, taken from the Folkestone Road."
Then it is seen that the illustration rather closely resembles this
spot, with the trifling exceptions that eagles, and not lions, surmount
the pillars, and that the mansion of Broome is really not to be seen
through the gateway, although clearly visible a few yards away, when
it is seen to be not unlike the house pictured. Many have been the
perplexed pilgrims who have vainly sought the ancestral Ingoldsby gates
and chimneys between Canterbury and Folkestone, lured to the quest
by the original Preface to the _Legends_. Broome Park, whose lovely
demesne is criss-crossed by turfy paths and tracks freely open to the
explorer, is beautifully undulating and thickly wooded. In its midst
stands the mansion, built in the last years of the seventeenth century
by one of the extinct Dixwell family, and gabled, chimneyed, and
generally as picturesque as Barham "most pseudonymously" described it,
under the title of "Tappington Hall."
[Illustration: BROOME PARK: THE REAL ORIGINAL OF TAPPINGTON HALL.]
The Oxenden family have long owned the beautiful old place, which
still contains a "powdering closet," as used in the bygone days of
huge headdresses and powdered hair. My lady would sit in her boudoir
with her head thrust through a hatch in the wall into the "powdering
closet"--a contrivance necessary to prevent the powder being scattered
over everything.
[Illustration: TAPPINGTON, FROM THE FOLKESTONE ROAD.]
Here, by the "Eagle Gates," the road branches, the left-hand route
continuing to Dover, the right-hand to Folkestone. This is the
"beautiful green lane" of the Preface to the _Legends_. "Here,"
says that Preface, addressed to the incredulous who did not believe
in the existence of Tappington Hall--"here a beautiful green lane,
diverging abruptly to the right, will carry them through the Oxenden
plantations and the unpretending village of Denton, to the foot of a
very respectable hill--as hills go in this part of Europe. On reaching
its summit, let them look straight before them--and if, among the
hanging woods which crown the opposite side of the valley, they cannot
distinguish an antiquated manor house of Elizabethan architecture, with
its gable ends, stone stanchions, and tortuous chimneys rising above
the surrounding trees, why, the sooner they procure a pair of Dollond's
patent spectacles the better. If, on the contrary, they can manage
to descry it, and, proceeding some five or six furlongs through the
avenue, will ring at the Lodgegate--they cannot mistake the stone lion
with the Ingoldsby escutcheon (Ermine, a saltire engrained Gules) in
his paws--they will be received with a hearty old English welcome."
[Illustration: DENTON.]
Let us, then, proceed along the Folkestone Road, with the Oxenden
plantations--now grown into dense woods of larch and pine--on the
right. Wayfarers are scarce, and the lovely scenery of Broome Park
and the road into Denton is quite solitary. A ladder-stile leaps the
rustic fence, birds chatter and quarrel in the trees, but as you come
into the hamlet of Denton, it is, in its quaint old-world appearance
and apparent emptiness, like some stage scene with the actors called
off. Denton is a triangular strip of village green, surrounded by
picturesque cottages, and with the old sign of the "Red Lion" inn
planted romantically in the centre. Beyond it comes Denton Court,
screened from the road by its timbered park, with Denton Chapel close
by. Of this you may read in the _Legends_; but those who, relying too
implicitly upon Barham's statements, seek the brass of the Lady
Rohesia, with the inscription--
"+Praie for ye sowle of ye Lady Royse,
And for alle Christen sowles+"
will be doomed to disappointment, for it is one of his picturesque
embellishments upon fact.
[Illustration: Denton Church]
Denton Chapel is a building of the smallest dimensions, belonging to
the Early English and later periods, but not distinguished by many
mouldings or other features by which the date of a building is most
readily to be fixed. It consists only of a nave and a plain tower; but
on the north wall, beside the pulpit, there is a sculptured stone which
may arouse the curiosity of the passing architect. It is probably a
dedication cross, but the incised letters upon it have hitherto baffled
elucidation.
More amusing, perhaps, is the colony of white owls which haunt the
chapel, and from their perch on the beams above the chancel deposit
upon the altar unmistakable evidence of their visits.
And now we come to Tappington. The valley opens wide, and on either
side of it climb gently-rising hills clothed with thin woods, the
Folkestone Road ascending the shoulder of the hills to the left. From
it we look down upon a beautiful flat expanse of meadow-land; but no
lodge-gate, no stone lions, no avenue, and certainly not the slightest
trace of a park nor of a grand manor house can be seen. Only an old
farmstead, half-smothered in ivy and creepers, is seen, in midst of the
open meadow. It is a dream of rustic beauty, but--it is not the manor
house of Barham's vivid fancy and picturesque pen. If, however, the
rich details with which he clothed the old farm buildings of Tappington
are lacking, it yet remains of absorbing interest, quite apart from
the literary memories it embodies. The old house, and the remains of
a former grandeur still visible in the half-obliterated foundations
of demolished buildings, attract attention. There it stands, a squat
building of mellowed red brick, crossed and recrossed with timbering.
Its rust-red roof is bowed and bent, and, in place of the clustered
chimneys of fiction, one short and stout chimney springs from the
centre of the roof-ridge, while another crowns the gable-end. In the
meadow are traces of an old well which, before the greater part of
Tappington Manor House was, at some unknown period, pulled down, stood
in a quadrangle formed by a great range of buildings. Creepers and ivy
clothe the front of the old house, and a garden, full of all manner
of old-fashioned flowers, extends on either side of the entrance.
[Illustration: TAPPINGTON HALL.]
The interior is of more interest than might be supposed from a glance
at the outside. A magnificent old carved-oak staircase conducts
upstairs from the lower rooms, and on the walls hang portraits--old
portraits indeed, but quite fictitiously said to be Ingoldsbys, and in
fact derived by some later owner of the property from Wardour Street,
or other such ready source, where not merely Ingoldsbys, but ancestors
of every kind, are procurable on demand. One, with an armorial shield
and the name of "Stephen Ingoldsby" painted on it, glowers sourly from
the topmost stair, where the blood-stained flooring still bears witness
to an extraordinary fratricide committed here two hundred and fifty
years ago.
[Illustration: THE "MERCHANT'S-MARK" OF THOMAS MARSH OF MARSTON.]
It is quite remarkable that, while Barham invented and transmuted
legends that had Tappington for their centre, he never alluded to
this genuine tragedy. It seems, then, that when all England was
divided between the partisans of King and Commons, and Charles and his
Parliament were turning families one against the other, Tappington
Manor House was inhabited by two brothers, descendants of that "Thomas
Marsh of Marston" who is the hero of that prose legend, "The Leech
of Folkestone," and whose merchant's-mark is still to be seen here,
carved on the newel of the great staircase. These two brothers had
taken different sides in the struggle then going on, and quarrelled
so bitterly that they agreed never to speak to one another, living
actually in different parts of the then much larger house, and only
using this staircase in common as they retired to or descended from
their particular apartments.
[Illustration: TAPPINGTON HALL: NIGHT.]
One night, by evil chance, they met upon the stairs. None knew what
passed between them, or whether black looks or bitter words were
exchanged; but as the Cavalier passed, his Puritan brother drew a
dagger and stabbed him in the back. He fell, and died on the spot, and
the stains of his blood are there to this day--visible, indubitably, to
one's own physical eyes.
The good people--farming folks from Westmoreland--who lately occupied
the house, showed the stranger these stains, outside what is known
as the bedroom of "Bad Sir Giles," who, to quote "The Spectre of
Tappington," "had been a former proprietor in the days of Elizabeth.
Many a dark and dismal tradition is yet extant of the licentiousness of
his life and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper's
daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns
darkly as of yore; while an ineradicable blood-stain on the oaken stair
yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is
with one particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is
said to be connected. A stranger guest--so runs the legend--arrived
unexpectedly at the mansion of the 'Bad Sir Giles.' They met in
apparent friendship; but the ill-concealed scowl on their master's
brow told the domestics that the visit was not a welcome one." Next
morning, the stranger was found dead in his bed, with marks of violence
on his body. He was buried in Denton churchyard, on the other side
of the highway to Folkestone. For the rest of the tale, and how the
spectre was supposed to have purloined Lieutenant Seaforth's breeches,
the _Ingoldsby Legends_ themselves must be consulted.
Tappington has again passed away from the Barhams. Ingoldsby's
son, the Reverend Richard Harris Dalton Barham, Vicar of Lolworth,
Cambridgeshire, resigned that living in 1876, and retired to Dawlish,
South Devon, where he died in 1886; but considerably earlier than that
date he had agreed, having no children, to sell the property and divide
the proceeds with his two sisters. This was accordingly done.
Although the scenery is so sweetly beautiful, the soil is said to be
very poor--mostly unfertile red earth, mixed with great quantities of
flints, the rest chalk. A great extent of the property is still coppice
and scrubwood. An advertisement of 1890, offering the place to be let,
is interesting:
FARM.--KENT.--Tappington Everard, Denton, near Canterbury, comprising
Homestead, with Picturesque Residence (formerly occupied by the Rev.
R. H. Barham, author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_) and about 245 Acres
of Land, of which 144 Acres are Pasture, and 101 Acres Arable. Rent
£220. Early possession may be had.--For terms and further particulars
apply to Messrs. Worsfold & Hayward, Land Agents, Dover, and 80,
Cannon Street, London, E.C.