THE BACK OF BEYOND: THE HINTERLAND OF FOLKESTONE AND HYTHE
The business of getting out of Folkestone is a weariful affair, for
there are not only the heavy rises in the roads to be surmounted, but
the great rolling chalk hills that shut in the valleys reverberate the
heat of the sun to a degree that is often stifling, and in these latter
days the tiresome hindmost suburbs of Folkestone conspire to render the
explorer's lot a hard one, going back dustily inland, beyond Radnor
Park, until they join forces with what was once the rural village of
Cheriton Street.
It is a remarkable stretch of country to which one comes at last; a
tumbled area of bare, grassy chalk downs, rising up into bold sugarloaf
peaks and cones, very dry and parching. Shorncliffe Camp is hard by,
occupying the high ground between Cheriton and Sandgate, and up and
down this valley and these hillsides it is the fate of the brave
defenders of their country to be manoeuvred, in season and out. When
the soldiers of Shorncliffe Camp look down from their windy eyrie upon
the long, dry course of the valley, they feel tired and thirsty, and
as they look on it every day this amounts to saying that the thirst
of Shorncliffe Camp is a transcendent thirst, and not to be measured
by ordinary standards. The sweating swaddy's acute thirst is induced
by reminiscent and prospective agonies of drought in the reviews and
field-days, past and to come, in that waterless bottom.
He and his forebears have been learning their martial trade here for
considerably over a hundred years, for it was in 1794 that Shorncliffe
Camp was first founded, to house the despondent and ragged troops
landed from the disastrous retreat of Sir John Moore upon Corunna. They
learn their drill with every circumstance of unmilitary squalor and
untidiness at Shorncliffe, and although they are turned out with pomp
and display on grand occasions, the dirt and raggedness of the camp
itself, and the makeshift out-at-elbows appearance of men and material,
do not form a picture of military glory. Tommy "at home" at Shorncliffe
is a very different creature from the oiled and curled darling of the
nursemaids on the sea-front at Hythe or Seabrook; and with unshaven
face, short pipe in mouth, in shirt-sleeves and with braces dangling
about his legs, wandering among the domestic refuse and garbage that
plentifully bestrew the place, looks very little like a hero.
It is very pleasant to leave the struggling shops of the ultimate
Folkestone suburbs behind, to forget the strenuous struggles with
bankruptcy waged by those pioneer shopkeepers at the Back of Beyond,
and to bid good-bye at length to the last outposts of the pavements,
the kerbstones, and the lamp-standards. It is not, however, so
pleasing, having put all these evidences of civilisation behind one,
to observe, peering over the distant hillside, a vast building which
on inquiry proves to be the workhouse, another, and a rather grim,
reminder of that civilisation which in one extremity flaunts in silks
and satins on the Folkestone Leas, and in the other sets its servants,
the ministrants to all that display, to eke out an objectless existence
in stuff and corduroy within this giant barrack. It is the dark reverse
of the bright picture of south coast life and fashion.
It is a relief to turn away from this evidence of Folkestone's
prosperity, and to secure a quiet hillside nook whence, on one of those
insufferably hot days invariably selected for elaborate evolutions
and parades, to watch the sweating Tommies harried up and down the
blistering valley in the service of their country, to the raucous and
unintelligible yells of commanding officers, comfortably and coolly
supervising their heated efforts from the easeful vantage-point of
horseback. The contemplative pilgrim finds the energy thus displayed by
rank and file to be what a tradesman would call "splendid value" for
the reward of a shilling a day, but dolefully admits to himself that
not for less than four times that pay can he obtain a man to do a job
of honest, but less laborious and exacting, work in a private capacity.
Up yonder, on the hillside, the signallers are working the heliograph
and energetically waving flags. Their energy makes one positively
feel tired. It is "Cæsar's Camp" whence the bright dot-and-dash
signal-flashes of the heliograph are proceeding; if we were clever
enough, or duly trained, we could read the messages sent. We must not
suppose, because "Cæsar's Camp" is so named, that Cæsar himself, or
any other Roman, ever camped there: if he had camped in half the places
so called, he would have had no time for fighting. Julius Cæsar, in
fact, is said to have camped, and Queen Elizabeth to have slept, in
more places than their poor ghosts would recognise if they were ever
allowed to revisit these glimpses of the moon. Nay, even in "regions
Cæsar never knew" his camps absurdly appear. It is quite certain, for
example, that the great general was never in South Africa, and yet
"Cæsar's Camp," overlooking Ladysmith, was the scene of much fighting
in the second Boer War.
A complete change from this scene of martial glory and perspiration is
Cheriton itself, where the ancient church stands on a hilltop, away
from Cheriton Street. In the rear go the chasing lights and shades of
sun and clouds, racing over the yellow-green of the grassy hills; ahead
plunges a tree-shaded winding line leading unexpectedly to the sea.
It is the one unspoiled little rural oasis in the urban and suburban
deserts of a seaboard that has grown fashionable. All too soon it ends,
and the villas of Seabrook are reached.
Seabrook and Hythe we have already seen. Now let us strike boldly
inland, and, leaving Hythe to the left, tackle the perpetual rise and
fall of the roads that lead past the romantic castle of Saltwood to the
bosky glades of Westenhanger.
[Illustration: SALTWOOD CASTLE.]
Saltwood Castle is a peculiarly interesting object in the Ingoldsby
Country, for it was the place where the four knights who murdered
Becket assembled, on the night before the tragedy, and FitzUrse,
among them, was, as we have already seen, claimed by Barham as his
ancestor. The massive circular stone entrance-towers of the Castle
come into view as we turn inland and surmount the crest of the hill
at the back of Hythe. From this hilltop it is seen how exquisitely
beautiful was the situation of Saltwood in days of old, before Hythe
and its neighbouring mushroom townlets had begun to throw out their
villas and suburban residences upon the spurs of the downs, flouting
the sylvan solitude and mediæval aloofness of that secluded fortress.
It lies a mile inland, at the head of a green and moist valley, still
thickly wooded, sloping to the sea. We do not fully realise, until
we take thought, the due meaning of that beautiful name of Saltwood;
but, dwelling upon its old history, and in imagination sweeping away
the modern accretions of houses, it is possible to recover the look
of that Saltwood of old, when the woodlands were even more dense than
now, and extended to the very margin of the sea; when a little pebbly
brook came prattling from the bosom of the downs beyond, and, overhung
by forest trees, found its way to the beach. The high tides then oozed
some little distance up the valley, and the trees dipped their branches
in the mingled waters of sea and stream. No roads, save the merest
bridle-paths, then led up to the Castle, whose towers rose from amid
the encircling trees like some fortress of fairyland.
From very early times Saltwood Castle was held by the Archbishops of
Canterbury. It was, indeed, the seizure of this archiepiscopal castle
and demesne by the Crown, and the grant of them to Randulf de Broc,
that formed one of Becket's bitter grievances against Henry II. De Broc
and his relatives were not only seated on the Archbishop's property,
but were given the custody of his palace at Canterbury during his long
six years' banishment, and on his return in December 1170, strenuously
set themselves to be as insolent and as injurious as possible. Randulf
himself hunted down the Archbishop's deer with the Archbishop's own
hounds, and seized a vessel off Hythe laden with wine, a present from
the King to Becket, killing some of the crew and casting the survivors
into the dungeons of Pevensey. It was ill business quarrelling with
that heady family, unanimously bent upon spiting and spoiling his
Grace, from bloody murder and the seizing and destroying of property
down to acts of wanton and provocative petty buffoonery. While Randulf
de Broc was committing murder and piracy upon the high seas, his
kinsman Robert, a renegade monk, on Christmas Eve waylaid one of the
Archbishop's sumpter-mules and one of his horses and cut off their
tails. It was this minor indignity that made the greater impression
upon Becket's mind. For it he cursed and excommunicated both Randulf
and Robert on Christmas Day from the nave pulpit of Canterbury
Cathedral.
Saltwood Castle, however, and the De Brocs bore a still further part
in the tragedy of Becket, now fast drawing to its final act. When the
four knights, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy,
and Richard le Bret, rushed forth from the King's presence at his court
of Bur, in Normandy, on the night of December 24th, with murder in
their hearts, they agreed to cross the Channel by two different routes,
landing at Dover and at Winchelsea and meeting here, in this fortalice
of Saltwood, where hatred sat embattled, already excommunicated and
given over in any case to damnation, and so ready for any deed. Ghastly
legends, theatrical in the rich gloom of their staging, tell how the
four from over sea and Randulf de Broc met here, and plotted together
on this night of December 28th the deed that was to be done on the
morrow; arranging all the details of that act of blood in the dark,
with extinguished candles, fearful of seeing each other's faces--so
strong a hold did the event take of the popular imagination. The next
morning, calling together a troop of soldiers in the King's name, they
galloped off to Canterbury, along the Stone Street, to the commission
of that crime whose echoes have come down to us, still hoarsely
reverberant, despite the passing of more than seven centuries.
But it must not be supposed that here at Saltwood we see the veritable
walls that sheltered those assassins. There is nothing remaining at
Saltwood that can take us back to the days of Becket. The oldest,
as well as the most imposing, part is the entrance, whose great
drum-towers, built or restored by the cruel and haughty Archbishop
Courtenay about 1350, give a very striking impression to one who stands
beneath them of the almost impregnable strength of such mediæval
strongholds before the days of heavy ordnance--the walls are so thick
and smooth, the loophole windows so high up and small, the stout gate
so strengthened with iron. If to force such a place seems almost
impossible in cold blood, what of the time when it was defended by
determined persons who heaved heavy stones from the battlements, so
high up, upon the devoted heads of the equally determined persons, so
far below; when the molten lead poured down in silvery cascades, to
burn through the flesh to the very bone, and the winged missiles sped
from the arbalasts into the liver of many a gallant warrior?--
The oak door is heavy and brown;
And with iron it is plated and machicollated,
To pour boiling oil and lead down;
How you'd frown
Should a ladle-full fall on your crown!
One is altogether indisposed to quarrel with the very thoroughgoing
restoration that has given these great entrance-towers so striking an
air of newness, for one instinctively feels that these towers must have
looked so in times when the garrison was still kept up. While the place
remained a fortress-residence it would have been simply suicidal not
to maintain the entrance in the utmost state of repair.
The arms of Courtenay--the three-pointed label and the three
bezants--supported by an angel, still remain over the entrance,
but Courtenay himself, before whose frown his unfortunate tenants
trembled, and in whose rare and uncertain smiles they dared to breathe
in deprecating fashion, is forgotten locally. In Cornwall, in Wales,
or in any Celtic part of Great Britain he would have survived in
wild diabolic legend, but in Kent, which has been phlegmatic and
matter-of-fact ever since Hengist and Horsa and the rest of the Teutons
landed, he has long been consigned to dryasdust records, where his
memory lingers, inanimate. When a little of the dust has been banged
out of him, he can be made to strut the stage again and lord it once
more, like the very full-blooded tyrant he was, zealous in upholding
the spiritualities and the temporalities of the Church, and fanatic
in the exaction of deference and manorial dues to himself. Did any
poor hind or woodsman offend, ever so unconsciously, in failing of
that deference, why, let him be seized and flung into some Little
Ease or earthly purgatory, damply underground, there to reflect, with
stripes, upon the majesty of Archbishops in general, and of Courtenays
in particular, and to wonder when it shall please my lord to release
him. Meanwhile, his Grace has forgotten all about his victim, and
is thundering in his manorial court against the trembling bailiffs
and townsfolk of his manor of Hythe, who have not done him, as he
imagines, that yeoman service which is his due, and have now come to
compound for that dereliction with fines in good coin and propitiatory
offerings for his table, such as porpoises (the old records call them
"porpusses") and others of the beastly dishes that mediæval times
delighted in. All these folk had cause to rejoice when his exacting
Grace died in 1396, and made way for a milder occupant of the seat of
St. Augustine, but they were not happy until the Reformation came and
the Church and the manor parted company. The property now belongs to
the Deedes family, but it needs no very prophetic eye to discern the
ultimate fate of Saltwood's ownership. It lies too near the gates of
the consorted towns of Hythe and Folkestone and their satellites to be
much longer suffered to maintain its present semi-solitude, and the day
will come when it and its romantic setting of woods will be offered to
and purchased by those towns as a public park. The landscape-gardener
will be let loose upon it; winding gravel paths of the kind that takes
a league of path to go a mile of distance will be made, and the public
will be requested to "keep off the grass" and to "place all refuse in
the receptacle provided for the purpose": all very parlourmaidenly, and
the essence of neatness and order, but--well, there! one can imagine
the choleric ghosts of De Broc and Courtenay and those of many a gross
man-at-arms or warlike seneschal walking on the grass in derision, or
with ineffective kicks of impalpable mailed feet seeking to demolish
the receptacles.
Magnificently-wooded hills stretch from Saltwood inland to
Westenhanger, and the delightful road goes full in view of the gorgeous
sylvan beauties of Sandling Park, presently to come to a broad highway
running due north and south, beside whose straight course the ruined,
ivy-clad outworks and towers of an ancient mansion are seen, in whose
midst is planted an eighteenth-century mansion. This is Westenhanger
House, erected by Squire Champneys in place of that older manor house
which was built on the site of a still more ancient fortified place by
Henry VIII. Like many another manor of ancient descent, Westenhanger
has been many times in and out of Royal possession. Its odd name,
inviting inquiry, really means no more than, in modern parlance,
"Westwood," and is derived from the Saxon _angra_. It is mentioned in a
deed of St. Augustine's monastery as "Le Hangre," and was early divided
into two portions, Westen and Osten (or eastern) Hanger. Remains of the
moat that once surrounded the old fortified mansion are still to be
seen, together with the defensible towers.
[Illustration: WESTENHANGER HOUSE.]
Westenhanger stands upon the old Stone Street from Lympne to
Canterbury, surrounded by densely wooded parks and neighboured
unromantically in these times by a railway--nay, more, a railway
junction. One might suppose that the force of modernity could no
further go, but that supposition would be an error, for the grounds
of the famous old place have been of late years converted into a
racecourse, and Westenhanger House itself is given up to the business
of a new turf enterprise--a sufficiently thorough change from those
remote times when it was a bower of Henry II. and the Fair Rosamond,
that beauteous harlot of whom Queen Eleanor was so very properly
jealous, and for whose safety from the queenly nails and tongue the
infatuated king built several artful retreats in various parts of the
country. The chief bower of the wanton Rosamond was at Woodstock. Its
like, according to the old ballad-writers, was never seen. It had a
hundred and fifty doors, and a vast number of secret passages, so
cunningly contrived that no one could find a way in or out without
the aid of a thread. Despite those precautions, or possibly because
there were a hundred and forty-nine doors too many, the furious Queen
Eleanor _did_ enter and poisoned the "Rosa Mundi"; and "a good job,
too," will be the verdict of most people with properly-developed
domestic instincts. Rosamond was buried in all the unmerited pomp
and odour of sanctity in Godstow Nunnery. If that shameless young
person had remained at Westenhanger, where there was, apparently not
so embarrassing a choice of doors, she might have escaped the Queen's
vengeance altogether. Nothing, however, at Westenhanger is of so
great an age as Rosamond's day, although, to be sure, the remaining
angle-towers were built only some forty years later.
Stone Street, that goes so broad and straight on towards Canterbury, is
not the deserted road that many are inclined to think it. Once a week
it is populated by a stream of carriers' covered carts going between
Canterbury and the obscure villages on either side of the Roman way,
not yet within touch of railways; and some very quaint survivals are
to be found on those occasions. There are carriers from sleepy hollows
who are as russet in complexion and clothing from head to foot as the
soil, and as much a product of it as the trees and fruits. These are
those true Kentish men in whose mouths the sound of "th" is impossible,
and who pronounce the definite article "the" like a Frenchman. To hear
a Kentish rustic holding forth upon the iniquities of "de wedder" when
he is intent upon abusing the climate is as humorous an interlude as
to listen to a Kentish housewife who talks in unaccustomed plurals and
asks the hungry tourist at tea if he will have any more "bread and
butters."
Others there are in a way less rustic, if equally provincial. These
are those grand seigneurs in the carrying line who sport ancient silk
or beaver hats and wear broadcloth of an antique cut--broadcloth that
was once black and hats that of old were glossy. If the clothes can
scarcely be suspected of being heirlooms, the hats certainly are. They
are extremely rare and genuine stove-pipes, calculated to impress the
rural neighbours with the dignity of the wearers and to extinguish the
casual stranger at Canterbury with spasms of laughter. "He were giv'
me by my feyder," said Carrier Hogben of Postling, who, alas, is now
gathered to his kin in the rural churchyard; and that amazing headgear
seemed to gather respect to itself when referred to in the masculine
gender. It seemed to stand more upright, and to look more rigid, if
that were possible. "Yes," he repeated, "m' feyder givvimee, and 'e's
still a good 'un. Dey don't mek 'at's like 'e now," he added with
pride, as he carefully brushed it the wrong way with his coat-sleeve,
so that the nap stood up like the fur of a cat when it sees a strange
dog. One used to heartily agree that hats of that sort are _not_ made
nowadays. Hogben was then wont to give a grunt of satisfaction. "Cloes
used to be made to _last_," he would say, as he carefully replaced that
gruesome tile in the box that had held it close upon forty years, "and
folks when dey'd got a good 'at, took care of 'im."
Having put away that impressive head-covering and resumed his everyday
clothes, "Mr. Jeremiah Hogben," as he was respectfully known by his
rustic neighbours on carrying days and Sundays, became simple "old
Jerry" or "old Hogben" for the rest of the week. It was as though a
king had relinquished his robes and regalia and come among the people
as one of themselves.
Mr. Hogben, in common with the rest of the countryside, had a good
deal of inaccurate lore respecting the Stone Street. According to him,
it was made by the builders of Canterbury Cathedral, to convey stone
quarried at Lympne to the scene of operations. He declined to believe
in the Romans. They were "foreigners," and as such, incapable of
road-making--"or anything else," as he sweepingly declared. Mr. Hogben
had seen a foreigner once: an Italian with a monkey and a hurdy-gurdy
organ, who had found his way to Postling by mistake--the only manner
in which strangers ever do find themselves in that village. Not having
been present at this rencounter, it is difficult to determine which
of the trio was the more astonished--the monkey, the Italian, or Mr.
Hogben. Presumably the monkey, for at sight of the carrier and his
hat the terrified animal escaped up a tree, whence his master only
recovered him after much trouble and many "Per Baccos!" "Swearing
awful, he was," according to Hogben.
"Do you understand Italian, then?" we asked.
"Lor' bless ye, no, sir; whatever put dat in yer 'ed: no Eyetalian
for me, so long as I can talk Inglish; and when dey tells me dat such
as dem, mid deir monkeys and orgins, made this ere roäd what we're
travelling on, why, I begs to not believe a bit of it."
"But the modern Italians and the ancient Romans are not precisely the
same people."
"So gentlemen like you've told me afore; but what I says is, dey both
comes from Italy, don't dey? Well den, it stands to reason dey're the
same. No people what goes about the country playing hurdy-gurdies ever
made this roäd, I'll stake me life on't."
If Hogben had no respect for foreigners, his manner indicated that
he owned an awed kind of deference to the memory of Lord Rokeby of
Mount Morris, past which park he had driven on his way to and from
Canterbury for many years. Which of the several Barons Rokeby it was
whose doings in lifetime and whose post-mortem pranks were the theme
of his discourses, does not appear. "He had a goolden bart" (he meant
"bath") "for Sundays and a marble one for week-days, and he'd sit in
'em all de marciful day long and read de papers and have his bit o'
grub. When he got tired o' dat, and t'ought he'd like a stroll, he'd
just nip outer de bart and walk about de park, as naked as Adam before
dey inwented fig-leaves. An' now" (? cause and effect) "he drives
down de Stone Street every midnight, wid his head in his lap and four
coal-black haases, breading fire. No, I can't say I ever seed him--and
dunnosiwanto: reckon I'd run awaiy. I knewed a man what _did_ see 'im,
and it gran' nigh druv 'im off n 'is 'ed."
Such are the legends still current at the Back of Beyond, but they are
dwindling away. Even old Hogben could find it possible to say that
"ghostesses" were already "quite out-o'-doors"--by which he meant that
they were out of fashion. But he was bung-full of smuggling lore, and
could illustrate his stories with object lessons, as he drove his
steady course along the Stone Street. "'See dat tree," he would say,
in passing a copse. "Dat's where de Ransleys"--naming a ferocious
family of smugglers, men and women, notorious for their cruelties and
outrages--"dat's where de Ransleys tied one of deir haases, before dey
were taken off to Maidstone Gaol." The horse was starved to death,
thus haltered, and the gang, who had been known to beat a Revenue
officer to death, were almost heart-broken when they heard of it. Such
contradictions are we all.