THE BACK OF BEYOND (_continued_)
If we continued along this straight road, the Mecca of the Stone
Street carriers, Canterbury, would be reached again. Instead, we turn
to the right, and in a mile and a half reach the Elham Valley and the
hoary village of Lyminge, looking very new when viewed from a little
distance, by reason of the sudden eruption of red-roofed villas come
to disturb the ancient seclusion. Have a care how you pronounce the
name of this village, lest by some uncovenanted rendering you proclaim
yourself a stranger. The cautious in these matters always accost the
first inhabitant met with, and ask him the name of the place, a method
never known to fail unless the encounter takes place outside the
post-office and the inhabitant be a crusty one who, curtly, and with an
over-the-shoulder jerk of the thumb, says, "You'll find it written up
there."
[Illustration: LYMINGE.]
By the united testimony of the phonetic spelling of the thirteenth
century and the twentieth century pronunciation of the natives,
"Lyminge" should be enunciated with a short, not a long, "y" for the
first syllable; while one should, for the second, pronounce as in
"singe" or "hinge." Authority for the ancient pronunciation being the
same as now is found in the name of a thirteenth-century rector,
spelled "de Limminge," which clinches the matter. It is, however,
quite other-guesswork with the meaning or the derivation of the name.
One school of antiquaries finds its origin in the Latin name of the
Stone Street, which when the Romans came was, they tell us, an ancient
British trackway called the Heol-y-Maen, or Stone Path. The Romans
reconstructed both the path and its name, which, in the Latinised "Via
Limenea," was as near as they could get to the uncouth tongue of the
Britons. Unfortunately for this ingenious theory, Lyminge is a mile and
a half from the Stone Street. It really derived its name, in common
with Lympne, from the Flumen Limenea, or river Limen, which once
flowed down the valley, a considerable stream, now shrunken to a tiny
brook.
[Illustration: LYMINGE CHURCH.]
The Romans prevailed largely in these parts, and, despite friend
Hogben, performed some wonderful things, even though "foreigners."
They certainly colonised at Lyminge, in whose church walls the red
Roman tiles from some shattered villa are plentifully worked in among
the undoubted Saxon masonry. The present church is the successor of
what is considered to have been the first Christian basilica erected
under the Roman rule in this island, and reconstructed about A.D. 640
by Ethelburga, daughter of King Ethelbert, on the re-introduction of
Christianity. Here that pious princess founded a Benedictine nunnery,
and here, in the fulness of time, she died. Portions of her religious
establishment long remained, and formed admirable pig-sties, but even
those few relics have been improved away. Very much, however, remains
in and around the church, to indicate its Roman origin and to prove the
old theory that it was reared upon a building of three apsidal aisles.
Indeed, the base of one of those same apses is laid open to view on
the south side of the building, level with the gravel path. This south
side of the church is eminently picturesque, with its wooden porch, and
windows of widely-different ages and styles, together with the ancient
flying buttress built against the south-east angle of the chancel.
The Elham Valley, in whose basin Lyminge lies nestled, runs up to
Bridge and Canterbury, and a branch of the South-Eastern Railway runs
down it, taking advantage of the easy gradients in a manner common
to railways. Places in it are ceasing to be remote and can no longer
strictly be said to be Beyond, much less at the Back of it. Thus we
will not pursue this pleasant hollow in the hills very far, but will
cut across to Acryse. But not before seeing Elham itself, the capital
and metropolis of the vale.
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES AT ELHAM.]
"E-lam"--for that, and not the more obvious way, is the correct local
shibboleth--sits boldly in the lap of the hills, visible afar off.
Those who hunt the fox with the East Kent Foxhounds know it well, for
the kennels are situated here, but few else have made its acquaintance.
It was once--in far-off times, when the ancient and beautiful houses in
its one broad street were new--a market-town, and if it has lost its
trade it has by no means relinquished its dignity. This is no place to
speak at length of Elham church, whose tall tower and tapering spire
command the valley, nor is it the place wherein to hold forth upon the
library within the church, bequeathed some hundreds of years ago to the
good folks of Elham by some old-world benefactor, strong in his belief
in the civilising influence of literature when dispensed at the hands
of the local clergyman--or perhaps merely anxious to be rid of a mass
of useless rubbish. That library is reported to contain a valuable
collection of Great Rebellion tracts; but what it does contain no
Elhamite can with certainty tell you, because their reading runs in the
lines of least resistance--which is equal to saying that they prefer
the news columns of their weekly paper to the crabbed literature of
that revolution which saved us from Popery more than two hundred years
ago. For that reason alone the position of church librarian at Elham is
a sinecure.
We have, for the purpose of seeing Elham, proceeded a little too far
for Acryse, and must retrace our steps, ascending the steep hillsides
to the east for that purpose.
It is only by dint of much climbing that one reaches Acryse, for it
tops the range of uplands that shut in the Elham valley. Climbing up
the lane by which Master Marsh and his man Ralph descended, in the
legend of "The Leech of Folkestone," the woods of Acryse are found
clothing the crest and extending densely into a shrouded table-land,
where the sun-rays percolate but dimly through a heavy overarching
interlaced canopy of boughs. Acryse means "Oak Hill," but, whatever
the character of these woods may once have been, the oak certainly is
not the most numerous in them to-day. If one tree preponderates over
any other species here, it is the beech, which in the dim light and
closely-serried ranks has grown so spindly that it only begins to throw
out branches at a height of some thirty or forty feet from the ground.
The simpleton who could not see the wood for the trees is proverbial,
but it is at first impossible to see Acryse, on account of the woods.
And no wonder, for the woods are so large and Acryse so small. There is
not even the semblance of a hamlet. The manor house and the adjoining
manorial chapel form the whole of the place, except some scattered few
cottages out of sight, for whose inhabitants the chapel serves the
function of parish church. The Papillons, who once held the manor of
Acryse, have long since relinquished it, and Mackinnons have for three
generations past resided here. The butterfly crest of the old owners
is therefore sought in vain in manor house or chapel. Chapel and house
are discreetly secluded within the mossy woods, and only the diminutive
spire of the one and some few glimpses of the outbuildings and bellcote
of the other are gained between the clustering tree-stems. History, by
association, is making at Acryse, for it is the seat of that Colonel
Mackinnon who commanded the C.I.V. in the second Boer War.
[Illustration: ACRYSE.]
If signs of human habitation are small here, those of bird-life are
overwhelming. The woods of Acryse are one vast rookery. In winter,
when the boughs are unclothed, their nests occupy every fork of the
branches, and all the year they make their presence known, not only by
the disfigurement of the stranger's clothing as he walks under their
roosting-places, but by the rising and falling bursts of cawing that
mark all hours of the day, like a perpetual session of Parliament with
the Speaker absent and the Irish members in individual and collective
possession of the House, each one talking "nineteen to the dozen,"
and each with a personal grievance to duly ventilate. For the note
of the rookery is a distinctly querulous one, always in opposition.
Occasionally, when the greater din dies down, grave and reverend--or,
at least, deep and self-satisfied--individual voices are heard,
like those of well-fed and paunchy ministers rising to defend their
departments and themselves, with voices remonstrant, argumentative, or
triumphant.
What the rooks find to talk about all day and every day might puzzle
anyone who did not read the reports of Imperial Parliament; but those
having once been read, there is no room for surprise.
It is only when evening approaches that the rookery is stilled, and
even then only after a preliminary clamour from home-coming birds, in
conclave, that makes one's ears sing again. After that deafening rally
the voices are heard singly, bubbling and gobbling, until at last, when
the rim of the sun sinks down below the horizon, the colony is at rest.
Leaving lonely Acryse amid a hoarse parting chorus from its rooks,
we will turn our course towards Swingfield Minnis, and thence to St.
John's, the scene of that lightest and brightest of the Legends,
the "Witches' Frolic." We need expect to find no ruin, for Barham's
description in the verse is altogether beside the mark. Thus he, in the
character of Grandfather Ingoldsby, apostrophises it:
I love thy tower, Grey Ruin,
I joy thy form to see,
Though reft of all, bell, cloister, and hall,
Nothing is left save a tottering wall.
* * * * *
Thou art dearer to me, thou Ruin Grey,
Than the Squire's verandah, over the way;
And fairer, I ween, the ivy sheen
That thy mouldering turret binds,
Than the Alderman's house, about half a mile off,
With the green Venetian blinds.
There is no alderman's house in the neighbourhood, with or without
Venetian blinds, but that matters little.
It is by a succession of steeply rising and falling, winding and narrow
country lanes that the Preceptory of the Knights Templars of St. John
of Jerusalem, near Swingfield Minnis, is reached. Like so many other
ancient religious establishments, it is now a farmstead. Not altogether
picturesque, and wearing very few outward signs of antiquity, it might
readily be passed by those not keenly in quest of it, except for the
existence of the three tall Early English windows prominent in one of
the gables. An inspection of the farmhouse proves that thrifty use
has been made of the old buildings, the hall, the principal ancient
feature, with fine old timber roof, being divided for domestic purposes
into two floors. Modern walls and fireplaces combine to almost wholly
alter the internal arrangements. A long, buttressed, monastic barn of
great antiquity is pictured in Knight's _Old England_, published some
sixty years ago, but it has long since disappeared in the insensate
rage for "improvement," and there is very little of interest now to
be seen outside the farmhouse. But whatever it lacks in picturesque
aspect, the glamour of romance thrown over the spot by the legend
redeems it from the commonplace.
[Illustration: THE PRECEPTORY, SWINGFIELD MINNIS.]
Rival explanations of the singular name of Swingfield Minnis divide
opinion as to whether the first word means "Swinefield" or "Sweyn's
Field," but a striking confirmation of the theory that it is named
after that Danish king, and of the vague records of his having
achieved a victory here, was afforded by the discovery of a quantity
of human bones in modern times, in the course of which were described
by a newspaper as "some agricultural operations," when the ancient
surrounding heath or common-land was, for the first time in its
history, enclosed and broken into for cultivation. If we, in our
commonplace way, translate "agricultural operations" into "ploughing,"
we shall probably be correct. The remains were at the time pronounced
to be the relics of some long-forgotten fight. "Minnis" is a Cantise
word for a piece of rough stony common, such as long existed here.
Barham, as freeholder in the district, was interested in this enclosure
and was awarded his share of the spoil. "St. John's," the name by
which the farm is known, is, as he says, in his note to the "Witches'
Frolic," two miles from Tappington, but it certainly cannot be seen,
as he would have us believe, over the intervening coppices, nor in any
other way, as we presently discover on coming past Tappington into
Denton, there joining on to a route described in an earlier chapter.