THE COASTWISE ROAD--FOLKESTONE TO DOVER AND SANDWICH
That is a toilsome road by which one leaves Folkestone for Dover. The
chalk--"infinite" indeed, as Dickens said--the blinding glare of the
sun upon it, the steep gradients, the rain-worn gullies, the tortuous
curves, and the persistent up and up of Folkestone Hill, make the salt
perspiration start from the wayfarer's brow and run smartingly into his
eyes. But when the hilltop is reached, where a once picturesque but now
rebuilt inn, the "Valiant Sailor," stands, grand is the view backwards
upon the town. That view is so sheer that the place looks all roof, and
seems a squalid huddle-together of ill-arranged streets. No one, gazing
down upon Folkestone from this view-point, would suspect the palatial
and magnificent nature of its later growth.
It was but yester-year that the five miles length of cliff-top
and chalky road on to Dover was solitary and marked by infrequent
houses, but no longer do the crows and the seagulls hold undisturbed
possession. It has never been a pleasant road, lying open and unfenced
upon the roof of the cliffs and along an inhospitable country. Those
whose way has lain along it have been grilled in summer and in winter
pierced through and through by icy blasts that no hospitable hedgerows
or kindly shelter of any description have served to lessen. Now these
bleak and forbidding uplands are varied with brickfields, sporadic new
houses, and blatant notice-boards offering building-land for sale,
and they are not improved by the change. Greatly to be pitied is that
cyclist who essays this road from the direction of Dover, for in that
terrible continuous climb he affords the best comparison with the
state of a good man struggling with undeserved adversity. "Surely,"
he thinks, "I shall soon come to the end of this rise"; but the white
ribbon of the roadway rises ever before him, until, exhausted, he
crests the hill at the "Valiant Sailor," where the staggering descent
into Folkestone forbids him to ride down.
How different the case of the eastward-bound! No sooner is the climb
from Folkestone completed than the long descent into Dover begins. Five
miles away, down at the bottom of a cleft at the end of this chute,
Dover Castle is blotted against the sky, and the cyclist has nothing
to do but sit still and let the miles reel comfortably away, until the
electric tramways at the outskirts of Dover are reached.
There is a point on this road between Folkestone and Dover that on
moonlit nights makes a picture after Barham's own heart. When the full
moon comes sailing up over the Castle Hill and floods the chalky road
with light, leaving the town of Dover lost in the darkling valley of
the Dour and the downs behind etched in a profound blackness upon the
luminous heavens, then you recall those exquisite lines from the "Old
Woman clothed in Grey":
Oh! sweet and beautiful is Night, when the silver moon is high,
And countless stars, like clustering gems, hang sparkling in the sky.
Yes; and night is more beautiful than day here, for the aching
whiteness, the parching dryness, the arid bareness of the chalk highway
and the folded hills are touched to romance by the cold majesty of the
moon, whose light softens the austerities of the road, just as the dews
assuage the lingering heats of day.
Tom Ingoldsby never, in the whole course of his writings, had much to
say of Dover, and the legend of the "Old Woman clothed in Grey," tacked
on to this ancient port, is really a Cambridgeshire story, hailing from
Boxworth, near St. Ives. The incidents, he says, "happened a long time
ago, I can't say exactly _how_ long,"--which is rather vague:
All that one knows is,
It must have preceded the Wars of the Roses
Here he takes occasion to have another fling at Britton, in this
footnote, where "Simpkinson of Bath" (whom we have already seen to
be intended for that eminent antiquary) is made to confuse these
historic campaigns with some family contentions: "An ancient and most
pugnacious family," says our Bath friend. "One of their descendants,
George Rose, Esq., late M.P. for Christchurch (an elderly gentleman now
defunct), was equally celebrated for his vocal abilities and his wanton
destruction of furniture when in a state of excitement. 'Sing, old
Rose, and burn the bellows!' has grown into a proverb."
And so, indeed, for many centuries past it has, but no one has yet
satisfactorily explained its origin. Many amusingly conflicting
derivations of it have been given. One, as old as 1740, is found in the
_British Apollo_ of that year:
In good King Stephen's days, the Ram,
An ancient inn at Nottingham,
Was kept, as our wise father knows,
By a brisk female called Old Rose.
Many like you, who hated thinking,
Or any other theme but drinking,
Met there, d'ye see, in sanguine hope,
To kiss their landlady and tope;
But one cross night, 'mongst many other,
The fire burnt not without great pother,
Till Rose, at last, began to sing,
And the cold blades to dance and spring;
So by their exercise and kisses
They grew as warm as were their wishes:
When, scorning fire, the jolly fellows,
Cried, "Sing, Old Rose, and burn the bellows."
An even earlier reference is found in Izaak Walton's _Angler_, where,
in the second chapter, the Hunter proposes that they shall sing "Old
Rose." Ingenuity has been let loose upon this subject, without much
satisfaction obtained. "Let's singe Old Rose and burn libellos," is a
wild variant, given as the cries of schoolboys on the eve of holidays,
and signifying, "Let's singe Old Rose's wig and burn our books"; but
we are not enlightened as to that school of which this "Old Rose" was
principal. This "explanation" is, in fact, so much sage stuffing for
green goslings, and we will not be so simple as to partake of it.
Ingoldsby advises the visitor to Dover to dine at the "York" or the
"Ship," and then to set out for the Maison Dieu and there ask for the
haunted house, the scene of the Old Woman's post-mortem visitations.
Where are the "York" or the "Ship" to-day? You would as vainly seek
them as the haunted house; but they did, at the time he wrote,
actually exist, which the house never did. The Maison Dieu, however,
was, and is, very real, but is more intelligibly sought, to the Dover
townsfolk's ears, under the title of the town hall.
As for the Priory, whence the mercenary Father Basil of the legend
came, that vanished long ago in disestablishment and ruin, only a
few portions, including the ancient gatehouse, being included in the
modern buildings of Dover College. The "Priory" station of the Chatham
and Dover line takes its name from this ancient religious house.
Some records of the Prior and his Benedictine monks who were housed
here still remain. It would seem that they were, at the last, when
the Priory was dissolved, a very bad lot indeed, and quite merited
disestablishment, if nothing more. They preferred amorous intrigues to
mortifying the flesh with the scourgings, cold water, and stale crusts
represented by the orthodox as the staple fare and daily discipline
of such. They were veritable Friar Tucks, these jolly monks of Dover,
so far as provand was concerned, while their morals left much to be
desired, as may be judged when we read the testimony of the Royal
commissioners who were sent hither to report upon their conduct.
Those emissaries gave no notice of their advent; in fact, the first
intimation the Prior had of their quite unceremonious visit was when
the noise of their bursting open the door of his bedroom (not, if you
please, his "cell") woke both him and the lady who shared his bed. The
commissioners turned her out, in that lay brother's costume in which
she had gained admittance to the monastery. Such historical evidence
refutes the charges of flippant injustice towards the olden Roman
Catholic times of which Ingoldsby has often been accused.
[Illustration: THE "LONE TREE."]
In quest of the "Marston Hall" of "The Leech of Folkestone," and of
traces of Master Marsh we must leave Dover, and, climbing the steep
and winding Castle Hill, come, under the frowning keep and warder
towers of that great fortress, to the high, bare, chalky table-land
that stretches from this point to Deal and Sandwich. It is an open,
unfenced road at the beginning, and so shadeless that a very striking
elm solitary by the wayside is known far and wide as the "Lone Tree."
This isolated object has a story, told with a thorough belief in its
truth. It seems that, a great many years ago, a soldier of the Castle
garrison murdered a comrade on this spot by felling him with a stick
he carried. No one saw the deed done, and he was so convinced that the
crime would never be traced that he thrust the elm-stick in the ground,
declaring that he was safe so long as it did not take root.
His regiment was shortly afterwards ordered abroad, and it was
not until many years had passed that he was again at Dover. Once
there, a morbid curiosity took him to the scene of his crime, where,
horror-stricken, he found that stick a flourishing tree. He confessed,
and was duly executed.
It is a legend exactly after Ingoldsby's own heart, but perhaps he
never heard of it, for it does not appear in his writings.
From this point, two miles distant from Dover, the way goes straight;
East Langdon, for which we are making, lying in the hug of the downs, a
mile away to the left, lost to view between those swelling contours and
in midst of clustered trees.
It was to this parish that "Thomas Marsh of Marston," the hero of that
prose legend, "The Leech of Folkestone," really belonged. He resided at
Martin, Marten, or Marton Hall, in the neighbouring hamlet of Martin,
whose name is thus variously and impartially spelled by post-office,
finger-posts, county historians and other authorities, who to this day
have not been able to decide which is the true and proper rendering.
East Langdon, on closer acquaintance, resolves itself into a remote,
huddled-up village of very small dimensions, situated on a narrow
lane that does duty for a road, and consisting of a parish church, an
inn, two or three farms, a rectory, and some agricultural labourers'
cottages--the whole knowing little of the outside world, and apparently
content with that knowledge. It centres around the church and Church
Farm, pictured here, and by that sketch, much more eloquently than by
any mass of verbiage, shall you see how grim and hard-featured a place
it is. The church has latterly been restored, and the monument in its
chancel to the veritable Thomas Marsh of the legend again made whole.
It had fallen, about 1850, from its place on the north wall of the
chancel, and was broken in many pieces, the fragments being preserved
in a cupboard in the vestry. Under such circumstances, and fully
cognisant of the atrocious things that have elsewhere been wrought,
all over the country, in the name of "restoration," it is with a shock
of surprise that the pilgrim finds it at all. But here it is, a black
marble tablet surrounded by an ornamental framing of white stone or
marble, and bearing a long Latin inscription to "Thomas Marsh, of
Marton." He is stated to have been born in 1583, and to have died in
1634.
[Illustration: EAST LANGDON.]
[Illustration: "MARSTON HALL."]
The hamlet of Martin, three-quarters of a mile distant, is, possibly
from its proximity to the railway station of Martin Mill, larger at
this day than the parent village. Why the Chatham and Dover Railway
authorities should choose to christen the station after the great
wooden windmill that towers up, black and striking, beside the line,
instead of simply by the name of the place, is not evident, for there
is no other "Martin" on the railway from which it might otherwise be
desirable to distinguish this. The hamlet itself overlooks the railway,
from its superior ridge. You come steeply uphill into it, through
an overarching bower of hedgerow greenery enclosing a hollow road,
strikingly like a Devonshire lane, and the more remarkable and pleasing
because set in midst of downs so generally treeless. Prominent in the
street of Martin is the great farmhouse known as "Martin House," that
"Marston Hall" of the story of Master Marsh's bewitchment, and once
the manor house. Portions of it may be as old as the early seventeenth
century, but it has been remodelled in a particularly hideous manner,
and the side of it towards the farmyard smeared over with "compo," or
similar abomination.
[Illustration: THE "THREE HORSESHOES," GREAT MONGEHAM.]
Regaining the high-road at Ringwould, Walmer is passed and Upper Deal,
with the sea and the crowded shipping of the Downs and the white cliffs
of France forming a striking picture on the right. It is worth while
turning off, a quarter of a mile to the left, to see the little village
called, magnificently, Great Mongeham, just beyond Deal, for its quaint
"Three Horseshoes" inn still displays a curious wrought-iron sign
originally made in 1735, a very striking object, overhanging the road.
The high bleak downs gradually sink down as Sandwich is neared, and
give place to flats. Away on the right, mile upon mile of blown sand
and dunes, tussocky with coarse grass, border the sea, and inland
stretch the vast unfenced fields of corn, beans, or oats that are so
characteristic of this corner of Kent, and of the Isle of Thanet.
Sandwich is always described as a "dead port," but we have already seen
that New Romney is more dead--if so Irish an expression may be allowed.
By a flat, straight stretch of road that ancient member of the Cinque
Ports is reached, past a row of tall poplars, the ancient Hospital of
St. Bartholomew and--the railway station, which is absurdly brisk for a
place supposed to have died and been buried about three hundred years
ago. Past this unmistakable evidence of post-mortem activity, are the
town walls, now, in passing, seen to be grassy ramparts, tree-shaded,
with walks, and below them little dykes and runnels--a very beautiful
scene which tells us that Sandwich has so far retired from business
that it does not actually grow; although, as for being dead, why,
there, at the other extremity of the town, where the navigable channel
of the Stour flows and conveys those ships up and down that still
trade here, you may see loading and unloading still going forward, and
port-dues being collected and all manner of bustle.
But Sandwich is a very staid and grave old town. It knows--its ancient
harbour being long centuries ago silted up--that it cannot compete with
modern ports, and so folds its hands and accepts the minor part now
assigned to it, and lives in the ancient ways; which is why we love
"Sannidge"--to speak in the fashion of those who live there.
But it really was once a great port and its past lives in history.
Many were its dramatic moments. Such an one was that when Becket, the
banished Archbishop of Canterbury, returning after years of exile,
landed from a boat in the haven. He had a premonition of his violent
ending, for he embarked upon his return with the significant words,
"_Vado in Angliam mori_," "I go into England to die." The people knew
of his coming, and a cross erected in the bows of the boat that put
him ashore made the identity of its occupants certain a great way
off. He was popular with the masses, who crowded around him at the
landing-stage, eager for a blessing from the "father of the orphans and
protector of the widows." Thence he set forward, without delay, for
Canterbury, by way of Ash.
Let us pluck another incident at hazard from the long roll of years. It
is toward the close of 1415, and days grow chill and nights bitter. The
war with France has ended with every circumstance of glory for England.
Nine thousand Frenchmen lie dead at Agincourt, proving on their bodies
the truth of the English arrow-flight and the prowess of the English
men-at-arms. Harry V. has been received on his home-coming at Dover
with the rapturous applause of an elated nation, and London has sealed
that welcome. By detachments, the rank and file of the expedition
slowly return home--some landing at Southampton, some at Dover, others
here; each man laden with some article of loot; all wearied, hungry,
and out of humour, because when they marched to our stronghold of
Calais they were refused shelter and sustenance, the garrison of that
town being afraid of running short of provisions.
They look, doubtless, for an enthusiastic welcome on their home-coming;
banners waving, hand-shaking, tumultuous cheers. What do they find?
Why, this: that the edge has been taken off the fame of their exploits
by those who returned first, and that the townsfolk of Sandwich are
cold--cold as the November wind, and their reception as forbidding
as the lowering sky. Even so did Jacob obtain the blessing of Isaac,
and Esau was deprived of his birthright. No blessing, no feasting, no
drinking for them, save for money down, and money they have none; so
that they are fain to sell their booty as best they may, to buy bread
and lodging. Callous Sandwich? Nay, but history has repeated itself
quite recently on the same lines; glory is as brilliant a thing as a
soap-bubble, and as evanescent.
But one must be done with these mosaics from history. The town reached
a great prosperity when Edward III. in 1377 removed the staple here,
from Queenborough; but that was its high-water mark. The ebb did not at
once begin, for still, in 1470, the annual customs revenue of the port
amounted to £17,000 and ninety-five ships were registered as belonging
to the place. There were then 1,500 sailors in the town.
But in the time of Henry VIII. the sand, long threatening, had closed
the harbour to ships of any considerable burthen, and decay set in.
The port declined, but, owing to the large settlement of Hollander and
Huguenot weavers in Sandwich, the place did not shrink to nothing, and
perhaps it is due to them that it exists at all.
[Illustration: ST. PETER'S, SANDWICH.]
From the tall, Dutch-like tower of St. Peter's the curfew-bell is
nightly tolled, as for seven hundred years the custom has been. The
sexton's annual stipend for performing this nightly service is £8; not
a great sum for a corporate town to yearly disburse, but something of
a consideration for a place like Sandwich, whose commercial greatness
is now only a thing of history and ancient repute. Thus it was that
in 1833 the unbroken continuity of the curfew from Norman times was
seriously threatened, in a proposal of the Corporation to discontinue
the practice, and the payment for it. Sentimental considerations,
however, prevailed, and thus it is that the nightly bell continues
to ring over the melancholy sand-flats, as of yore. But economical
considerations again, in quite recent years, threatened the old custom
on the same grounds, when, about 1895, it was proposed to discontinue
the ringing and to save the money for more practical purposes. Again,
however, sentiment prevailed, and what the old inhabitants call "the
old charter" continues.
This church of St. Peter, one of the three possessed by the town, is
its most notable landmark, and from all points of view stamps the town
with a distinct alien appearance. It is by no means the principal
church--that honour belongs to St. Clement's, whose massive and highly
decorated Norman tower is second only to that of New Romney. But St.
Clement's tower is only of medium height; that of St. Peter is tall
and stark, and is, moreover, capped with an extraordinary turret
of distinctly Dutch feeling. Sometimes you laugh at it and think
it something bulbous and onion-like; at other times, and from some
points of view, it is impressive, rather than absurd. If it were away,
Sandwich would lose much of its individuality. It is not an old tower,
as ages in churches go, and was built only in the years immediately
following 1661, when the older tower fell, and not only involved itself
in complete ruin, but demolished the whole length of the south aisle,
and, with the bells, buried the whole interior of the church three
feet deep in what a contemporary account calls "rubidge." When the
inhabitants set to work to repair the damage, they did not restore the
destroyed aisle, but just walled up the arches and inserted the quaint
Dutch-like windows still remaining. The tower they rebuilt with bricks
economically manufactured out of the harbour mud, which, judging from
the number of houses built of the same material, seems to have been as
plentiful a deposit then as now. The Hollander character of the tower
and of the town in general owed its being to the existence at that time
of a very large Flemish and Walloon colony, originally formed in Queen
Elizabeth's reign, when the persecuted weavers and others from the Low
Countries came here as refugees and were welcomed as settlers, not only
in Kent, but in many other districts of England. The Sandwich colony
numbered some four hundred at the beginning, but they gradually became
absorbed in intermarriages, until, as a separate race, they ceased to
exist. But in that period, while they retained their national manners
and architectural style, these "gentile and profitable strangers" did,
as we see, succeed in impressing the place with their personality to a
remarkable degree.
Thus, then, St. Peter's tower dominates the view far and near. St.
Mary's tower fell six years later, but was not rebuilt, save in a
stumpy and inconspicuous way. St. Clement's tower suffered restoration
in 1886; the churchwardens obtained the necessary funds by the
expedient of selling the bells!