SANDWICH TO THE VILLE OF SARRE
Sandwich ends at the Barbican, the foreign-looking watergate that
spans the road on the hither side of the Stour. Down to the left,
away from the road to Pegwell Bay and Ramsgate, can be seen from this
point the dark ruin of Richborough, and directly on that road, to
the right, a belt of sparse woodland, a clump of thin, wiry trees,
insufficiently nourished on the sandy and pebbly soil. In midst of
this, solitary and surrounded with an atmosphere of melancholy, is an
absolutely uninteresting modern house. These trees and this house form
all that remains of the once important and flourishing port of Stonar,
or Lundenwic, an early rival of Sandwich itself. The spot and an
adjoining one are now marked on the maps as "Great and Little Stonar."
The history of that vanished town is vague and fragmentary, but
enthralling, like some half-told tale of faëry. Its very incertitude
renders it into the likeness of a city of dream, the product of a
magician's wand, blighted by uncanny spell. What, then, do we know
of Stonar? Just this: that in the long ago, in A.D. 456, the Britons
under Vortimer, after being deserted by the Roman legions, secured one
of their few victories over the invading pagan Saxons on this spot,
a spot fixed by the Latin annalist in the phrase, "_In campo juxta
Lapidem Tituli_." It was near here, therefore, in these flats, that the
battle was fought, and the place seems to derive its name of Stonar
from that same Latin "_Lapidem_." Now it is remarkable that the Kentish
coast is rich in place-names including the word "stone." Littlestone
near Old Romney, is an example--Folkestone another, and the most
prominent--the ancient "_Lapis Populi_" of Latin records. But from what
stones those original names proceeded who shall say?
[Illustration: THE BARBICAN, SANDWICH.]
The British victory was but an interlude in an almost unbroken series
of defeats inflicted upon that unhappy people by the ruthless Saxons,
who presently bore down all opposition on the Kentish shores, and
established themselves here. It was they who founded the original town
of Stonar, on a sandspit even then forming at the mouth of the River
Stour and the entrance to the channel of the Wantsume, dividing the
Isle of Thanet from the mainland of Kent; and the Roman fortress of
Rutupium, the vast shell of ruined Richborough that we see to-day,
overlooking the surrounding marshes from its rising vantage-ground, was
converted by them into a fortress-palace for their kings.
[Illustration: SANDWICH, FROM GREAT STONAR.]
When, in the course of time, the Saxons had possessed themselves of
the country and had at last become luxurious and less warlike, they
were in turn attacked by the fiercer Danes. Prominent among the many
bloody fights waged for the mastery was the second battle of Stonar,
fought here between the forces of Torkill the Dane and the Saxon king,
Edmund Ironside, in 1009. It was one of those exceptional victories
for the Saxons that now and again cheered them in their long series of
disasters.
Stonar's alternative name of Lundenwic seems to have derived from
the extensive trade with London, but of the vanished town and its
records we know next to nothing. Only this, indeed, that its rivalry
with Sandwich was fierce, and that Sandwich was gaining the advantage
and Stonar decaying when the ill-fated town was entirely destroyed
and swept away by the sea in the great storm of 1365, when Sandwich
not only took all its trade, but assumed its alias of "Lundenwic" as
well. "It is an ill wind that blows no one any good," says the old
saw, and this was worth much to Sandwich. If tempests--or "tompuses,"
as the Kentish folk, in their quaint speech, call them--were of such
destructive powers to-day, insurance would cease to be the lucrative
business it now is.
Richborough, that frowns so grim down upon the Stour meadows and the
flat Sandwich and Ramsgate road, is a favourite haunt of archæologists.
It rises, rugged walls and bulging bastions, from low, earthy cliffs,
ivy-clad in places, and shrouded by dense thickets of brushwood, where
the earth falls away to the levels. The secretive ivy, incredibly
aged, clasps the hoary masonry with a tenacity that will not allow of
severance. They will live and die together, those walls and that "rare
old plant, the ivy green."
The view from Richborough is comprehensive and varied. Away to the
right is Sandwich, a mass of clustered roofs and spars and rigging,
dominated, of course, by that Dutch-like cupola of St. Peter's,
resembling some gigantic onion of fairy-lore; and away again to the
left goes the curving shore, to Pegwell Bay and Ramsgate, with the
white cliffs standing out to sea, as bolt upright as though they had
been sliced out. The houses and some of the more prominent public
buildings of Ramsgate peer over the edge of the down.
The railway that, taking advantage of the levels, runs between
Sandwich and Ramsgate under these walls of the aged Roman castle is
not an unromantic feature. Its living commercialism serves to contrast
eloquently the methods of to-day and those of an Empire dead these
fifteen hundred years. He must be a soulless signalman who does not,
in his cabin placed under the shadow of that wall, sometimes let his
imagination loose and, conjuring up the past, people those ramparts
again with the helmeted sentries of old Rome.
More than 140,000 coins, Roman and Saxon, are said to have been, at one
time and another, picked up within and around Richborough. That is why
the visitor to Sandwich hastens at the earliest opportunity along those
two miles that separate the ruins from the town, and is explanatory
of his exploring zeal in turning over the clods with his foot and
probing the light earth with his walking-stick. Alack! the statement
that so great a number of coins have been found means perhaps that the
last are gone, rather than that a hundred thousand or so remain. If
the ploughman still finds anything, he keeps the fact to himself; but
certainly, if any personal efforts of the present historian may count
for testimony, there is a plentiful lack of anything but heavy clay
in these fields. No precious fibula, no golden coin, nay, not even a
humble copper _denarius_ rewarded his anxious efforts, and the ware of
Samos was equally to seek.
[Illustration: RICHBOROUGH, AND THE KENTISH COASTLINE TOWARDS
RAMSGATE.]
Here we are well within the Isle of Thanet, whose name, as generally
is the case, is of uncertain origin. "Thanatos," the "Isle of Death,"
suggested some commentator in the bygone years, but he did not bolster
up his derivation by telling us in what way it was so deadly. Perhaps
in the wrecks of its coast. In other respects, Thanet is the Isle
of Good Health, of rude, hungry, boisterous health; and in summer
the Isle of Cockneys. Does it not contain Ramsgate--"rollicking
Ramsgate",--and Margate the merry, whose name--I am sorry--always
reminds me of margarine? It was at Margate, upon Jarvis's Jetty, that
"Mr. Simpkinson" met the "little vulgar boy" who did him so very brown,
but I am not going to Margate to see the Jetty; which has been greatly
altered since Jarvis caused it to rise out of the vasty deep. Margate
is mentioned only that once in the _Ingoldsby Legends_ and Ramsgate
not at all, and so I shall cut them out of my journey, and make across
inland, over the high ridge at Acol, to Reculver.
The road is flat, the surface good, and from Sandwich to Ebbsfleet is
an enjoyable run. At Ebbsfleet there has been lately erected a tall
granite cross to mark where St. Augustine landed and reintroduced
Christianity in A.D. 597. Perhaps not everyone knows that he was sent
against his will on this mission by the Pope, and that it was only
grumbling he came. Not altogether so saintly as we might, not inquiring
closely, suppose--a morose and masterful man.
Through Minster lies our way--Minster-in-Thanet--reached by lanes of
the charmingest, with overarching trees; very beautiful, and filled
in summer with other things not so lovely: with such eye-sorrows and
ear-torments as dusty brake-parties clamant with the latest comic songs
and energetically performing upon cornets and concertinas; little
vulgar boys, descendants, possibly, of Mr. Simpkinson's young friend,
turning cart-wheels in the dust for casual pence. The brake-proprietors
of Margate and Ramsgate, conscious that such tree-shaded spots are
rare in Thanet, have taken these under their protection, and advertise
"Twelve miles drives through the pretty lanes, 1/-." Minster is
therefore a paradise of beanfeasters and the inferno of pilgrims,
literary or other.
[Illustration: THE SMUGGLER'S LEAP.]
To find the "Smuggler's Leap" one must make as for Acol. "Near this
hamlet of Acol," says Ingoldsby, in a fictitious quotation prefixed
to the fine legend of Smuggler Bill and Exciseman Gill and their
doings, "is a long-disused chalk-pit of formidable depth, known by the
name of the 'Smuggler's Leap.' The tradition of the parish runs that
a riding-officer from Sandwich, called Anthony Gill, lost his life
here in the early part of the eighteenth century, while in pursuit
of a smuggler. The smuggler's horse _only_, it is said, was found
crushed beneath its rider. The spot has, of course, been haunted ever
since." For the original of this quotation, the reader is referred to a
"Supplement to Lewis's History of Thanet, by the Reverend Samuel Pegg,
A.M., Vicar of Gomersham," supposed to have been published by a "W.
Bristow, Canterbury, 1796"; but Ingoldsby, who composed the legend,
invented his quotation as well, and those who seek the Reverend Samuel
Pegg's "Supplement" will not find it.
But if so much be imaginative, the smuggling exploits common in the
district a hundred and thirty years ago, as recorded in the Kentish
newspapers, were in many respects like that celebrated in the Ingoldsby
legend. The _Kentish Gazette_ of Saturday, November 22nd, 1777, gives
a case in point: "On Monday last Mr. Harris, Officer of Excise, and
Mr. Wesbeach, Surveyor of the Customs at Ramsgate, attended by six
dragoons, met with a body of smugglers at Birchington, consisting of
at least a hundred and fifty, armed with loaded whips and bludgeons.
After a sharp skirmish, in which the smugglers had many of their horses
shot, they made a very regular retreat, losing 8 gallons of brandy, 96
gallons of Geneva, 162 lb. of Hyson tea, and five horses."
[Illustration: MONKTON.]
The chalk-pit, too, is sufficiently real. Crossing the open fields,
spread starkly to the sky, between Monkton and Cleve Court, it is found
on the Ramsgate road, opposite the "Prospect" inn, where it still gapes
as deep and wide as ever. Do not, however, if you wish to be impressed
with the truth of Ingoldsby's romantic description, view it by the
brilliant sunlight of a summer's day, because at such times the great
cleft in the dull white of the chalk does not properly proclaim its
immensity. It is only when the evening shadows fall obliquely into the
old chalk-pit that you applaud the spirit of those lines:
It's enough to make one's flesh to creep
To stand on that fearful verge, and peep
Down the rugged sides so dreadfully steep,
Where the chalk-pit yawns full sixty feet deep.
When Ingoldsby wrote there were, according to his testimony, "fifty
intelligent fly-drivers" plying upon Margate pier, who would convey the
curious to the spot for a guerdon which they term "three bob." Cycles
and electric tramways have nowadays so sorely cut up the trade of the
intelligent that few of those depressed individuals remain.
[Illustration: MONKTON.]
Coming into Monkton, a scattered village on the way to Sarre, the
church, directly facing the road, makes, with the old stocks on a
grassy bank, a pretty picture. The indications of arches, seen in the
sketch, show that there was once a north aisle to this church. The
parish owes its name to the fact that the manor was anciently the
property of Christ Church Monastery, Canterbury.
The whole of this district is covered by the legend of the "Smuggler's
Leap." The "smuggling crew" dispersed in all directions before the
customs-house officers.
Some gallop this way, and some gallop that,
Through Fordwich Level, o'er Sandwich Flat ...
Those in a hurry Make for Sturry,
With Customs House officers close in their rear,
Down Rushbourne Lane, and so by Westbere.
None of them stopping But shooting and popping,
And many a Customs House bullet goes slap
Through many a three-gallon tub like a tap,
And the gin spurts out, And squirts all about;
And many a heart grew sad that day,
That so much good liquor was so thrown away.
* * * * *
Down Chislett Lane, so free and so fleet,
Rides Smuggler Bill, and away to Up Street;
Sarre Bridge is won--Bill thinks it fun,
Ho! ho! the old tub-gauging son of a gun.
We, too, will ride into Sarre.
Sarre was, and is still technically, a ville of the port of Sandwich,
governed by a Deputy whose functions are now merely decorative. He
still, however, as of old, swears fealty to King and port. These
historical facts explain those notices, "Town of Sarre" and "Ville de
Sarre" prominently displayed on the houses at the Canterbury and Thanet
ends of the village respectively.
The bridge gained by Smuggler Bill is that which joins Kent and the
Isle of Thanet, the successor of that original pont built in 1485, on
the site of "the common ferry when Thanet was full iled." It is not a
romantic bridge nowadays, and has its many thousands of counterparts.
Beneath its commonplace arch the sluggish waters of a branch of the
Stour go wandering away, right and left, along the old narrowed channel
of the once broad and navigable Wantsume, where the sea once flowed,
and the Roman galleys and triremes, the Saxon and Danish prows, and
the Norman and early English ships, came and went; and only a shallow
stream, no wider than a horse could jump, choked with reeds and snags,
divides the former "Isle" and the mainland.
Sarre is picturesque in parts, and in other parts quite distressingly
ugly. It is, indeed, a peculiarity of Kent, overrun from the earliest
times by Cockneys, that many of its buildings touch the deepest depth
of ugliness, vulgarity, and unsuitability. The Cockney has come forth
of his Cockaigne, and builded, after his sort, great grey-brick houses
in the model of the houses in towns, where of necessity, being in
streets and shouldered by neighbours, they run to height and unrelieved
squareness. Sarre contains exactly such an example, in one of the two
inns--one never can recollect the name of a commonplace inn--that
minister not only to the wants of Sarre, but were halting-places for
the Margate and Ramsgate coaches in the old days, just as they are
"pull-ups" for the brake-parties of the present time.
[Illustration: THE "VILLE OF SARRE."]
The artist can dodge the hideous inn out of his sketch and can make
a pretty view of Sarre, but unless he adopts the tactics of a Turner,
and takes a piece here and another there, and so fits them together in
a composition of his own, he cannot get into one view the quaint old
barn-yards, with their curious barns standing, for fear of the rats,
shouldered off the ground on stone staddles; nor can he include the
bridge, the stream, and the long, poplar-lined road into the village.
In no case could he bring in the time-worn tower of a village church,
that sanctifies a sketch, for Sarre is godless and graceless and owns
no church, its inhabitants finding their nearest place of worship at
St. Nicholas-at-Wade, nearly two miles distant.