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THE KENTISH COAST
WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER
=The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of
Old.
=The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
=The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.
=The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.
=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.
=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.
=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.
=The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great Fenland
Highway.
=The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road=: Sport and History
on an East Anglian Turnpike.
=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: The Ready Way to
South Wales. Two Vols.
=The Brighton Road=: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic
Highway.
=The Hastings Road= and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”
=Cycle Rides Round London.=
=A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of
Reproduction.=
=Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore.= Two Vols.
=The Ingoldsby Country=: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby
Legends.”
=The Hardy Country=: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.
=The Dorset Coast.=
=The South Devon Coast.=
=The Old Inns of England.= Two Vols.
=Love in the Harbour=: a Longshore Comedy.
=Rural Nooks Round London= (Middlesex and Surrey).
=Haunted Houses=; Tales of the Supernatural.
=The Manchester and Glasgow Road.= This way to Gretna Green. Two
Vols.
=The North Devon Coast.=
=Half-Hours with the Highwaymen.= Two Vols.
=The Autocar Road Book.=
=The Somerset Coast.=
=The Cornish Coast.= North.
=The Cornish Coast.= South.
=Thames Valley Villages=
=The Shakespeare Country.=
=The Sussex Coast.=
[_In the Press._
[Illustration: DOVER CASTLE: THE WHITE CLIFFS OF ALBION.]
THE
KENTISH COAST
BY
CHARLES G. HARPER
“_Kent, in the commentaries Cæsar writ,
Is termed the civil’st place of all this isle:
Sweet is the country, because full of riches;
The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy._”
KING HENRY THE SIXTH (Second Part).
[Illustration]
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
1914
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
DEPTFORD AND PETER THE GREAT 1
CHAPTER II
GREENWICH--THE ROYAL NAVAL HOSPITAL--THE “FUBBS YACHT”--THE
GREENWICH WHITEBAIT DINNERS--WOOLWICH--THE “PRINCESS
ALICE” DISASTER--LESNES ABBEY--ERITH--DARTFORD 15
CHAPTER III
STONE--GREENHITHE--NORTHFLEET--HUGGENS’S COLLEGE--ROSHERVILLE--
GRAVESEND--SHORNEMEAD--CLIFFE--COOLING--THE HUNDRED OF HOO--
THE ISLE OF GRAIN--HOO ST. WERBURGH--UPNOR CASTLE--STROOD 31
CHAPTER IV
ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM--BROMPTON--GILLINGHAM--GRANGE--OTTERHAM
QUAY--LOWER HALSTOW--IWADE 57
CHAPTER V
SHEPPEY 67
CHAPTER VI
THE CAPTURE OF JAMES THE SECOND--FAVERSHAM 88
CHAPTER VII
MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE--SITTINGBOURN--OLD INNS--MURSTON--
LUDDENHAM 94
CHAPTER VIII
GOODNESTONE--GRAVENEY--SEASALTER--WHITSTABLE AND THE OYSTER
FISHERY 103
CHAPTER IX
HERNE BAY--RECULVER--WANTSUM--SARRE 116
CHAPTER X
THANET’S CORNFIELDS--MONKTON--MINSTER-IN-THANET--BIRCHINGTON--
QUEX PARK--WESTGATE--DANDELION 130
CHAPTER XI
MARGATE 144
CHAPTER XII
KINGSGATE--THE NORTH FORELAND--BROADSTAIRS--ST. PETER’S 156
CHAPTER XIII
RAMSGATE 167
CHAPTER XIV
PEGWELL BAY--EBBSFLEET--THE LANDINGS OF HENGIST AND OF ST.
AUGUSTINE--RICHBOROUGH 177
CHAPTER XV
SANDWICH 188
CHAPTER XVI
WORTH--UPPER DEAL--DEAL--THE GOODWIN SANDS 214
CHAPTER XVII
THE DOWNS AND THE DEAL BOATMEN 240
CHAPTER XVIII
WALMER CASTLE--KINGSDOWN--ST. MARGARET’S BAY 256
CHAPTER XIX
DOVER--THE CASTLE AND ROMAN PHAROS--“QUEEN ELIZABETH’S
POCKET-PISTOL”--THE WESTERN HEIGHTS 270
CHAPTER XX
THE CHANNEL PASSAGE--THE NATIONAL HARBOUR AND ITS STRATEGIC
PURPOSE--SWIMMING AND FLYING THE CHANNEL 284
CHAPTER XXI
SHAKESPEARE’S CLIFF--SAMPHIRE--THE CHANNEL TUNNEL--COAL IN
KENT--THE WARREN 298
CHAPTER XXII
FOLKESTONE--THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW--DICKENS AND
“PAVILIONSTONE”--SANDGATE 308
CHAPTER XXIII
SHORNCLIFFE CAMP--THE ROYAL MILITARY CANAL--HYTHE--ROMNEY
MARSH--THE MARTELLO TOWERS--THE “HOLY MAID OF KENT” 319
CHAPTER XXIV
NEW ROMNEY--SMUGGLING DAYS--BROOKLAND--FAIRFIELD--SMALLHYTHE 344
CHAPTER XXV
LYDD--DUNGENESS--CAMBER-ON-SEA 359
INDEX 371
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Dover Castle: The White Cliffs of Albion _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Deptford Green: St. Nicholas’ Church and Church-house 7
Greenwich Hospital 17
The “Old Fubbs Yacht,” Greenwich 19
Ingress Abbey 33
Tilbury Fort 37
Curious old Boat-cottage at Chalk 39
Shornemead Battery 41
Cliffe Battery 42
Cooling Castle 43
The “Charter,” Cooling Castle 45
Graves of the Comport Family, Cooling: “Like Chrysalids” 46
Stoke 49
St. James Grain 51
Upnor Castle 55
The Medway: Rochester Castle and Cathedral 61
The Medway: Hoo Forts 63
Upchurch 65
Lower Halstow 67
Minster-in-Sheppey 73
Tomb of Sir Robert de Shurland, Minster-in-Sheppey Church 76
Harty Church: Faversham in the Distance 83
Late Fourteenth-Century Chest, of German origin, carved with
representation of a Tournament, Harty Church 85
The Town Hall, Faversham 90
Faversham 92
The Church, Milton Regis 95
The Town Hall, Milton Regis 97
Sign of the Adam and Eve, Milton-next-Sittingbourne 99
Luddenham 101
Whitstable: The Old Lighthouse and the Oyster Fleet 111
Herne: The “Smuggler’s Look-out” 120
Reculver 123
The Wantsum Ferry 126
St. Nicholas-at-Wade 128
Minster-in-Thanet Church 133
The Waterloo Tower, Quex Park 139
Dandelion Gateway 141
From the Palimpsest Brass, Margate Church 147
Kingsgate 157
The North Foreland Lighthouse 158
Broadstairs: York Gate 163
Broadstairs 164
Thanet as an Island, showing the Wantsum. From an ancient map 185
Fishergate, Sandwich 189
The Town Hall, Sandwich 211
Upper Deal 215
The Quaint Foreshore of Deal 221
The Goodwin Sands: “A dangerous flat and fatal” 236
The East Goodwin Lightship 238
Walmer Castle 258
Entrance to Walmer Castle 259
Walmer Castle, from the Sea 262
St. Margaret’s Bay 263
Westcliff 268
Dover Castle 272
Colton’s Tower, Dover Castle 273
The Church of St. Mary-in-the-Castle, with the Roman Pharos,
Dover 275
The National Harbour, Dover 287
Shakespeare’s Cliff 298
Shakespeare Cliff Colliery, and the Coast towards Folkestone 304
The Stade, and Old Tackle-Boxes, Folkestone 310
Interior, Sandgate Castle 316
Hythe 321
Romney Marsh: The Martello Towers and Military Canal, Moonlight 334
Lympne 331
Lympne Castle and Church 333
Bonnington Church 342
New Romney Church 345
Brookland Church 349
Fairfield Church 352
Smallhythe Toll-gate 354
Smallhythe Church 356
Smallhythe 357
Lydd Church 361
Dungeness: Lighthouse and Railway Station 366
[Illustration: THE KENTISH COAST: DEPTFORD TO FAVERSHAM]
[Illustration]
THE KENTISH COAST
CHAPTER I
DEPTFORD AND PETER THE GREAT
The seaboard of Kent, and indeed the south coast of England in general,
is no little-known margin of our shores. It is not in the least
unspotted from the world, or solitary. It lies too near London for
that, and began to be exploited more than a hundred and fifty years
ago, when seaside holidays were first invented. The coast of Kent,
socially speaking, touches both extremes. It is at once fashionable and
exclusive, and is the holiday haunt of the Cockney: a statement that
is not the paradox it at first sight appears to be, for the bracing
qualities of its sea-air have always attracted all classes. We all
ardently desire health, whether we are of those who romp on the sands
of Margate or Ramsgate and eat shrimps in the tea-gardens of Pegwell
Bay, or are numbered among those who are guests at the lordly Lord
Warden, the Granville, or the Cliftonville.
Where does the coast of Kent begin? It begins at Deptford, that crowded
London suburb which would doubtless be considerably astonished in
contemplating itself as a seaside town, and in fact does not do so.
Yet Deptford’s old naval history and ship-yard associations give it
a salt-water flavour, and so we must needs say that the coast begins
there. True, it is but the Thames whose murky waters lap the shore at
Deptford; but the Thames here is the great commercial “London River,”
as seamen call it, the port to which resorts a goodly proportion of the
world’s shipping; and sea-going vessels crowd the fairway at all hours
of day and night.
Past Greenwich, Woolwich, and Erith the Thames goes in its gradually
broadening course, and at length comes to Gravesend. Gravesend Reach
is, and has always been, by general consensus of opinion, the Sea-gate
of London, and therefore, without any manner of doubt, on the coast.
The length of the coast of Kent, reaching from Deptford, and tracking
round Sheppey and up the Medway estuary to Rochester, and in and
out of the queer places wherever the foreshore wends, I make to be
about one hundred and thirty-eight miles. It is--the whole of it--
extremely interesting, and in places grandly beautiful and in others
quietly pretty; and also along some other stretches, scenically (but
never historically) dull and drab. Below Gravesend, round the Isle of
Grain, and round Sheppey and the Swale to Whitstable and Herne Bay,
for instance, no one could perceive much of nobility actually in that
coast-line of London clay and of low, muddy, or shingly foreshores. But
where the chalk begins at Westgate, and the sea, ceasing from washing
the clay and receiving the contaminations of the Thames and Medway,
becomes more cleanly, the coast, grows by degrees more striking.
As for the history that lies in the landings and embarkations, all
along the coast of Kent, why, there was never such another coast as
these storied shores. The fame of them begins at Gravesend, to which
those foreigners who did not by any chance land at Dover generally
came in the dangerous old days of the road between Dover and London.
At Faversham a king who sought secretly to leave his kingdom was
detained; at Ebbsfleet landed the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa, and a
hundred and fifty-seven years later came to that same spot a Christian
missioner who came missionising very much against his own inclinations.
At Deal, 1970 years ago--a tolerably long stretch of time--a great
personage set the fashion in these numerous landings. I name Julius
Cæsar, the noblest Roman of them all, who, as far as history tells
us, was the first of any importance who ever burst into these unknown
seas. Great personages have been doing the like ever since. The reason
for this exceptional honour shown the Kentish coast, which has thus
from the earliest times been the Front Door of England, is quite
easily glimpsed on any sunny day anywhere between Deal and Folkestone,
in the gleaming coast of France, which reminds us that most of those
world-famous characters, in common with modern voyagers across the
Channel, disliked the sea, and crossed by the “shortest route.”
For the rest, Dover has been the scene of comings and goings
uncountable, and to attempt recounting them would be wearisome indeed.
Charles the Second, who had lively experiences in a hunted embarkation
from our shores, experienced a welcome change in 1660, being received
on his “glorious restoration” by his loyal subjects on Dover beach, and
in 1683 came ashore at what was at that time “Bartholomew’s Gate,” in
Thanet, which, in honour of that act of kingly condescension, has ever
since been called “Kingsgate.”
Kent, the _Cantium_, or country of the _Cantii_, mentioned by Julius
Cæsar B.C. 54, and by other ancient writers, is thought to take its
name from the peculiarity of its geographical position, jutting boldly
out (or, in other words, “canted out”) in an easterly direction, beyond
the estuary of the Thames. There is another view taken of the origin
of the word, a view which derives it from _caint_, the “open country,”
as distinguished from the woodland character of Sussex, the ancient
“Andredswald”; but, against this, it does not seem to be sufficiently
established that Kent ever was such an open country, while the evidence
of maps shows us that it does indeed project most markedly.
The Kentish Coast, then, begins little more than two and a half miles
below London Bridge, the county boundary between Surrey and Kent being
placed at Earl’s Sluice, on the Grand Surrey Canal, in Deptford, just
beyond the Surrey Commercial Docks. There, where the Royal Victualling
Yard fronts the busy Thames, midway between Limehouse Reach and
Greenwich Reach, begin the 138 miles of this strangely varied and
exceptionally historic coast-line.
Undoubtedly the noblest and most fitting introduction is to proceed
down river by steamer to Greenwich, for that way you perceive the
greatness of the Port of London, and the majesty of the commercial
and maritime interests of the capital; while to come “overland”--
thus to dignify the approach by mean streets through Bermondsey and
Rotherhithe--is an effect of squalor.
Deptford of to-day is an integral part of London. Not an ornamental
part; indeed, no. Rather an industrial and wage-earning place. One does
not “reside” at Deptford, and there are not a few who find it difficult
even to live. It is thus not easy to associate it with that “Depeford”
of which Chaucer writes in his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” in 1383: “Lo,
Depeford, it is half-way prime.” The deep ford whence it obtained its
name is--or rather was--on the Ravensbourne, or the Brome, as that
stream has sometimes been called, at the Broadway, on the Dover Road;
but the many changes that have taken place have of necessity abolished
any possible likeness to the passage that existed in Chaucer’s day. In
any case, the Deptford around the Broadway, the present bridge over the
Ravensbourne, and the road on to Blackheath is not the real intimate
Deptford. That is only to be found on the river side of Evelyn Street,
and in the neighbourhood of Creek Road, where the Ravensbourne broadens
out into Deptford Creek. _Here_ is the real Deptford; more especially
along the winding old street oddly--and with a curiously shipboard
suggestion--named “Stowage,” and so to the old original church of
Deptford, dedicated, as it should be in a waterside church, to St.
Nicholas, the sailor’s patron.
From the church, Deptford Green leads to the waterside, and adjoining
is “Hughes’ Fields.” Pleasantly rural although these names sound,
candour compels the admission that they are, in fact, streets, with no
suggestion of grass or meadows about them. The church of St. Nicholas
dates from about 1697, and is a red-brick building in the curious taste
of that time; retaining, however, its old stone fifteenth-century
tower. Flourishing plane-trees render the churchyard in summer not
unpleasing, but the stranger is apt to see with a shudder the grisly
stone gate-piers, surmounted by great sculptured skulls decoratively
laurelled, as though Death were indeed the conqueror and the hereafter
merely a vain thought. You might travel far, and yet find nothing so
truly pagan.
[Illustration: DEPTFORD GREEN: ST. NICHOLAS’ CHURCH AND CHURCH-HOUSE.]
Yet in this church is gathered much of Deptford’s olden story, and in
it are the memorials of captains and constructors of the Navy in times
when Deptford was much more of a dockyard and seaport than a stirring
quarter of London: monuments dating from before the days of Charles
the Second and Pepys. Here you shall find that of Peter Pett, master
shipwright in the King’s yard, who died in 1652. The Latin epitaph upon
this master craftsman quaintly describes him as “a thoroughly just man,
and the Noah of his generation.” It further goes on to say that “he
walked with God and brought to light an invention even greater than
that recorded of his prototype (for it was an ark by which our mastery
of the sea and our rights were saved from shipwreck). He was called
away from the tempests of this world, God being his pilot, and his
soul resting in the bosom of his Saviour as in an ark of glory.” This
seventeenth-century Noah and inventive saviour of his country was the
designer of the new frigate type of ship, the Dreadnought of its day.
Here also is the monument of Captain George Shelvocke, who thrice
circumnavigated the globe, and died in 1742. The north side of the
church facing Deptford Green, which as already remarked is not
any longer a green, and cannot have been for some two hundred
years or more, forms a striking picture, for a group of red-brick
eighteenth-century buildings, built on to it, is obviously associated
with the church itself, although of absolutely domestic character.
The great days of Deptford began in the reign of Henry the Eighth,
with the rise of the Royal Navy. It had been described as “a mean
fishing village” until the “King’s Yard,” as the dockyard was named,
was established in 1513--the first of our naval dockyards. There the
earliest ships of the Navy took the water; vessels with the strange,
and long since impossible, names of _Jesus_, _Holy Ghost_, _John
Baptist_, _Great Nicholas_, and the like: sacred names whose use in
such a connection would in our own days offend the ear with a sense of
blasphemy. The naming of ships in that manner went out of fashion with
the Reformation, and thereafter no English _Holy Trinity_ set forth to
deal out death and destruction upon the high seas. It was left to the
Spaniards to couple holiness with conflict and slaughter, and for such
awful names as _Madre de Dios_, _Sanctissima Trinidad_, and _Espiritu
Sancto_ to be associated with warfare.
The breach with Rome brought an entirely new order of names into the
Royal Navy of England, of which that of the _Mary Rose_ was for a time
typical. But the domestic prettiness of love in a bower pictured by
such as this presently gave place to others, of the robustious, defiant
kind, such as the _Revenge_. It is true that there was even another
order, of which Sir Richard Hawkins’s _Repentance_ was representative.
It marked the full swing of the religious feelings of Englishmen from
the idolatries of Rome to that sinners’ sense of abasement under
conviction of sin which was a feature of Protestantism and the Puritan
wave of thought.
It was in the year of the Armada that the _Repentance_ took the water
at Deptford. One would dearly like to know exactly why Hawkins gave
his ship that name. Was he wrestling with the spirit, or had he in his
mind some conceit of bringing repentance home to the Spaniards? The
Elizabethan age was an age of ingenious conceits, and this may well
have been one of them. But the name did not commend itself to Elizabeth
when she was rowed from her palace of Greenwich to see the new ship,
lying off Deptford beautiful in paint and gilding, and she renamed it
the _Dainty_. Perhaps the great Queen considered _Repentance_ to be a
singularly ill-chosen name for a ship about to sail on a filibustering,
piratical expedition. It is curious to consider that the expedition
was a disastrous failure, and that a cynic dispensation of affairs
thus mocked the original choice of a name; just as it did that of Sir
Richard Grenville’s _Revenge_, three years later, when the fight went
against the English, and Grenville was killed and the Spaniards had
their own revenge for much.
Seven years before her visit to Sir Richard Hawkins’s ship, Elizabeth
had made a notable journey to Deptford, when she went aboard Francis
Drake’s _Golden Hind_, in which he had returned from circumnavigating
the world, dined there, and knighted him after dinner.
Of all those ancient days and brave doings nothing remains. The
dockyard, although from time to time enlarged, and actually in
existence until 1869, is now but a memory, and the site of it is
occupied by the Foreign Cattle Market. It was the smallest of all the
dockyards, only thirty acres in extent; but it was the introduction of
ironclad ships, and the greater depth of water required that led to its
end, after a temporary closing between 1810 and 1844. The last vessel
launched was H.M.S. _Druid_, in 1869.
When the average person thinks of Deptford, historically, it is not to
Queen Elizabeth’s visits his mind reverts, nor even to Mr. Secretary
to the Admiralty Pepys, but rather to John Evelyn, to Sayes Court, and
Peter the Great. John Evelyn, later of Wotton, settled at Deptford in
1651, at the mansion of Sayes Court, which had been originally the
manor-house of West Greenwich. Here he made gardens and planted trees,
the chief delight of his life. “I planted all the out-limites of the
gardens and long walks with holly,” he says, in March 1683.
He was extremely proud of his holly-hedges:
“Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of
the kind than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in
length, nine feet high and five in diameter, at any time of the year
glittering with its armed and varnished leaves? The taller standards
at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral: it mocks the
rudest assaults of the weather, beasts, or hedge-breakers--_Et ilium
nemo impune lacessit._”
No one, he thought, could insult a holly-hedge with impunity.
In 1665 he found Deptford a very desirable place of retreat from the
Great Plague of London. Later he let Sayes Court to Admiral Benbow, who
in January 1698 sublet it for three months to the “Czar of Muscovy,”
Peter the Great, who was as earnest then in planning a navy for Russia
as the German Emperor of our own times in building a fleet for Germany.
But the Czar himself worked as a shipwright in the dockyard and filled
Sayes Court with a semi-savage household. His reputed chief amusement,
that of continually wheeling a wheelbarrow through Evelyn’s cherished
hedges, is perhaps the most vivid item of information about Peter the
Great in the average Englishman’s mind: something of an injustice to
the memory of that constructive autocrat, whose greatness was not built
upon such eccentricities.
The generally received account of the Czar’s way with the hedges is
that he trundled wheelbarrows through them; but it would appear that he
was seated in the barrow, and that some one else did the wheeling.
Three months of “his Zarrish Majestie” and suite sufficed to very
nearly wreck Sayes Court and its gardens. Benbow and Evelyn claimed
compensation from the Treasury for the damage, and the Treasury,
considering that the Czar was the guest of William the Third in this
country, admitted the liability and deputed Sir Christopher Wren to
make a return. The document is still in existence. Among other items of
dilapidations by that riotous tartaric company are:
£ _s._ _d._
New floore to a Bogg House 0 10 0
300 Squares in the Windows 0 15 0
All the floores dammag’d by Grease & Inck 2 0 0
For 3 wheelbarrows broke & Lost 1 0 0
The total amount awarded by Treasury warrant of June 21st, 1698, was
£350 9_s._ 6_d._, of which £162 7_s._ went to Evelyn.
Sayes Court was almost wholly demolished in 1728, and the remainder
converted into a workhouse. A plot of ground of fourteen acres, a
portion of the old gardens, was secured in 1877 by Mr. W. J. Evelyn
of Wotton, and converted into a public recreation ground. The Evelyns
still own considerable property here, and although Court and gardens
be gone, the historic sense is strong, and Evelyn Street, Czar Street,
and Sayes Court Street, neighbour thoroughfares named after the Armada,
Blake, and Wellington, and curiously contrast with the unimaginative
“Mary Anne Buildings.” It is, however, only right to say that the
streets that remind one of those historic people and that old mansion
are as squalid as the buildings that honour Mary Anne.
Across the bridge that spans Deptford Creek, amid the surroundings
of canals and wharves, you come into Greenwich. The Frenchman of the
story illustrating the vagaries of English pronunciation, uncertain
whether he wanted “Greenwich or Woolwich, he didn’t know which,”
and pronouncing the place and names as spelled, was to be excused:
how could he know it was “Grinnidge” and “Woolidge”? And how many
Englishmen can speak the name of Rennes properly after the French use?