ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM--BROMPTON--GILLINGHAM--GRANGE--OTTERHAM
QUAY--LOWER HALSTOW--IWADE
Very little change overtakes Rochester High Street, that narrow, rather
gloomy, and distinctly dirty-looking thoroughfare. The Corn Exchange
clock still projects its “moon face” over the pavement, as Dickens
described it, “out of a grave, red building, as if Time carried on
business there and hung out his sign”; and the ancient grime still
clings to the brickwork houses, and the occasional old weatherboarded
tenements still lack the new coats of paint cruelly denied them. One
might expend much description upon the High Street of Rochester,
from the famous “Bull” hotel of Pickwickian fame, and the tame,
characterless front of the “Seven Poor Travellers,” on to the curiously
weatherboarded Westgate of the Cathedral Close, familiarly known,
through associations with “Edwin Drood,” as “Jasper’s Gateway,” and not
forgetting the Early English crypt beneath the “George” inn, nearly
opposite the “Bull,” a relic of which very few people know, and little
to be suspected from the decidedly commonplace general appearance of
that house. There is, indeed, room for a most interesting monograph
upon this High Street. I always associate the little weatherboarded
house and shop numbered 195, on the left hand as you go towards
Chatham, with that where little David Copperfield had his adventure
with the half-mad second-hand-clothes shopkeeper who said “Goroo,
goroo,” and invoked his lungs and liver. It is a bootshop nowadays; but
you go down into it from the street-level just as in the story.
Eastbury House--the “Nuns’ House” of “Edwin Drood”--until recent
years a gloomy mansion, mysteriously retired behind a grim brick wall,
has lately been restored and the enclosing wall demolished, and has
become a museum. It is now a much more worshipful-looking building than
before; all the better for its scouring and cleaning, and yet looking
none the less antique. Built in 1591, Eastgate House looks every year
of its age, and has a very thorough air of historical mystery, although
nothing has ever happened there to which one can put a name. Miss
Twinkleton’s young ladies, in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” must often
have experienced strange thrills and shivers in its darkling rooms and
passages.
The allied towns of Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, and New Brompton do
not grow any more attractive, from the tourist’s point of view, with
the effluxion of time. They had always a taint of Cockney vulgarity
which later industrial and military and naval developments, and
an extensive system of electric tramways, have intensified. With
all these things, the natural beauties of the site have been almost
utterly obscured in mean streets and crowded slums. Those beauties
were of a very striking nature. From the lofty side of Chatham Hill
the eye ranged over the broad Medway and its marshes, beautiful in
the distance, and across to the Hundred of Hoo. To-day that view is
qualified by a vista of innumerable roofs and domestic chimneys, and
by the many giant chimney-stacks of the Portland cement factories that
have to-day become almost as striking a feature of the surroundings as
the naval and military establishments, and spread a smoky haze over the
scene.
It is not easy to realise Chatham as a waterside place, still less as
a port and dockyard, because of the closely-packed houses along the
High Street which runs parallel with the Medway. Only the narrowest
alleys open to the water, and few of them: the Sun Pier being, in
fact, the only view-point. But the outlook upon the busy waterside
scenes up-river, along Limehouse Reach, is of an inspiring nature. It
is composed, indeed, of widely different elements, but is therefore
all the more pictorial. There you see Rochester Castle and Cathedral,
contrasting strongly with the huge coal-cranes and the wharves,
alongside with the fuming chimneys of the cement factories on the
Frindsbury shore, and many picturesque, brown-sailed barges and fussy
steam-tugs on the water. The strenuous past, and a much more strenuous
present, lend imagination, as well as pictorial quality, to the scene.
The name of Limehouse Reach is exactly descriptive, for the cement
factories on the Frindsbury shore give it a character. Here, and above
Rochester Bridge, the pleasant Medway valley is scarred and seamed with
the chalk-quarrying and the mud-dredging that go towards the making of
Portland cement, this neighbourhood being one of the chief centres of
that industry. The chalk and the river-mud are mixed roughly in the
proportion of three parts of chalk to one of mud, and are then burnt in
kilns and ground into a flour-like powder. Portland cement, invented
about 1826, is an important industry, with an output of over 3,000,000
tons a year in this country. The price per cask was originally 21_s._,
but the output is now so large and the production has so improved that
a better article is now sold at about 4_s._ a cask.
As to Chatham Dockyard, it is a highly historic place full of keenest
interest to a patriotic Briton, but to such a good deal more difficult
to explore properly than it is made for distinguished foreigners.
Why the native tax-payer who contributes to the support of this
establishment so much of his hardly-earned gold should be thus
discouraged, while possible enemies--much more keenly concerned to
worm out official secrets and far better able to do so--should be
shown every particular is more than the plain man can comprehend. But
it is the same tale in all our places of arms.
[Illustration: THE MEDWAY: ROCHESTER CASTLE AND CATHEDRAL.]
Among the interesting things here in the nature of relics none is
more keenly absorbing than the figure-head of the American frigate
_Chesapeake_, the vessel captured by Captain Broke, in command of
the _Shannon_, in 1813. This naval duel was the brightest incident
in the three years’ war between England and the United States. The
figure-head, a fine specimen of this extinct art, represents a woman
with headdress of feathers in the North American Indian fashion.
It is past the Dockyard gates and by High Street, Brompton, and thence
across “Chatham Great Lines” that the stranger who wants to find
again the coast-line had better trace his course. The district is an
unalluring one of tramways, mean streets, and the squalid side of
military life. But the Brompton Barracks of the Royal Engineers are
rather fine. Here is the Gordon statue, a striking work, representing
the General seated on a camel; and here, too, are two triumphal arches
displaying the achievements of the Royal Engineers, and four huge
bronzes, representing seated Boers with rifles and bandoliers. The
“Great Lines,” an upland, common-like expanse, is the scene of that
incident in “Pickwick” in which, during the grand review, the timid Mr.
Snodgrass, after being violently hustled to and fro, was indignantly
asked “vere he vos a-shovin’ to,” together with many other shameful
experiences.
Following the tram-lines, we come at last to the terminus at
Gillingham, one of the two places of that name in England. The other
is in Dorset. Although their names are spelt alike, they are spoken
differently: the Dorsetshire town is “Gillingham,” as might be
expected: this is, unexpectedly, always locally “Jillingham.”
[Illustration: THE MEDWAY: HOO FORTS.]
The ancient church here has a tall tower, conspicuous far and wide on
its hill-top; its corner-turret provided with a cresset, or fire-pot,
for a beacon. Here, descending the steep and narrow Church Street, and
bearing to the right, a hamlet called Gad’s Hill is passed, giving on
to a variety of creeks and inlets looking out across the Medway and the
circular forts of Gillingham and Hoo, with the wooded heights of the
Hundred of Hoo beyond.
By taking the next turning on the right, up a commonplace new street
called “King Edward Road,” and then turning left, a large country
residence on the right hand will presently be seen. This is the manor
of Grange, or Grench, formerly a member of the Cinque Port of Hastings,
and a separate parish. Some ancient, ivy-clad ruins in front of the
modern house are those of a chapel and a barn built in 1378 by Sir John
Philipot, Mayor of London. Not really “Lord” Mayor, strictly speaking,
for that dignified title is not known to have been given before 1486.
The manor comprised 120 acres, and was held by the service of finding
one ship and two armed men in time of war. Philipot, however, did
better than this. His patriotism impelled him to provide 1,000 men and
a squadron of vessels, to aid against the French. This ancient manor
enjoyed until modern times the singular extra-territorial right of
affording shelter to fugitives from justice who escaped thither; and
criminals who succeeded in reaching this Alsatia could not be arrested
on the warrant of the local magistrates until a confirming warrant had
been obtained from Hastings.
Proceeding and passing a railed-in redoubt, the road rises. Turning
then to left and again to right, we come down beside the estuary of
the Medway, amid the pear and cherry orchards, into Lower Rainham,
past Otterham Creek, and on to Upchurch. Here the church has a steeple
of fantastic ugliness, resembling two wooden extinguishers placed one
above another. There is a curious crypt, or bonehouse, under the north
chancel aisle. This district is famous for the many finds of Roman
pottery in the Medway creeks: the well-known black “Upchurch ware,”
generally discovered by punting in the shallow waters and prodding the
mud with rods. It is supposed that an extensive industry was seated
here in ancient times, on land now more or less submerged. It is now
pretty generally supposed (why it should be I know not) that all the
finds possible have been made. Hasted, writing of these parts early
in the eighteenth century, says “the noxious vapours arising from the
marshes subject the inhabitants to continued intermittents, and shorten
their lives at a very early period.” This, at any rate, seems to be of
the past.
[Illustration: UPCHURCH.]
Passing Upchurch, the creek of Lower Halstow is soon seen, with the
church away on the left, amid scenes of brickmaking activity. The road
in the next half-mile turns sharply right at Parksore, rising steeply;
that going straight ahead to a place marked “Funton” on the map,
rapidly becoming impassable.
Cresting the hill, a wonderful distant view over across to Sheerness,
disclosing the battleships there, like uncanny monsters of fairy-lore,
is obtained. Bending right and then left, and passing a moated farm,
and then a gate across the road, we come in another mile to cross-roads
and there turn left for Iwade, and through the village to the bridge
across the Swale into Sheppey, at Kingsferry.