MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE--SITTINGBOURNE OLD INNS--MURSTON--LUDDENHAM
A curious and but-little-visited part of the Kentish littoral is
that which stretches, some eight miles or so, between Iwade, Milton,
Sittingbourne, Tonge, and Faversham. It is that part of the country,
going down to the low-lying shores of the Swale, which was in olden
times spoken of as being possessed of “wealth without health.” The land
was, and is still, wonderfully fertile, but in remote days was full
of malaria. To-day, as the traveller by the leisurely South-Eastern
Railway passes from Sittingbourne, past Teynham to Faversham, he
sees orchards and farmsteads, grazing sheep, and many evidences of
prosperity and beauty. It seems to him like a Land of Promise. And
truly, once past the squalid papermaking and brickmaking purlieus of
Sittingbourne, this is a district of exceptional beauty; by no means
flat; and rich in orchards of cherry, apple, and pear.
If we retrace our route from Sheppey, and, coming again across the
bridge at King’s Ferry, turn off to the left beyond Iwade, we shall
presently come into Milton Regis, otherwise Milton-next-Sittingbourne,
past the fine and very striking church, of Norman and Early English
periods. It is, in this age of silly “suffies,” generally locked, and
therefore the tourist finds considerable difficulties in the way of
seeing the beautiful interior and the three Northwode brasses: a knight
in heraldic tabard; another about 1480; and John Northwode and wife,
1496. But the odd, and much more humble, tombstone in the churchyard to
one “Abraham Washiton late Hvsband of Alise Washinton, now living at
Milton, whome had in all six hvsbands,” 1601, is easily found. Alice,
you will observe, was at that date “now living,” and so, for all we
know, may have married again; but possibly she may by that time have
struck the surviving men of Milton as rather lethal.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH, MILTON REGIS.]
Before ever there was a town of Sittingbourne there was a town of
Milton, standing upon Milton Creek. It was from early times a royal
manor, and until ages comparatively recent Sittingbourne, as the lesser
place, was best described as “Sittingbourne-next-Milton.” But, from
being situated directly upon the great Dover Road, Sittingbourne grew,
while Milton languished. Great inns sprang up beside that historic
highway, to serve the needs of travellers. No less a personage than
Henry the Fifth, coming home flushed with the victory of Agincourt
in 1415, was entertained at the “Red Lion,” a hostelry still in the
forefront in 1541, when Henry the Eighth was its guest, and held there
one of his fateful Councils, which probably resulted in some one losing
his head. The “George,” the “Rose,” and the “Red Lion” seem to have
long been the best inns. Hasted, the historian of Kent, says the “Rose”
was the most superb of any in the kingdom; but that must have been at
a much later date, for we are not to suppose that those two monarchs
stayed at a second-rate house. For the “Red Lion” you will now seek in
vain, although there is a “Lion,” without any specified colour; a large
old inn, with long, seventeenth-century red-brick frontage: twelve
windows in a row; quite the largest in the town, although part is now
let off as a bank. A quaint, old-world scene presents itself up the
archway entrance to the courtyard, with the prettily framed windows of
the coffee-room on one side.
The “Rose,” once “the most superb,” is a thing of the past, for we
cannot affect to believe that the small house which now bears that
sign is its modern representative. No: what was once the real “Rose”
stands adjoining, and is parcelled into four shops. A tablet on the
frontage bears the date 1708, with a rose sculptured in full bloom.
The elevation is a handsome two-storied one, with projecting eaves
supported by richly carved consoles. A tall window at the side,
apparently that of an old assembly-room, runs through two floors.
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, MILTON REGIS.]
Opposite is the old “George,” red brick, about 1720, with nine windows
in a row. The building is in two parts, with two coach-entrances, and
must once have been an important inn. Up one entrance is the Liberal
Club, and up the other, oddly enough, is the Conservative Club. Along
this last, looking back, you see a picturesque tile-hung front, hung
with wistaria.
Finally, just past the Wesleyan Chapel is the old “Crown,” now a shop.
The old coach-yard, very picturesque, has five old postboys’ dwellings
in timber, now much dilapidated, with broken windows.
But Sittingbourne is not, on the whole, an engaging town, and the
bubbling brook, the “seething burn,” as the Anglo-Saxons styled it,
which gave the place its name, has since 1830 been hidden away from
view in a pipe beneath the road. It used to flow across the highway
at the east end of the church. The industrial modern circumstances of
Sittingbourne, the making of paper and bricks, are the very denial
of beauty. Lloyd’s paper-mills will be found at Milton. There, on
the banks of the muddy Milton Creek, you see mountainous stacks
of wood-pulp, for the making of paper. The scene, with the greasy
mud-banks and the squalid pieces of wrapping-paper, is inexpressibly
ugly. If there is any choice, Milton Creek is even more beastly than
the brickmaking village of Murston, below Sittingbourne; and even that
is a horror.
But, although Milton is so ill a place, full of lodgings for tramps,
and all such mean circumstances, there are yet in its narrow streets
some fine old houses, of good architectural character, which hint,
not obscurely, that this was, two hundred years ago, a place of
charm and gentility. On an old house, now the “Waterman’s Arms,” in
Flushing Street, may be seen a quaintly sculptured stone sign dated
1662, representing Adam and Eve standing on either side of that fatal
apple-tree: Eve about to pluck the fruit which caused all the trouble.
The sign is the arms of the Fruiterers’ Company; but the reason of it
being here is not known.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE ADAM AND EVE, MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE.]
It is perhaps worth while to turn aside, on leaving Sittingbourne, to
see what manner of place Murston may be. It has already been described
in unfavourable terms, but how unutterably wretched a spot this great
brickmaking centre is can only be learnt by close inspection. One comes
into it by a mile-long road which for the most part stands prominently
up above the surrounding country, something in the likeness of a
railway embankment; the brick-earth of which the neighbouring fields
once consisted having been dug out to great depths on either side. Down
below there, in that artificially low level, the valuable brick-earth
having been excavated, many of those fields have once again been given
over to agriculture. Crops seem to do well in this curious situation,
deriving benefit from what a native described to the present writer as
the “mysture,” which is apparently Cantise or Cockney for “moisture.”
At the end of this singular interval, close to the shores of Milton
Creek, is Murston. Whatever beauty the village once possessed has
long been obliterated in its expansion into an industrial slum of
long, unlovely, characterless streets of human kennels. Even the
parish church has been severely dealt with, only the chancel of the
old building being left; and that stands in a mangy little walled
and locked enclosure, strewn with old tins and other refuse. Such is
Murston; and the “brickies” who live in it match the place completely.
It is pleasant to think and to know that Murston is exceptional.
Beautiful country, wholly unspoiled, immediately adjoins it, and one
comes pleasantly past Tonge, in search of the coast-line, past Chekes
Court Farm and Blacketts, to Conyers Quay. There indeed is again an
unpleasant interval, for advantage has been taken of a slimy little
creek opening out of the Swale to erect a brick-factory, whence the
bricks are barged to Sheerness, and round up the Thames; the barges
bringing back from London cargoes of cinders and the contents of London
dustbins, which (under the name of “breeze”) is useful in the making of
bricks. The immediate and intimate part of Conyers Quay is therefore,
it will be readily understood, undesirable alike to sight and smell.
[Illustration: LUDDENHAM.]
The roads of these parts carefully avoid the shore; the one leaving
this spot running directly inland, to Teynham, where orchards and
hop-gardens and old cottages neighbour the church, in a pretty,
diversified landscape. From Teynham, through the hamlet of Deerton
Street, one comes to Buckland, where the scanty ruins of an old church
stand in front of a farm, on the other side of Buckland crossing.
Near by is a humble old timber-framed cottage on the edge of
hop-gardens. This was originally the parsonage. Beyond it, over Stone
level-crossing, a road leads away on the left to Luddenham, a solitary
parish on rising ground overlooking the marshes. There is no village,
only scattered farms and cottages; but the picture formed by the church
on its height, neighboured by the Court Lodge, now the largest of
the neighbouring farms, devoted partly to hops and in part to fruit,
is an unusual and striking one. There you see the church, partly
Early English, with an eighteenth-century red-brick tower, displayed
against the skyline in company with some hop-oasts, the hollow in
the foreground on the left, evidently once a creek, planted with
bush-fruit; while on the right the hop-gardens are screened by a weird
hedge of polled poplars, looking very knobbly and knuckly with their
annual trimming.
From Luddenham we come steeply uphill and then down, through Davington,
again into Faversham.