GOODNESTONE--GRAVENEY--SEASALTER--WHITSTABLE AND THE OYSTER FISHERY
The road from Faversham to Whitstable winds level for long distances,
passing at first through a charming district of cherry-orchards,
interspersed with emerald pastures, with sheep feeding under the trees,
and evidences of much poultry-keeping, in the many coops filled with
anxious hens clucking nervously after their young broods. Here, too,
you see hop-gardens; looking more than a little bare in spring, but
with plenty of work going on, chiefly in trimming and tarring the ends
of the new ash-poles that are to be planted, thick as forests, for
the hop-bines to grow upon. Here and there are the hutches in which
the hop-pickers will live in August, and now and again you see an
oast-house; the old buildings with their quaint outlines, the new apt
to be eye-sorrows for angularity and sheer commonplace ugliness.
It is perhaps best to come this way in the sweet of the year, when the
cherry-blossom mantles the trees with purest white, and when there is
everywhere an inspiring and heartening air of anticipation, not only
in the preparations going forward in the hop-gardens, but in the great
barns where the thousands of cherry-baskets are collecting, awaiting
the cherry-picking.
A lovely, lovable corner, this, past Goodnestone on the way to
Graveney, and it seems prosperous, too. Moreover, the yellow gravel
road is excellent.
The name of Goodnestone is a corruption of “Godwin’s Town.” It was one
of the manors of the great patriot Saxon, Earl Godwin. Graveney stands
where the wide-spreading marshes of Seasalter stretch away to the sea.
There is little of it, beside the ancient, time-worn church, containing
a fine canopied brass to John Martyn and wife, 1436. He was a Judge of
the King’s Bench. The effigy shows him holding a heart, inscribed “IHV
MCY,” in his hands.
A stone in the churchyard, not otherwise remarkable, mentions a place
with the odd name “Old Wives’ Leaze.” One naturally wants to know
something of these old wives and of their leaze, but disappointment
dogs the footsteps of the inquirer, as closely and as constantly as
his own shadow. An old man mowing the grass of the churchyard remarks
incuriously, on his attention being drawn to it, that he “’spects it’s
only a name.” “What’s in a name?” he seems to suggest with Shakespeare.
Much sometimes.
Later inquiries prove “Old Wives’ Leaze” to be a hamlet high on a
hill-top, one mile from Chilham, some seven miles distant; but I
have no information as to the old wives, nor does any one else appear
to possess any. The name, in fact, seems, like so many others, to be
a corruption of some forgotten name, and is indeed supposed to have
originally been “Overs,” or “Oldwoods Leaze,” or Lees.
In the marshes of Seasalter the hedgerows die away, leaving the flat
road open and unfenced and bordered by watery dykes, in which last
year’s reeds, rubbing together in the wind, keep up a rustling murmur,
looking sere and wan until with the coming of June they are replaced
by newer growths. The dykes quarter the marshes in all directions, and
keep the pastures efficiently drained, but the sight of men busily
engaged in digging thick slab-mud from them proves that they require
constant care.
The scenery is that of Holland; even down to the particular detail
of grass-grown earthen embankments against the sea, which long ago
encroached here and destroyed the original church of Seasalter, and
has in modern times caused its successor to be abandoned, in favour of
a new building in Whitstable. In any case, it is difficult to see the
need of a church where there are but few houses, unless some modern
St. Francis were wishful of preaching here to the birds, the seagulls
and the curlews that haunt these marshes and maintain a mingled
screaming and melancholy piping, varied sometimes with what sounds like
demoniacal chucklings or mocking laughter.
Inland you see the wooded uplands of the old forest district of Blean,
with the whirling sails of distant windmills seeming to beckon over the
hills and far away. Of the sea one observes nothing until the grassy
embankment is climbed, hard by the “Old Sportsman” inn that stands
sheltered under the lee of it, but from the top is seen the entrance
of the Swale, dotted with many small vessels, with Sheppey about three
miles across the channel and the pink-washed houses of the coastguard
shining out yonder on Shellness Point.
From this spot the embankment gradually dies down and the land rises
slightly to Whitstable. Stakes are stuck in the ooze of the foreshore,
which is strewn with myriads of cockle and mussel-shells. Passing a
coastguard-station where the coastguard’s chief anxieties seem to be
concerned rather with his cocks and hens than with guarding the coast,
the road comes past the “Jolly Sailor” and the “Blue Anchor,” into
the hamlet of Seasalter, and thence winds inland. Here the approach
to Whitstable is heralded by the notice-boards of the “Bolingbroke
Building Estate,” a would-be suburb that appears by no means to have
attained success. It is one of the very many attempts, so curiously
characteristic of these speculative and impatient times of ours, to
discount the future; to make a place, _ad hoc_, instead of letting
it gradually develop, in response to requirements. The essential
difference is that in other times places grew by gradual accretion of
population. The population grew, and the houses increased gradually
to meet its needs; but in this present era of “building estates”
on the edges of towns, it is the speculative greed of landowners
that seeks to build or let on building lease, and it is the public
which is coy. The imaginations of landowners riot so freely on the
alluring prospect of ground-rents that there is nowadays scarce a
seaside town whose outskirts are not rendered squalid and utterly
detestable with projected roads that are grass-grown failures, and
with notice-boards in various stages of abject decay, offering
“desirable sites” whose desirability appears to be more evident to
the vendors than to purchasers. Here, at the approach to Whitstable,
notice-boards make what appear to be splendid offers, “Title-free,
rates-free, tithe-free”--everything, it seems, but rent-free; and yet
the “Bolingbroke Building Estate” has not resolved into much more than
a waste of scrubby pasture, dotted plentifully with sign-posts marking
imaginary streets and avenues with the most grandiloquent names:
Valkyrie Avenue, Medina Road, Wauchope Avenue, and so forth. One would
conclude, not merely that the ground is _not_ “ripe for building,” but
that it has not even blossomed.
Having successfully passed the attractions of “Ye Olde Sportsman,” the
“Blue Anchor,” the “Jolly Sailor,” and finally the “Rose in Bloom” and
the “Two Brewers,” we come into Whitstable.
Domesday Book, which mentions “Seseltre,” says nothing of Whitstable,
but there was then a “Hundred of Whitstapele,” a division even then of
ancient standing. The name was, in its origin, evidently that of some
prominent white pole, or post, or even of some white church-tower; for
the word “stapol” means any of these; surviving in modern English as
“steeple.” But no one will ever know what that object really was from
which, in such roundabout fashion, the town of Whitstable derives its
name.
It is, at first sight, a singularly unattractive place; and the more
you see of it, the less you like it. The streets are narrow and mean,
without the saving grace of picturesqueness, and the sea-front adds to
the squalor by being occupied by the railway-station and a very coaly
dock.
Having thus successfully taken away the character of Whitstable, I will
now address myself to the oyster fishery.
There are numerous conflicting accounts of the reason for Julius
Cæsar’s invasion of Britain. Some historians consider he was impressed
with the riches of the country in gold and skins, and some--with
clearer vision, no doubt--are of opinion that he was actuated by sheer
lust of conquest. Whitstable, however, is earnestly of opinion that
Cæsar’s coming was entirely and exclusively prompted by an appetite
for “Whitstable natives.” It is a flattering belief. At any rate, the
“Rutupine oysters” (the “natives” in question) were at that time high
in favour at Rome, and continued so with all the Roman emperors;
so that one instinctively associates “oyster” and “emperor” in
indissoluble company.
No one will ever discover the origin of oyster-eating. The eating of
the first must have been a thrilling experiment, as James the First
declared. “He was a very valiant man,” said our British Solomon, “who
first ventured upon the eating of oysters.”
One can imagine that man, faced with the dilemma of starving or being
poisoned, making the awful experiment. Whoever he was, or whenever he
flourished, he merits the gratitude of that portion of the world which
eats oysters.
Speaking for myself, and those of my fellow men who are illogical
enough not to like oysters--never having tried them, and never
intending to do so--I am quite cold upon the subject, and therefore am
inclined the more to applaud Seneca, who, austere philosopher that he
was, described the oyster as “a thing that cannot be called food,” but
an abstruse luxury, “a provocative of appetite, causing those who are
already full to eat more.” Thus he dismisses oyster-eaters to the cold
shades of contempt occupied by such people as those who take bitters
and wash themselves out with table-waters. But Seneca himself was an
oyster-eater, and spoke, as your true philosopher should speak, at
first-hand knowledge.
The Rutupine oyster of Roman times still remains, as the “Whitstable
native” of our own day, the prime favourite, and the cultivation
of him here employs some three thousand people. We shall see the
fishing-grounds to better advantage on having left Whitstable behind
and ascending the cliffs of Tankerton. They are not lofty cliffs, but
they do assuredly command a fine view, out over this shallow sea at
the entrance of the Swale. There, where at low water you perceive the
long “Street Stones” stretching out to sea, many of the eighty-five or
more of the Whitstable oyster-fleet will, at the beginning of August,
when the season begins, generally be seen going to their work of
dredging up the young oysters, so far away as Margate, presently to
return with the spoils of their dredge-nets, for laying down in these
Whitstable grounds. Others are engaged in dredging for the mature
oysters, ready for the market. It takes seven years for the Whitstable
natives to reach maturity, and they do so only to perfection in this
patch of shallow water, some two miles square. There are many theories
to account for the especial virtues that reside in these exceptionally
favoured waters; but the generally received explanation of the
undoubted fact is that the shallowness of the water permits it to be
readily warmed by the sun, and that the streams descending from the
land keep the sea-bottom free from mud. The Colchester native, from the
shores of Essex, has a great reputation, but he is often dredged up and
taken to finally mature in Whitstable waters.
[Illustration: WHITSTABLE: THE OLD LIGHTHOUSE AND THE OYSTER FLEET.]
The natural history of the oyster is interesting. There is, for one
thing, no “race-suicide” about what would-be eloquent journalists were
once used to term the “succulent bivalve,” for it has been estimated
that each oyster produces 276,000 little ones. It will thus be readily
supposed that it takes all the efforts of the busy dredgers to prevent
over-population. But the oyster has many enemies, from his birth
upwards. Beginning as “spat,” or spawn, in June or July, the young swim
about for a while, a prey for everything else that swims. They then
settle down to grow shells, at the rate of one inch in diameter every
year, for three years, after which the growth is slower. Meanwhile,
sand, mud, and weeds, but especially crabs and starfish, slay the
oysters in hundreds of thousands; and frosts often cause great havoc,
that in the winter of 1890–91 being responsible for £15,000 damage.
But the starfish is the oyster’s worst enemy. He spreads two or three
of his arms over the upper shell of the oyster and places the others
firmly on the ground, his position being such that his central orifice,
or mouth, is at the edge of the shell at the point farthest from the
hinge. Then he applies a steady pull. In course of time the oyster gets
tired, his big muscle gradually relaxes, and the shell reluctantly
opens. The rest is silence.
Thus it happens that the oyster-fishers regard the starfish with
the bitterest hatred. It is probably the worst feeling these burly,
genial, jerseyed fellows entertain; for they don’t really dislike
the person who doesn’t eat oysters. Him they regard merely with a
half-amused, half-pitying contempt. Always, of course, excepting
oyster-poachers, against whom no law can, of course, be sufficiently
severe. To deal with the poachers who come out at night to dredge in
the preserves of the fishermen who, after ages of oyster-culture,
were incorporated by Act of Parliament into the Corporation of Free
Dredgers, in 1793, and have in latter years converted themselves
into the “Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company,” there are guard-boats
always at hand, and, should they not be sufficient, there are artful
contrivances laid upon the sea-bed, called “the creeps.” These consist
of chains with barbed grapnels attached at intervals, which intercept
and destroy the dredge-nets of these illegal dredgers.
There are not many prettier sights than that of the oyster-fleet,
on a sunny day; the red-brown sails of the ten- to twenty-ton yawls
going in stately procession over these shallow waters. They come back
with uncounted millions of “brood” for laying down in this restricted
pasture off Whitstable, or with mature oysters for the markets. In the
season, which extends by Act of Parliament from August 5th to May 14th,
as many as 200,000 “natives” are despatched from Whitstable in a day;
and great is the activity to be observed here in that time, on the
foreshore, and in the wooden shanties where they are scrubbed clean
and packed carefully in barrels. Be sure, the Whitstable folk will
impress upon you that there is no competition possible with the local
specialty.
Surely he must have been one of these local patriots who originally
propounded this excruciating conundrum: “What is the difference between
a Whitstable oyster and a bad one?” the answer being, “One is a native,
the other a settler!”
A pretty, pretty wit!
Among other efforts on this subject this may be recalled: “Why is an
oyster the greatest curiosity in the world?” “Because you have to take
it out of its bed before you can tuck it in.”
One quaint old feature of Whitstable beach is the unconventional
lighthouse, cobbled up out of some old copperas-works. It makes not a
bad picture, looking out across the Swale, with the cliffs of Warden
Point beyond, and the oyster-dredging fleet in between. At low water
the shallow channel displays a long rocky ridge called the “Street
Stones,” supposed to be the remains of a Roman causeway.
At the farther end of Whitstable, and giving character to an otherwise
featureless shore, is the wooded bluff of Tankerton, the growing
residential suburb that Whitstable is at last throwing off. New roads
strike through it, and there are fond hopes that the place will become
a great seaside resort; but it has hitherto been slow in developing.
Meanwhile, the cliff-top--a very modest cliff-top though it be--
affords the best view of the “Street Stones” and of the crowded
flotilla of the oyster-fleet. The coast-line through the hamlet of
Swalecliffe, and on to and through Herne Bay, is protected from wastage
by the sea by serried ranks of closely-set wooden groynes, erected in
the shingle at enormous expense and looking, in the long perspective,
like gigantic combs.