THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 UNKNOWN KENT
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 A PAINTER IN PALESTINE. 
 
 A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA. 
 
 THE LAST CRUSADE. 
 
 ADVENTURES WITH A SKETCH 
 BOOK. 
 
 A CRUISE ACROSS EUROPE. 
 
 THE BODLEY HEAD
 
 CANTRKBURY 
 
 THE ANGEI. TOWKR
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 BY DONALD MAXWELL 
 
 Being a series of unmethodical Explorations of the 
 County illustrated in line and colour by the Author 
 
 JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED 
 LONDON MCMXXI
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND
 
 DA 
 
 TO MY COLLEAGUES OF 
 THE GRAPHIC 
 
 In labours, in watchings, in fastings ; 
 
 By evil report and good report : 
 
 As unknown, and yet well known ; 
 
 As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; 
 
 As poor, yet making many rich ; 
 
 As having nothing, and yet possessing all things. 
 
 873350
 
 ^.1 
 
 A "DOORWAY IN THE. VEAUD
 
 PREFACE 
 
 To write about the whole of Kent and to give even a tithe 
 of the sketches acquired in years of rambling about its ways 
 would be to make a catalogue. It has seemed to me better, 
 therefore, to leave out all reference to places when there is 
 not room to say more than a word or two about them, how- 
 ever interesting they may be. 
 
 The reader, in looking through this book for the first 
 time, will probably experience the same emotion as a 
 certain Quaker, when in a dream he reached Heaven — 
 surprise at not finding many old friends whose presence 
 was confidently anticipated, and equal astonishment at 
 the inclusion of those whom he did not in the least expect 
 to meet. But for all this, I will be a good guide and 
 lead him into places not easily found, and show them to him 
 in such an atmosphere that he will see the things that are 
 hidden. I will tell him that the loveliest glades of the 
 garden of England are composed of slag heaps — slag heaps of 
 the days of Good Queen Bess, but slag heaps for all that ; 
 and I will dwell on this fact because I am an optimist believ- 
 ing that beauty is not only a joy for ever, but that it will
 
 Vlll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ultimately prevail. I will take him to despised industrial 
 regions and cause him to see the glamour and mystery therein 
 of old Baghdad and the Arabian Nights. 
 
 I have had to leave out whole sketch-books of drawings. 
 At the last minute, however, I have included a doorway of 
 Mr. Lewis Hind's Elizabethan cottage, Island Farm, near 
 Biddenden, because it expresses so well the spirit of these 
 old Wealden half-timbered houses, and will stand as a type 
 for many others. 
 
 My thanks are due to the Editor of the Graphic for kind 
 permission to include in this book both notes and sketches 
 which have, in some form, been published in that paper ; 
 also acknowledgment to the Editors of the Yachting Monthly 
 and Saturday Review respectively, for similar courtesies. 
 
 The Beacon, 
 Borstal, 
 
 Rochester. 
 
 September 21, 1921.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Track in the Wood J 
 
 II. The Quest of the Mills of Maidstone 13 
 
 III. The Ways of the Weald • 33 
 
 IV. The Riddle of Tenterden Tower 45 
 
 V. Studies in Napoleonic Landscape 59 
 
 VI. Thames-side Kent 67 
 
 VII. The Land of Cement -93 
 
 VIII. The Land of Bridges 107 
 
 IX. The Land of Streams 121 
 
 X. The Lost Road of Kent 131 
 
 XL The Amateur Archaeologists H7 
 
 XII. The Seven Islands of Kent 163 
 
 XIII. Canterbury and the Sea 181 
 
 XIV. Wind and Water 191 
 
 XV. The Silver Darent 199
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATES 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Canterbury : the Angel Tower Frontispiece 
 
 The Medway at Borstal 6 
 
 The Dedication of the Seven Lamps of Borstal 8 
 
 A Woodland Glade near Rochester 10 
 
 The Vanished Mill of Loose 18 
 
 Boughton Quarries 26 
 
 The Furnace Pond of Horsmonden 3 8 
 
 An Elizabethan Iron Foundry in the Weald . . . • . 40 
 
 The Marshes from Oxney Island 5° 
 
 The "Walrus" at Greenwich 82 
 
 The Giant Jars of Greenhithe 88 
 
 Cement Works at Borstal 96 
 
 The Pillars of Wouldham . . . 9 8 
 
 The Nearer East: a fantasy of Bluebell Hill 102 
 
 The Medway near Maidstone no 
 
 Old Maidstone from the River 114 
 
 Hadlow Tower 124 
 
 The Stair, Tonbridge 126 
 
 The Straight Mile, Tonbridge 128 
 
 The Medway at Yalding 152 
 
 A Nocturne of Margate Roads 16S 
 
 In Gillingham Reach .... 178 
 
 St. Margaret's Bay 186 
 
 A Dover Foreshore 18S 
 
 XI
 
 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LINE SKETCHES AND MAPS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Doorway in the Weald vi 
 
 ' : Like a River of Grass between Thickly Wooded Shores" . . 2 
 
 Heading: "The Track in the Wood" 3 
 
 Rochester Castle and Bridge, from Borstal 4 
 
 The Wooded Hills above Halling 5 
 
 Map: Vicinity of Borstai 7 
 
 Bottle Kilns 12 
 
 Old Water Mill, Boxley H 
 
 A Ragstone Quarry, Boughton l S 
 
 Beam over Doorway in Great Culand Farm, Burham . . . .16 
 Ancient Man-power Wheel for drawing Water, Burham . . .17 
 
 The Pulp Train 21 
 
 " Its Architecture was Babylonian or Assyrian " 23 
 
 Woodland Path, Loose 24 
 
 Old Mill at Loose 25 
 
 Disused Water-mill, Tovil 29 
 
 In the Village of Loose 30 
 
 A Water-wheel at Tovil 31 
 
 Paper-mill in Loose Valley 32 
 
 A Little Shop Window in Headcorn 34 
 
 Heading: "The Ways of the Weald" 35 
 
 Boughton Hill 36 
 
 Goudhurst 37 
 
 A Glimpse of a Garden at Yalding 39 
 
 A Quaint Sky-line in the Weald 41 
 
 The Medway at Yalding 43 
 
 Oasthouses 44 
 
 Appledore Church 46 
 
 Heading: "The Riddle of Tenterden Tower" 47 
 
 Isle of Oxney and Sea Approaches in the Middle Ages ... 48 
 
 Isle of Oxney from the Marshes at Appledore 49 
 
 Stone in the Isle of Oxney 51 
 
 Tenterden from the Isle of Oxney 52 
 
 View from the same place 400 Years ago 53
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Half-timbered House in Tenterden 55 
 
 At the Woolpack Inn, Tenterden 57 
 
 The Royal Military Canal 58 
 
 Map of Romney Marsh 60 
 
 Heading: " Studies in Napoleonic Landscape" 61 
 
 Martello Towers near Hythe 62 
 
 The Royal Military Canal from the High Land of the Isle of 
 
 OXNEY 62 
 
 Lympne and Romney Marsh 63 
 
 The Hill Country near Hythe 65 
 
 Roman Walls near Lympne 66 
 
 Cliffe Creek 68 
 
 The " Worcester " at Greenhithe 69 
 
 "Ours was the Marsh Country down by the River" . . . .71 
 
 A Road out of Cliffe 73 
 
 Entrance to the Tunnel at Higham 75 
 
 A Crater in Kent 77 
 
 Frindsbury Shore 79 
 
 A Bit of Cooling Castle 81 
 
 At Greenhithe . 83 
 
 A Little Ship from Lilliput 85 
 
 A Powder Hulk near Erith 86 
 
 A Nocturne of Northfleet 87 
 
 Dartford 91 
 
 Aspdin's Kiln, Northfleet 92 
 
 Kilns, Bluebell Hill 94 
 
 Heading: "The Land of Cement" 95 
 
 Map : " Land of Cement " 96 
 
 The " Penguin " below Bridge 97 
 
 The Horse-shoe Bend : the Medway at Burham 99 
 
 Cement Land from above Burham 100 
 
 Ruins of Cement Works near New Hythe 101 
 
 A Kentish Venice: New Hythe in Flood 104 
 
 Outward Bound 106 
 
 Aylesford ^ . . 108 
 
 Aylesford Bridge 109
 
 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Map: Old Bridges of the Medway in 
 
 Allington Castle 113 
 
 East Farleigh 115 
 
 Teston Bridge 117 
 
 Bridge and Church, Yalding 119 
 
 On the Beult, Yalding 120 
 
 Map: Medway near Tondridge 122 
 
 Heading: "The Land of Streams" . 123 
 
 Map: Medway Valley, Yalding 127 
 
 "The Twelve Apostles" 129 
 
 Ye Old Chequers, Tonbridge 130 
 
 Map: The Sea Coast and the "Weald Coast" 132 
 
 Heading: "The Lost Road of Kent" 133 
 
 The Castle, Sutton Valence 135 
 
 Gables at Yalding 146 
 
 Sutton Valence 148 
 
 Heading: " The Amateur Archaeologists " 149 
 
 The Giants of Yalding 155 
 
 By Twyford Bridge, Yalding 158 
 
 A Riverside Hop Garden 159 
 
 Rats Castle, near Mere worth 160 
 
 "Fair Rosamond's Bower," Westenhanger 161 
 
 Westenhanger Castle 162 
 
 Map : The Seven Islands of Kent 164 
 
 Minster in Sheppey 165 
 
 King's Ferry Bridge 167 
 
 Alongside " Actveon " 169 
 
 Sea Reach, Calm 170 
 
 Sea Reach, Fresh 171 
 
 This is not meant to be a Comic Picture. It simply shows what 
 
 curious things people will do for Pleasure 172 
 
 Painting a Cruiser's Funnel 173 
 
 The "Penguin" and H.M.S. "Magnificent" 173 
 
 The Tower at Grain 174 
 
 Reculvers and Margate Hook 175 
 
 The Mussel Manor, Leysdown 177
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Plates for Shipbuilding, in Chatham Dockyard 178 
 
 Old Map showing Leysdown .... .... 179 
 
 Old Boats. A Dockyard Scene 180 
 
 Dover l % 2 
 
 Map: Canterbury and the Roman Ports 183 
 
 Kingsdown 190 
 
 Delce Mill, Rochester 192 
 
 Heading: "Wind and Water" 193 
 
 The Medway from Rochester Station 195 
 
 In the Rochester River 198 
 
 Eynesford Bridge .... . . ... 200 
 
 HORTON KlRBY 201 
 
 Franks 203 
 
 Shoreham Mill 205 
 
 A Mill on the Darent 206
 
 THE TRACK IN THE WOOD
 
 
 
 ... .. 3: .£. 
 
 " LIKE A RIVER OF GRASS BETWEEN 
 THICKLY WOODED SHORES" (p. IO).
 
 r T 
 
 THE TRACK IN THE WOOD 
 
 IT came to me one day as I gazed upon the Medway from 
 the heights of Borstal that I had explored many lands 
 and written of many places but singularly little about my 
 own county, Kent. And this was neither from want of love 
 for it nor from any flagging of enthusiasm on the subject of 
 its highways and byways, but rather because of its very 
 familiarity and the ease with which material could be gathered 
 together. The impulse to discover something is largely 
 fostered by the inaccessibility of the thing to be discovered. 
 Had America been an island within sight of Lisbon, probably 
 Columbus would never have fitted out an expedition to explore 
 
 B 2
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 ROCHESTER CASTLE AND BRIDGE, FROM BORSTAL. 
 
 it. Eldorados might have been had for the asking, and no 
 one worried about them. 
 
 The wonderfulness of Kent was stamped upon my imagina- 
 tion when I was furthest away from England. It was in 
 India that I saw potential pictures of moonlight in the land 
 of cement. It was in Persia that I came to feel more 
 than ever the Eastern magic of the chalklands at home, 
 and it was in the Garden of Eden that I began to realize 
 more fully the richer pictorial possibilities of the Garden of 
 England. 
 
 So I vowed a vow. And the vow was this. That I should 
 travel through Kent with log-book and sketch-book as an 
 explorer in a new land, taking nothing for granted, and 
 working my way along, topographically, by my wits. Having 
 made my resolve it was not long before I started. Brown, 
 my faithful Achates on many similar trips, said he would
 
 THE TRACK IN THE WOOD 
 
 THE WOODED HILLS ABOVE HALLING. 
 
 like to come too, so he joined up, full of enthusiasm. We 
 left the warmth and cheery comfort of a fire for the bleak 
 highway on a bitterly cold day at about three of the clock. 
 
 Brown carried numerous books, making the sum total 
 of his possessions somewhat heavy. My impedimenta con- 
 sisted of a small haversack, a large sketch-book, and a 
 mysterious tin containing a medley of chalks and paint 
 arranged so unsystematically that I can never find anything 
 I want. My children refer to this last item somewhat con- 
 temptuously as the muddle box, a rather good description, 
 I think. The white chalk is the great offender. It always 
 rolls about and coats all the other chalks with white, so that 
 it is impossible to tell their real colour. It also renders 
 indiarubber peculiarly ineffective and even dangerous. 
 
 Steering a more or less westerly course we marched boldly 
 down the village street. Unmindful of the fact that we were
 
 6 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 bent on an epoch-making exploration of Kent, Borstal took not 
 the slightest notice of our determined look and heroic bearing. 
 It was bitterly cold, and I felt that I should need a great deal 
 of determination if I succeeded in getting much sketching 
 done before sunset. 
 
 Lector : You old fraud ! Trying to make dear, simple- 
 minded old ladies imagine that you had a terribly rough time. 
 You know quite well I saw you only a few days afterwards 
 living in great luxury and cribbing sketches made on the spot 
 from a series of picture postcards. 
 
 Pictor : Hush ! Don't go and give the whole show away. 
 You must start off by letting everybody have a glimpse of 
 the artist as a most terrible fellow who will stick at nothing. 
 Besides, there is the publisher. At present he does not 
 suspect me. If he once got hold of that picture-postcard idea 
 he might publish them, and then where should I be ? 
 
 What shall I say of Borstal ? If I am out to rediscover 
 Kent I must not shirk my responsibilities because I am near 
 home. Well, Borstal is frankly hideous, a utilitarian yellow 
 brick blot, perched on the hillside with a glorious view of the 
 river and the valley of the Medway. It is situated in a position 
 that many famous towns might envy, and for that reason 
 it is rather a tragedy that it should be so exceptionally ugly. 
 The architecture of Borstal might be described as belonging 
 to the ironic style. Crowned by a fort and dominated by the 
 old convict prison — now H.M. Institution for the reformation 
 of young offenders — it straggles downhill in the direction of 
 Rochester to become a single row of houses overlooking the
 
 
 ■■.::. ■•..».•.•! 
 
 
 g*o . 
 
 
 THE MEDWAY AT BORSTAL
 
 THE TRACK IN THE WOOD 
 
 s~- V 
 
 STROUD 
 
 river, roomy and comfort- 
 able if not beautiful, till 
 Borstal Road reaches Fort 
 Clarence in the chain of 
 the old moated and walled 
 defences of Rochester and 
 Chatham. I could wish 
 that some imaginative dis- 
 trict council would make 
 a law that every yellow 
 brick house in Borstal 
 must be whitewashed. It 
 would not be any use a 
 few householders doing it. 
 The scheme should be a 
 comprehensive one. Then 
 I should have hopes of my 
 own village even from a 
 pictorial point of view. 
 We should look like an Italian mountain town, and artists 
 from far and near would come to sketch us. 
 
 When we came to the church, we entered, for it is always 
 open, and I showed Brown the seven lamps. He had not 
 seen them before. Here is the tale. 
 
 The Story of the Seven Lamps of Borstal 
 
 Once upon a time there lived in the City of Damascus 
 an old brassworker who made lamps. And he was a cunning 

 
 8 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 workman, a Christian and a Syrian, and the workshop wherein 
 he worked was in the Street which is called Straight. And he 
 made seven lamps to hang before the altar of God, even as 
 the lamps of fire that are the seven spirits of God. 
 
 Now it chanced that about the same time that he had 
 finished the fashioning of these lamps a painter came into the 
 City, and he sought out the Street which is called Straight, 
 and came to the workshop of the old man. And he spoke 
 with the lampmaker and said, Show me, I pray, lamps of 
 brass. And he showed him the seven lamps which he had 
 made. And when the stranger saw them he was moved 
 with great admiration, and he said, I will buy these lamps, 
 and they shall hang in the Church of St. Matthew which 
 is in Borstal. Now the old brassworker was glad when 
 he said I will buy the lamps, and he said, I will fashion 
 yet more of the cunning work which is in these lamps, and 
 they shall be ready to take into the ship in thirty and 
 one days. 
 
 Now the painter returned to his own land, and before the 
 thirty and one days were passed there was a great war. And 
 the lamps came not. Then he said to himself, Now that 
 the Turks have become our enemies the lamps that were in 
 Damascus shall never come unto Borstal. 
 
 And the Turks took the workshop of the lampmaker, and 
 took all the brass and made the lampmaker and his men work 
 like slaves, and they made instruments of war for the Turks. 
 But ere the officer of the Turks had entered, the old man had 
 taken the lamps and buried them in the ground, for he said,
 
 *xt\ 
 
 THE DEDICATION OF THE 
 SEVEN LAMPS OF BORSTAL
 
 THE TRACK IN THE WOOD 9 
 
 Lest the ungodly find them and the Church of St. Matthew 
 at Borstal be desolate. 
 
 Now the painter served in the King's ships, and the war raged 
 sore, and he forgot the lamps that were in Damascus. But after 
 five years, when the war was spent and the tumult had abated, 
 it chanced that he was sent on duty to Damascus. And then he 
 called to mind the lamps, and said, I will go unto the house of the 
 lampmaker, which is in the Street called Straight. Peradventure 
 he is dead and his goods scattered, or peradventure he liveth. 
 
 And when he had come thither he found the workshop, 
 and the old man remembered him when he came in. And he 
 was overjoyed, and took him into the deep cellar and uncovered 
 the lamps. And the painter sought to pay him money for 
 preserving the lamps, but the lampmaker would take nothing, 
 for he said, Are they not thy lamps, and for the Church of 
 St. Matthew ? And so the lamps came to Borstal. 
 
 And when the feast of St. Paul was come, there was great 
 rejoicing in Borstal, and the Bishop came to dedicate the 
 seven lamps. Now it chanced that the painter before the 
 war had with him two friends at Borstal, but both were killed, 
 and he alone was left. So he said, Let the lamps be as a 
 memorial to them. And the whole company of priests and 
 singers in the church marched in procession to the War Shrine 
 and made prayers for the souls of the Dead, and they marched 
 back again to the altar with loud singing. And they had 
 vestments of scarlet and of gold, and the Priest of Borstal 
 took a torch and kindled it at the lights of the altar and gave 
 it to the Bishop. And the Bishop kindled the lamps, and they
 
 io UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 burned even as the lamps of fire before the throne of Heaven. 
 And the seven lamps were dedicated to the Glory of God and 
 in memory of Victor Morgan and Luke Taylor who fell in the 
 great war. And the people of Borstal remembered that day. 
 
 # 
 
 After leaving the church we took the path by the school, 
 past the Fort and the rather gloomy precincts of the old 
 convict prison, now " H.M. Institution for the Reformation 
 of Young Offenders," and gained the high-road that runs 
 from Rochester to Maidstone, past Fort Bridgewood and along 
 the top of the down. To the right lies the wooded valley of 
 Nashenden, some four hundred feet below. 
 
 The weather was not very clear, and partly owing to this 
 circumstance we seemed to be looking down on an amazing 
 thing — a glacier cut through the dark, tree-covered ridge 
 that overlooks Burham. I have sketched the effect at the 
 head of this chapter. Brown immediately christened it the 
 Mer de Grass, and proposed an ascent. To get there we had 
 to go down into the valley by means of a track, appropriately 
 called Stoney Lane, past a little stone farm. The woodland 
 walk soon opened out into a glade, a fruitful place for wild 
 strawberries, as many Borstal children know, and seemed 
 like a river of grass between thickly wooded shores. 
 
 The track steepens as it nears the crest of the hill and the 
 Robin Hood Inn. A line of gaunt and windblown trees make 
 a striking sky-line. Looking back, the high ground of the 
 Rochester road appeared in golden light, the woods and the 
 green track by which we had come in shadow.
 
 3s?~~. 
 
 jfeS^: 
 
 
 ■5^*- 
 
 N 
 
 A WOODLAND GLADE NEAR ROCHESTER
 
 THE TRACK IN THE WOOD n 
 
 In some weather the view from this point is a remarkable 
 one. In this light, however, it looked flat and uninteresting. 
 I have seen it sometimes on a November afternoon, when a 
 huge red sun is lighting up the river so that it has the appear- 
 ance of a fiery serpent lashing itself in coils across the plain 
 between blue-wooded heights dimmed with faint layers of 
 smoke and mist. The serried ranks of chimneys and multi- 
 tudinous kilns and quays create an intangible world that some 
 enchanter might have produced by magic, and it is only the 
 reality of a tug and a train of barges, or the plodding worka- 
 day aspect of a stumpy on her way down to Rochester that 
 destroy the illusion. 
 
 Some people always run down smoke and chimneys, but 
 given enough smoke and enough chimneys the most fantastic 
 and wonderful effects can be seen. To the painter, indeed, 
 it does not really matter so much what a thing is. It matters 
 more what it suggests. In the sketch of some giant bottles, 
 reproduced as the frontispiece of this book, there is a good test 
 of this theory. Show it to the average man as an illustration 
 to the Arabian Nights and he will rather like it, but tell him 
 that it is a very realistic and faithful drawing of some bottle 
 kilns not very far from Rochester, and he will immediately 
 either discount its romance or doubt its accuracy. 
 
 The comparisons which I have made so often between the 
 cement world of the Medway country and the magic East 
 have been received generally with roars of laughter. The 
 fact remains, however, that when I show people portfolios of 
 sketches made in Persia, India, or the nearer East and throw
 
 12 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 in a few Medway subjects to add variety, invariably they 
 chose some of these as the most characteristic example of 
 mystery and glamour. 
 
 For a time we kept along the fields at the top of the hill, 
 enjoying the wide prospect of winding river and busy 
 industry far below, and descended by a rough path in the 
 direction of Snodland, where the Medway loops itself into 
 horse-shoe bends to disappear from sight at Aylesford. 
 
 FTl
 
 II 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE
 
 ■"* 
 
 OLD WATER-MILL, BOXLEY.
 
 A RAGSTONE QUARRY, BOUGHTON. 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 
 
 MAPS are popularly supposed to assist a traveller in 
 finding his way and explaining by diagram the nature 
 of the country through which he is passing. As far as 
 Brown and I were concerned, they led often to disappoint- 
 ment and invariably to wrong conclusions. At all times 
 Brown is blessed with a tremendous imagination, but give 
 him a map and he will fairly let himself go in romantic 
 speculation. 
 
 I must say there is a good deal of extenuation for Brown's 
 romancing. Even an ordnance survey map can be very
 
 i6 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 / 
 
 »■» w u «» *• if * » t/uMAuv i/yff-^-t-n. ^.-T 
 
 
 71 " f^^T^r y^— T u l cWi(UUWl'i»*^*Vmnv3^aia^3UEi^^ 
 
 &<o 
 
 BEAM OVER DOORWAY IN GREAT CULAND FARM, BURHAM. 
 
 misleading. When you come across the word Castle, not 
 " castle," you have a right to expect something just recogniz- 
 able as a building. In the case of towns, big ones are marked 
 in large lettering, and little ones in smaller type, corresponding 
 with their diminishing size. Not so, however, with castles. 
 Queenborough Castle, for instance, which is a water-tank on 
 a slight bump in a railway station, is announced in the same 
 dignified lettering as Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, one of 
 the finest examples of a moated mediaeval building in England. 
 I think in the case of an obvious fraud like Queenborough, 
 the map should be lettered ELTSAC or 31ISVD- Then we 
 should know where we were. Or, better still, why not work
 
 Castle 
 CastIe 
 
 CA S X L E 
 
 CCCCCASTLE 
 
 CASTLE 
 
 £CASTLE 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 17 
 
 out a system of symbolic lettering to indicate the condition 
 of the building, something like this — 
 
 Ancient castle in fine preservation . . 
 Restored, but with some ancient 
 
 features 
 Partly in ruins 
 
 Doubtful site 
 
 Modern 
 
 Modern, built for war profiteer 
 
 In the case of the quest of the Mills of Maidstone, it was a 
 map that was our undoing. Coming down from the hill to 
 the region of the river, we sat down in a field by a row of 
 bottle kilns. Brown spread out a map, and we held a council 
 to determine our route. .__ ^_ 
 
 I rather wanted to push 
 into " the Pyrenees " (the 
 wild chalk-gorge country 
 by North Hailing, across 
 the river), but Brown's 
 eye caught the oft-re- 
 peated word mill tucked 
 away in small type all 
 round Maidstone, so we 
 decided on water-mills as 
 our next objective. 
 
 The first one on the 
 list was quite near, 
 
 ANCIENT MAN-POWER WHEEL FOR DRAWING 
 WATER, BURHAM. 
 
 c
 
 18 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 according to Brown, who found ancient water-wheel marked 
 as at Great Culand Farm at Burham. It seemed an im- 
 possible place for a mill, as the farm stands on the slope 
 of the hill. However, Brown soon proved that in a chalky 
 country it was probable that a spring would burst out of the 
 hillside just at this point with sufficient volume to drive a 
 turbine. 
 
 The nearer we approached the farm, the less likely became 
 the probability of a mill, but we were convinced that we should 
 find something, as in the case of Castle, so we boldly knocked 
 at the door of the farm and waited. An elderly man came 
 out to answer our questions, and took us into a shed built 
 against the farmhouse. 
 
 There, sure enough, was something that undoubtedly 
 appeared to be a large water-wheel. On closer inspection, 
 we found that it was a man-power wheel that raises water 
 from a well. By getting inside the wheel and walking uphill, 
 a man could keep it turning slowly to raise a barrel of water 
 some 180 feet. 
 
 I drew the wheel while Brown drew the water. He was 
 pretty well blown by the time the barrel of water arrived, and 
 I think I got the best of the deal. I think, moreover, the 
 experience will have a good moral effect on Brown, who says 
 now that he realizes what a poor sort of hobby working a 
 treadmill must be. I have sketched the beam over one of 
 the doors of this old house, which is built partly of hewn 
 chalk. There are said to have been three wheels of this sort 
 in England. One has just been demolished, and the other,
 
 THE VANISHED MILL OF LOOSE
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 19 
 
 worked by a donkey, is at Carisbrooke Castle. Thus our friend 
 at the farm believes that this water-wheel is the only one of 
 its kind, i.e. worked entirely by man-power, that can be seen 
 in this country. 
 
 The next mill on our programme was just outside Maid- 
 stone, by "The Running Horse." When it became visible on 
 the left hand as the road dips down to cross the brook, we 
 felt that this was more the style of thing we were after. How- 
 ever, we had again drawn a blank. True, there had once 
 been a mill at this spot, but the mill-wheel was no more, and 
 the mill house had been fitted up as a tiny church, an offshoot 
 of Boxley. Nothing daunted, we pushed on into Maidstone, 
 Brown cheerful and buoyed up by visions of multitudinous 
 mills on the stream flowing from Loose. We knew at least 
 of paper-mills in the neighbourhood, and the making of paper 
 I have found is often associated with the weird and the 
 picturesque, as the following yarn will show. 
 
 The Story of the City of Paper 
 
 By the merest chance one day, I found myself in an 
 amazing place by the waters of Sittingbourne, not, as these 
 sketches would seem to indicate, by the waters of Babylon, 
 and became, perforce, a student of paper in a paper world. 
 Life is full of surprises. I have roamed the streets of Baghdad 
 and found squalor. I wait for a train at Sittingbourne and 
 find an Arabian Nights entertainment. 
 
 Ask any naval man what he did during the Great War.
 
 20 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Should he have been stationed at Harwich or Sheerness, he 
 will tell you that he spent most of his time waiting on the 
 platform at Manningtree or Sittingbourne. For some reason 
 or other these places are destined to be the abode of travellers, 
 and so when I tell you how I discovered a wonderful world 
 within a stone's throw of Sittingbourne station, you need 
 not be dull should you at any time find yourself stuck there. 
 
 It chanced that my train ran a little beyond the platform 
 in the direction of Faversham. The time was evening. 
 Strange lights and shadows glancing across the vapour-laden 
 brickfields gave a curious Eastern glamour to the landscape. 
 Suddenly a shaft of gold lit up the distance, and in a moment 
 of time I beheld a city, four-square, with ramparts, gates, and 
 towers. Its architecture was Babylonian or Assyrian. It 
 stood by the waters of Milton Creek, and, because of the 
 familiar sailing barges at its quays, I could see that it was no 
 mirage. Then the sunlight failed. The city vanished, and 
 the train steamed back into the station. 
 
 I had to change, and there was more than an hour to wait. 
 To this delay I owe my discovery. Had my train been ready 
 to leave, I should have proceeded on my journey, become a 
 teetotaller, and said nothing more about the Assyrian vision. 
 
 Turning to the right, outside the station, I took a road 
 towards the waters of the creek. At first the path led through 
 some brickfields ; then, under long high walls that hid the 
 landscape in the direction of my dream city, and finally, 
 through a sort of no-man's land of rusted machinery. Huge 
 piles of what seemed to be masonry, some of it grey and some
 
 
 1 P?r- 
 
 THE PULP TRAIN.
 
 22 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 of it white, rose up on all sides. Between these enormous 
 masses led byways, and through a broader gorge, a sort of 
 Grand Canon of Colerado, a little engine puffed busily, hauling 
 trucks loaded with square objects. On close inspection these 
 proved to be either wood-pulp or masses of old newspapers 
 compressed into cubes. Then I realized that all this seeming 
 masonry was of the same material, wood-pulp or paper, and 
 the glorious vision which had been conjured up in my 
 imagination of a hitherto undiscovered Nineveh or Babylon 
 in Kent, was gone. 
 
 Barges were unloading the paper or pulp. Trucks were 
 carrying it away. Cranes were piling it into pyramids, and 
 all the time, the busy mills were turning out thousands of 
 miles of paper. 
 
 Rejoice and be glad, ye publishers and all printers ! Of the 
 making of many books there is no end. 
 
 TV* *7V* 
 
 # 
 
 We boarded a tram labelled Loose, and descended into 
 the valley which Brown had pronounced to be a valley of 
 mills. The main road crosses the stream by a stone bridge 
 at some height, and from this advantageous position we could 
 see both up and down the valley. Down-stream we were 
 looking upon a long sheet of water that looked like a mill- 
 pond, but we could not see without a nearer view whether 
 any of the buildings below it were mills or not. Up the valley 
 on the other side we looked towards what appeared to be mills, 
 and at our feet a skeleton or ghost of a mill. The mill had 
 gone, but sluices, walls, and stonework foundations showed
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 23 
 
 clearly where it had been (sketch facing page 18). A passer- 
 by informed us that it had once been a paper-mill. 
 
 "ITS ARCHITECTURE WAS BABYLONIAN OR ASSYRIAN. 
 
 " And now," said Brown, gazing somewhat reproachfully 
 at the map which had so misled him, "it is only a mill on 
 paper. But there are two more marked higher up." 
 
 We found these. One sketched (facing page 18)
 
 24 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 WOODLAND PATH, LOOSE. 
 
 more or less a ruin, and 
 the other, a black tarred 
 structure, picturesque and 
 complete with millpond, 
 but not working. Nothing 
 daunted, we explored the 
 valley towards Boughton by 
 a delightful path clinging to 
 the steep valley side, a wild 
 woodland walk that might 
 have been designed for a 
 pilgrims' way on the stage, 
 but it led to no mills. 
 The quarries lie further on, a bit of one I have sketched on 
 page 15, and two delightful old timbered houses hidden 
 among the green in the steep dip of the valley. It is interesting 
 to remember that the stone from these hills was used in the 
 building of Westminster Abbey, and, by Royal Command, it 
 was decreed that no Kentish stone should be carted to London 
 for any other purpose. The stone was used also, in the days 
 when gunnery was still in its infancy, for cannon balls, iron 
 being too scarce or considered too difficult to work when any- 
 thing heavy and hard would do as well. 
 
 We retraced our steps to Loose. The houses with little 
 bridges crossing the streams to their doors (sketched 29) 
 call to mind the quaint ways of Holland. Further down, 
 where the stream takes a bend to the right, lies a millpond, 
 but again we had drawn a blank, our sixth failure, for the
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 25 
 
 buildings below it are merely the site of a mill now 
 defunct. 
 
 Loose is a pleasant place of old mill-pools and green 
 cottage gardens reflected in the still surface of the water. 
 
 OLD MILL AT LOOSE. 
 
 There is a spring at the upper end of the village and the 
 stream here is said to be the re-appearance of a lost stream 
 from higher up the valley — hence according to some authorities 
 the derivation of Loose — the water looses itself. I should 
 have thought Found would have been more appropriate, but 
 I am quite an amateur at these place-name problems.
 
 26 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 We pushed on, lured by the prospect of a mill, which is 
 one of the Seven Hopes of the sketcher. 
 
 The Seven Hopes of the Landscape Painter 
 A mill (windmill or water- A roof 
 
 mill) A ridge of hills 
 
 A river A wood 
 
 A tower A bridge 
 
 I do not mean that hundreds of good sketches cannot be 
 found without these things. Yet in rambling about in search 
 of material I have always found the anticipation of any of my 
 Seven Hopes brightens the landscape possibilities. To begin 
 with a mill. A windmill, apart from its inherent picturesque- 
 ness, is bound to stand in a place worth winning for its com- 
 manding position, and as to a watermill, why, the very fact 
 that you know that yonder dip between the hills contains a 
 watermill is enough to cheer you with all sorts of anticipations. 
 
 I loved the brimming wave that swam 
 
 Thro' quiet meadows round the mill, 
 The sleepy pool above the dam, 
 
 The pool beneath it never still. 
 The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor, 
 
 The dark round of the dripping wheel, 
 The very air about the door 
 
 Made misty with the floating meal.* 
 
 The second hope, a river, needs no advocacy. How point- 
 less often seems a valley in which no stream is visible. The 
 silver glint of water makes interesting many a view that would 
 
 * Tennyson : The Miller's Daughter.
 
 BOUGHTON QUARRIES
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 27 
 
 be monotonous without it. The same antidote to monotony 
 is a tower. It enables you to touch uninteresting matter and 
 transmute it into the purest gold. 
 
 Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 
 Whilst the landskip round it measures ; 
 
 ***** 
 Towers and battlements it sees 
 Bosomed high in tufted trees.* 
 
 The fourth hope, a roof, often saves the situation. The 
 straight lines of a gable among a writhing mass of green 
 foliage, the pleasant russet of a great barn, or, since we are 
 sketching in Kent, the quaint shape of an oasthouse. 
 
 The fifth hope, a ridge of hills, has the great property of 
 welding together otherwise disunited elements. Mean little 
 houses and straggling things can become significant under a 
 steady skyline. The swelling curve of a hill will bring into 
 unity a hundred trivialities so that they become, as it were, 
 controlled instruments in an orchestra, instead of isolated 
 ones playing different tunes in different keys. 
 
 The sixth hope, a wood, needs little explanation. The 
 green mystery of foliage, the unexpected vistas and clearings, 
 with their suggestion of infinity. And the seventh hope is a 
 bridge, with its rhythmical repetition of arches. The spring- 
 ing curves of a big span, the shadow patterns on the ground 
 or reflections in water make for interest and focus in many 
 a pointless piece of country. 
 
 And here, now we are talking about sketching, I must tell 
 
 * Milton: L' Allegro.
 
 28 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 you a story about an artist friend of mine, who started a 
 summer sketching class. It is a sad story, but now that much 
 time has elapsed even my friend, who was the victim in a 
 dreadful tragedy, can see the funny side of it. 
 
 Finding a most picturesque farm with a tumble-down barn, 
 the roof of which in its decrepit state was a subject of great 
 variety of colour, he agreed to rent it from a farmer. The old 
 barn with its roof studies in orange and madder and green 
 was alone worth the money. Unfortunately, the farmer had 
 a conscience and feeling that he had taken rather a lot of 
 money for such a poor place determined to do his tenant 
 well. On the day that the class assembled full of enthusiasm 
 for studying old barns the finishing touches were being put to 
 a new corrugated iron roof and every weed or piece of moss 
 in the place ruthlessly removed. 
 
 My friend had said so much about the barn being just the 
 thing for his sketching class that the good farmer imagined 
 they were all going to work inside it. 
 
 The moral of this touching tale is that in some circum- 
 stances you should never speak the truth, not from any base 
 motive, but because most people cannot understand it. Had 
 my friend explained in detail that people were going to make 
 serious studies and sketches of this barn of which the owner 
 was heartily ashamed, no doubt the farmer would have refused 
 to have anything to do with such a scheme of systematic 
 lunacy. 
 
 It was towards evening that our efforts were rewarded by
 
 THE QUEST OF THE MILLS OF MAIDSTONE 29 
 
 the sight and sound of what did undoubtedly seem to be a 
 real, live, working mill. It stood across the narrow valley, 
 
 < I 
 
 ^h 
 
 =r- . 
 
 DISUSED WATER-MILL, TOVIL. 
 
 as sketched at the end of this chapter, and proved to be a 
 paper-mill. Further on were two disused mills, one at 
 Bockington and one at Tovil. I have sketched this last one on
 
 30 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 page 29. Near this was a little mill with wheel merrily working, 
 as shown on page 31, and we came also to another paper-mill. 
 
 After seven blanks we had found the first working mill, and 
 so our quest was over.
 
 A WATER-WHEEL AT TOVIL.
 
 32 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Lector : But now you have found mills at Maidstone, are 
 you not going to tell us something about them ? 
 
 Pictor : No, certainly not. I am fed up with mills, and 
 this is the story of the quest only, so I can end the chapter 
 with a clear conscience and go to bed.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE WAYS OF THE WEALD
 
 
 A LITTLE SHOP WINDOW IN HEADCORN.
 
 THE WAYS OF THE WEALD 
 
 THE Weald of Kent is the region, once thickly wooded 
 and an almost impenetrable wild, lying between the 
 ragstone ridge south of Maidstone and a line drawn from 
 Ashurst to Dungeness, excluding the marshes within six or 
 eight miles of the sea. This is only approximate, the exact 
 limits of the Weald having been the subject of numerous 
 lawsuits on the subject of tithe and the felling of timber. 
 It has been contended that the Pilgrims' Way on the chalk 
 hills of the North Downs is the northern limit. These are 
 known as the White Hills, whereas the ragstone ridge are 
 called the Red Hills. A celebrated case was fought out, 
 
 D 2
 
 36 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 . ' - ■ 
 
 BOUGHTON HILL. 
 
 dragging on for a period of ten years, on the question of wood 
 tithe. The Weald of Kent was exempt from a tithe on wood, 
 and the crux of the whole case was whether a certain wood 
 near Aylesford was within the boundaries of the Weald of 
 Kent or not. If the Red Hills formed the boundary this 
 wood did not come within the exempted area, and the Vicar 
 of Aylesford was right in claiming tithe. The Vicar's counsel, 
 addressing the jury, said — 
 
 " The Chalk Hills will enclose within the Weald the towns 
 of Maidstone and Mailing. Lord Stanhope, who professes 
 great knowledge on the subject, says that the Weald means 
 a Wild, and my learned friend, the Solicitor-General, who 
 has been studying the Saxon language for the purpose of this 
 cause, tells you that a Weald is nothing more or less than an 
 immense wilderness, impervious to man or beast. If that is 
 so, it is a very odd and extraordinary thing that Maidstone,
 
 THE WAYS OF THE WEALD 
 
 37 
 
 which is the capital of Kent, should have been situate in a 
 place impervious to the approach of man or beast ! ' 
 
 G-otrpviwfeyr 
 
 GOUDHURST. 
 
 Since this famous case the Red Hills have been regarded 
 as the northernmost limit of the Weald. 
 
 The fact that nearly all buildings in this forest region 
 must have been of wood accounts for the scarcity of archi- 
 tectural traces of great age except in the churches. The nature
 
 38 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 of the country, too, has been changed since the land has been 
 cleared and brought into cultivation. We must remember 
 that this was the iron country of the Elizabethan age. 
 
 It is probable that one day, if we are to trust the analogies 
 of history, artists and poets will be rambling among the slag 
 heaps of Sheffield or the waste places of Nuneaton, seeking 
 inspiration. They will delight in the rich verdure of steep 
 declivities. They will select picturesque " bits " suitable 
 for the landscape of the Royal Academy of 3021 among 
 the well-wooded vales, or write odes to nightingales in the 
 solemn stillness of the forest glades. Perhaps some archae- 
 ologist will remind them that these rural haunts were not 
 designed to be holiday haunts, and the tumbled appearance 
 of the primrose-covered banks was the result of man's work 
 and not Nature's ; that these woodlands were once regions 
 of roaring industry, of furnace glare and belching smoke, 
 of fierce labour disputes, of strikes, and the unceasing struggle 
 between capital and labour. 
 
 Time was when the very heart of the Garden of England, 
 the Weald of Kent, was (together with the adjacent Weald 
 of Sussex) the black country of our land. The dense forests 
 of this district yielded fuel for the furnaces. The iron-stone 
 could be had for the asking on the surface (the numerous 
 pits, now generally ponds, abound in a hundred unexpected 
 places still), and charcoal was easily made. Thus the iron- 
 masters flourished. It was coal, elsewhere, that was the 
 death of the charcoal process. 
 
 The Romans worked iron in the great forest of Anderida,
 
 THE FURNACE POND OK HORSMONDEN
 
 THE WAYS OF THE WEALD 
 
 39 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF A GARDEN AT YALDING. 
 
 which was their name for the Weald. Of Saxon ironworks 
 we find no direct mention ; but there is a good deal of indirect 
 evidence that iron was produced here. In the Middle Ages 
 we find various references to furnaces at work. 
 
 Agitation of various kinds was growing against the furnace 
 owners. "Ina few years," wrote Christopher Baker, " there 
 will not be sufficient timber to build ships for Her Majesty's 
 service." And Archbishop Parker writes in alarm to Elizabeth 
 that Sir Richard Sackville was about to build more ironworks 
 in Westwell, Kent, and he refers to the advance of the industry
 
 40 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 as a " plague which if it shall come into the country, I fear it 
 will breed much grudge and desolation." At this time there 
 were " ten owners, six forges, and eight furnaces in the Weald 
 of Kent." 
 
 There is a note somewhat of modern industrialism in 
 Camden's account of the Weald. 
 
 "It is full of iron mines," he writes, " for the casting of 
 which there are furnaces up and down the country, and 
 abundance of wood is yearly spent ; many streams are drawn 
 into one channel, and a great deal of meadow ground is turned 
 into ponds and pools for the driving of mills by the flashes 
 which, beating with hammers upon the iron, fill the neighbour- 
 hood round about, night and day, with continued noise. 
 The proprietors of the mines, by casting of cannon and other 
 things, make them turn to good account. But whether 
 the nation is in any way advantaged by them, is a doubt 
 which the next age will be better able to resolve." 
 
 Facing this page I have tried to reconstruct an old-time iron- 
 works with its water-power for the bellows and crude 
 machinery. It stands below a hammer pond in a clearing, 
 and in my sketch, which was arrived at after some thought, 
 I think you will find some sort of idea of the black country of 
 the Elizabethan era. 
 
 In hidden-away places, often among thick trees, can be 
 found the old hammer ponds or furnace ponds that supplied 
 the water-power for the crude machinery of those days, in 
 the infancy of iron. The largest of these, and one of the most 
 picturesquely situated, is the furnace pond at Horsmonden.
 
 AN ELIZABETHAN IRON FOUNDRY IN THE WEALD
 
 THE WAYS OF THE WEALD 
 
 4i 
 
 Facing page 38 I have sketched the site of the long- vanished 
 iron-mills below the high-banked lake. A tumbling fall with 
 pools and brick-built basins makes a pleasant noise of waters 
 in the little wood. In the dim light I can almost see a ghostly 
 
 A QUAINT SKY-LINE IN THE WEALD. 
 
 mill where the shades of the old ironmasters of Kent still 
 watch their men fashioning ordnance for the defence of the 
 realm against the King of Spain. 
 
 This reminds me, too, that there were profiteers in those 
 days. Cannon was sold to foreign ships, and it is said that
 
 42 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 some of those used against us by the Great Armada were 
 cast in Kent. 
 
 The iron trade of the Weald reached its most prosperous 
 days at the close of Elizabeth's reign. The gradual disappear- 
 ance of the forests that had been looked upon as an almost 
 inexhaustible supply, made for high price in charcoal, and the 
 Wealden ironmasters closed down one after the other. In 
 1740 there were only four furnaces in Kent. The last output 
 of Kentish iron was at Lamberhurst, where the old railings 
 of St. Paul's Cathedral were cast. These were removed in 
 1870 and sent to Canada. The ship which carried them 
 foundered, but a few that were recovered at great expense 
 and trouble are to be seen in Toronto. 
 
 Another industry that made the Weald famous in the 
 Middle Ages was the making of broadcloth. Cranbrook and 
 its surrounding townships had become places of considerable 
 industrial importance. 
 
 The necessity of large areas of pasture for the feeding of 
 sheep led to the cutting down of forests as much as the necessity 
 for fuel for the furnaces. It was chiefly in the densely wooded 
 region that divided Sussex from Kent that the wholesale 
 clearing of woodlands was made by the ironmasters. Yet, 
 compared to the ordered state of things now, the Weald 
 must have been in a large measure an impenetrable wild, 
 through which certain tracks — they could hardly be called 
 roads — had been made. 
 
 Pack-horses in large numbers, roped together like caravans 
 of camels in the East, were the main users of the roads for
 
 THE WAYS OF THE WEALD 
 
 43 
 
 commerce, and oxen for heavy goods. The frequency of the 
 Woolpack as the name of an Inn still speaks of those days. 
 Sometimes a paved way can be found, as at Biddenden, a 
 path some two feet wide of flagstones irregularly set. Some- 
 
 THE MEDWAY AT YALDING. 
 
 times a sunken track, a veritable ghost of a road, may be 
 traced still, though abandoned and overgrown, in the depths 
 of a wood or wandering up hill and down dale without reference 
 to the roads of to-day. 
 
 We get glimpses of the appalling state of things in the
 
 44 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 winter in various chronicles : horses up to their girths and 
 coaches drawn into comparative safety by six yoke of oxen ! 
 
 I have seen in Hungary and in some of the thickly wooded 
 valleys of the Lebanon in Syria, almost exactly the sort of 
 thing the Weald of Kent must have been like in those days — 
 a tangled mass of featureless forest growth through which 
 paths have been cleared for pack-horses, and, in the latter 
 case, mules and camels.
 
 IV 
 THE RIDDLE OF TENTERDEN TOWER
 
 APPLEDORE CHURCH.
 
 '-?■ 
 
 
 1r.i 
 
 THE RIDDLE OF TENTERDEN TOWER 
 
 GREAT play has been made in the days of our forefathers 
 in ridiculing the superstitious belief of many that a 
 famous steeple in the Weald of Kent caused the Haven of 
 Sandwich to silt up. Yet so deep-rooted was the belief 
 among the people of Sandwich in the reign of Henry VIII. of 
 Tenterden Tower bringing evil days upon them that inquiry 
 was made in all seriousness by no less a person than Sir 
 Thomas More to try and get at the substance and origin of 
 the fable. A commission was sitting to collect evidence
 
 4 8 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 as to the causes of the decay of Sandwich port. In his 
 Dialogues More recounts how after many witnesses a very 
 old man arose and said — 
 
 " Ye maysters, say every man what he wyll, cha marked 
 this matter as well as sum other, and I wote how it waxed 
 naughte well ynoughe ; for I knewe good, I have marked, 
 so chave when it began to wax wore." 
 
 " And what hath hurt it, good father ? " quod those 
 gentlemen. 
 
 " By my fayth, Maysters," quod he, " yonder same 
 Tenterden Stepell, and nothing ellys, that, by the Masse, 
 sholde 'twere a fayre fyshpole." 
 
 " Why hath the stepell hurt the haven, good father ? " 
 quod they. 
 
 "Nay, by'r Lady, Maysters," quod he, "yeh cannot tele 
 you well why, but chote well yt hath ; for I knew that a good 
 haven tyll the stepell was bylded, and by the Mary masse, 
 
 cha marked yt never 
 throve synnys." 
 
 Tenterden lies in the 
 Weald five leagues from 
 the sea, and it is difficult 
 indeed to find any con- 
 nection between the mis- 
 fortunes of the port of 
 Sandwich and this stately 
 tower. 
 
 Explanations, how- 
 
 * "RYij?2_ 
 
 ISLE OF OXNEY AND SEA APPROACHES IN 
 THE MIDDLE AGES.
 
 THE RIDDLE OF TENTERDEN TOWER 
 
 49 
 
 ISLE OF OXNEY FROM THE MARSHES AT APPLEDORE. 
 
 ever, of the inner meaning of the fable have not been 
 wanting. Like the story of the geese that saved the 
 Capitol, invented by some ingenious person to justify a 
 ritual the origin of which had been lost, so fertile minds 
 have devised all sorts of feasible readings of the riddle of 
 Tenterden. 
 
 One story is that this tower, built in 1461, replaced an 
 earlier structure fashioned by Earl Godwin, who became so 
 enthusiastic about its construction that he fetched stones 
 for it that should have maintained his sea wall, from Thanet, 
 consequently losing part of his estate, which became the 
 Goodwin Sands. A most improbable thing, to begin with, 
 bringing stones from Thanet, which is a chalk country, to 
 the Weald, which abounds in stone. Another yarn, which 
 bears some family likeness to the above, is that a sum of 
 money in the hands of the Bishops of Rochester for the pur- 
 pose of maintaining the sea walls in Thanet was used for 
 the building of Tenterden Tower to the detriment of the East 
 Kent marshes, which became flooded. 
 
 Both these explanations are rendered particularly ludicrous 
 because they explain away the wrong thing. The old fable 
 
 E
 
 50 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 was that Tenterden steeple caused the silting up of Sandwich 
 Haven, as the old doggerel tells us — 
 
 Of many people it hath been sayed 
 
 That Tenterden steeple Sandwich haven hath decayed, 
 
 and was not the cause of the Goodwin Sands. The Goodwin 
 Sands were dragged in by Hugh Latimer when using this 
 old saying as an illustration. He was preaching before 
 Edward VI., and he slightly misquoted More either accidentally 
 or intentionally to heighten his effect. 
 
 Now it happened not long ago, when I was bent on ex- 
 ploring the Isle of Oxney, I stumbled, almost by accident, 
 against evidence which revealed to me some possible con- 
 nection between Tenterden and Sandwich. It has often been 
 my good fortune when rambling with my sketch-book to make 
 notes of places and things which have had in them more 
 than I knew. In this case I scribbled a sketch which re- 
 vealed to me in the twinkling of an eye the solution of the 
 age-long riddle of Tenterden Tower. I will tell you how it 
 happened. 
 
 Appledore is just the quaint, old-world, old-fashioned 
 place that its name suggests, on the fringe of the great expanse 
 of the Romney Marsh, by the tree-bordered canal that leads 
 from Hythe to the waters of the Rother by old Rye. The 
 village is about a mile from the station, where I landed from 
 Ashford at 8.30 in the morning. Across the level land and 
 beyond the green procession of foliage along the Royal 
 Military Canal, a relic of the invasion menace of the Napoleonic
 
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 THE RIDDLE OF TENTERDEN TOWER 
 
 5i 
 
 *Tt«1 
 
 STONE IN THE ISLE OF OXNEY. 
 
 days, rose the headland of Stone cliff, the eastern end of the 
 Isle of Oxney. I remembered as I marched along that a few 
 centuries previously a traveller in this spot would have been 
 upon the sea nearing land by Appledore and Ham Street. 
 On his port beam would be Rye. The sea would divide at 
 Oxney, which would have stood very much like Warden 
 Point in Sheppey, one estuary running up the Rother valley 
 and the other encircling the island by way of Small Hythe, 
 joining the main waters again below Rolvenden. The little 
 sketch-map here reproduced will give a rough idea of the 
 coastline — the waters by Hayling Island to-day being almost 
 an exact parallel to these estuaries and creeks as they were 
 in the Middle Ages. 
 
 I gained the island and climbed the steep ascent, some 
 two hundred feet, at Stone, and stood overlooking the great 
 flat plain. I have sketched it here, not as it was on this
 
 52 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 occasion, but as I found it later when evening fell and the 
 old-time sea, now marshland, intersected with a gleaming 
 network of ditches, stretched its gloomy length from Rye 
 to Lympne. The dark trees of the canal led the eye to the 
 headland by Play den, where the Rother glittered in light, 
 
 -/vvv 
 
 it 4$ -3 
 
 TEXTERDEN' FROM THE ISLE OF OXN'EY. 
 
 and away to the south a misty brightness seemed to show 
 the sea. 
 
 Walking along the crown of the hill I came first to a long 
 cleft in the ground running east and west, not unlike an 
 irregular railway cutting in parts, the result, I imagine, of 
 a landslide where the descent is very steep hard by. A little 
 further on I was surprised to find a pond. It was on the 
 very highest part of the crest. From near this place I could
 
 THE RIDDLE OF TEXTERDEX TOWER 
 
 53 
 
 see the great stretch of marshland mile upon mile in the 
 direction of Lympne, the tree-bordered canal creeping like a 
 great green caterpillar across the level meadows and the 
 tower of Stone Church half hidden by trees and the falling land. 
 Then as I walked towards Wittersham I came upon a feature 
 
 *"r^5*^ "V., 
 
 "!" 
 
 VIEW FROM THE SAME PLACE 4OO YEARS AGO. 
 
 which I found an amazing thing, but which the inhabitants 
 did not seem to think worthy of notice, a chain of ponds like 
 the one I had seen at the summit of the rising ridge. I counted 
 no less than nineteen in the three miles between Stone and 
 Wittersham. Some were open pools, some rush-bordered 
 marshes, some little lakes in the woodlands with banks 
 clustered thickly with bluebells, violets, primroses. 
 
 Such a thing is familiarity that I could not get up any
 
 54 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 local interest among the natives concerning their strange 
 position. Several men I questioned seemed to think that 
 the summit of hills was the proper place for ponds, not 
 hollows. I suppose some tilted stratum of rock forces water 
 to this high position, and the clay surface does not readily 
 allow it to soak away. Perhaps some geological reader 
 will enlighten me. 
 
 Near one of these pools, where the land begins to fall away 
 to the marsh some two hundred feet below, I could see 
 the Tower of Tenterden crowning a wooded hill. To the 
 right was a tongue of level green running up between hilly 
 banks on the way to Small Hythe. I have sketched the scene 
 on page 52. Now the name Small Hythe is a reminder 
 that this place once stood upon a branch of the Rother estuary, 
 and four hundred years or so ago was a shipbuilding place 
 for Hythe further down and for Rye across the water. 
 The place where the road crosses a ditch is still called the 
 Ferry. 
 
 Burnt down in 15 14, the busy quays and warehouses of 
 Small Hythe were never rebuilt, and the place possesses now 
 only a few small houses, one, a rambling timbered structure 
 belonging to Miss Ellen Terry, speaks eloquently of the glory 
 that has departed. You can see on the sketch-map how this 
 place is situated with regard to Tenterden. It was the port 
 and harbour of the town, and the creek that ran up to within 
 quite a short distance of Tenterden was a place of shipyards 
 and docks. 
 
 I thought as I sketched in the level meadows that I must
 
 *** 
 
 HALF-TIMBERED HOUSE 
 IN TENTERDEN.
 
 56 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 succeed in making them look flat in contrast to the rolling 
 country enclosing them, as one day this was not grass but 
 water, an arm of the sea bearing ships to fetch wool and iron 
 from the Weald. Fancy even led me to dream a dream and 
 sketch the place again, not as it was now, but as it would have 
 been when Sandwich Haven was beginning to silt up (page 53) . 
 What a fine lead Tenterden Tower with its beacon flare at 
 night ! What an easy harbour compared to difficult Sand- 
 wich, and with cargoes, too, richer than that ancient port could 
 provide ! 
 
 Tenterden had grown up rapidly owing chiefly to the wool 
 trade. Refugees from Flanders had set up looms and the 
 broadcloth of Kent had world-wide fame. The amount of 
 smuggling in wool was enormous, and huge profits were made 
 by shipowners trading with the Continent. In spite of 
 vigilance and Acts of Parliament to the effect that wool must 
 not be exported without special licence this illicit trade — free 
 trade as it was then called — grew and grew. A ship with a 
 few kegs of brandy and a few bales of silk snugly landed 
 could always double her profits by returning with a few bales 
 of wool. 
 
 So here is, perhaps, light on the riddle of long ago : Sand- 
 wich becoming more and more difficult : the Weald, with its 
 wool and splendid prospect of profiteering, to say nothing 
 of the undoubted blessings to the shipowner of " free trade," 
 smuggling : a beacon tower, seen from far, and a safe road. 
 There is a north-easter blowing, and the light is failing. Can 
 you not hear the master exclaim —
 
 >'!"|A*-!pi 
 
 AT THE WOOLPACK INN, TENTERDEN.
 
 58 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 "By the Masse, let us make Tenterden Stepell and 
 nothyng ellys ? " 
 
 And so the Haven of Sandwich went from bad to 
 worse. 
 
 *y 
 
 "V 
 
 THE ROYAL MILITARY CANAL.
 
 V 
 STUDIES IN NAPOLEONIC LANDSCAPE
 
 
 torn ////a///, mgh um 3oc£'&' /> » ' 
 
 fcLYMPNIL "'*" HY7H£ 
 
 
 APPLEDORE 
 
 N oto Romwey new rowe*^ 
 
 a 
 LYDD 
 
 -pu(VCrENES3
 
 ,A^ 
 
 - ■ Jfc- 
 
 STUDIES IN NAPOLEONIC LANDSCAPE 
 
 NAPOLEON left his mark upon Europe, not only as an 
 immediate consequence of his military genius, but 
 also indirectly by the repercussion of his activities. Regions 
 where he never penetrated were braced up, poetry, especially 
 of the patriotic kind, was kindled into flame, and even painting 
 felt the stirring of the nation and took on a new lease of 
 life. The very landscape of our coast is in parts still 
 eloquent of those days of expected invasion, when nursemaids 
 quieted refractory children with threats of Boney and when 
 the old roads of the Romans from inland to the sea resounded 
 with the clatter of horsemen and the tramp of the men of Kent 
 Stand upon the high land overlooking the vast track of 
 Romney Marsh, and you will observe, as your eye travels
 
 62 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 MARTELLO TOWERS NEAR HYTHE. 
 
 over mile after mile of 
 the green plain bordered 
 by the sea, two curious 
 features. One is an in- 
 terminable procession of 
 thick trees, making a 
 monster caterpillar, from 
 Hythe by Appledore to 
 Rye, in long straight 
 lengths with an occa- 
 sional kink as if the 
 creature was creeping 
 with difficulty across the land dragging his huge length along 
 toward the Rother. From the headland at Stone in Oxney, 
 which was once an island like Thanet, it is particularly 
 striking. 
 
 The other feature is 
 the strange appearance 
 of the coast-line, which 
 is studded with innu- 
 merable little turrets. 
 These explain themselves 
 after a moment's con- 
 sideration. It is clear 
 that they are some sort 
 of defences to command 
 the beach. They are, 
 in fact, the famous 
 
 THE ROYAL MILITARY CANAL FROM THE 
 HIGH LAND OF THE ISLE OF OXNEY.
 
 STUDIES IN NAPOLEONIC LANDSCAPE 
 
 63 
 
 LYMPNE AND ROMNEY MARSH. 
 
 Martello towers, part of Pitt's plan of countering a landing 
 in this region. 
 
 The first mystery, the caterpillar, is the Royal Military 
 Canal, now thickly overgrown with stately trees that make 
 it a conspicuous object, as it stretches across the marshes. 
 This waterway, flanked by the Royal Military Road, joined 
 Hythe with Rye, making Romney Marsh an island, and the 
 second line of defence, should Napoleon succeed in flinging 
 his army on the beach and silencing the coast batteries. It 
 was also useful for transport of guns and munitions. Every 
 few hundred yards there is a kink and a blockhouse command- 
 ing the reach. 
 
 It is necessary to remember that Dungeness is the nearest 
 point to France, and Napoleon with the Grande Armee, and 
 multitudinous gunboats and transports, was encamped at
 
 64 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Boulogne before this scheme of repelling an invasion had been 
 completed. In the Kentish Gazette of Sept. II, 1804, the 
 following paragraph appeared : — 
 
 " On Thursday last Mr. Pitt, accompanied by Generals 
 Twiss and Moore, met the Lords and Bailiffs of the Level of 
 Romney Marsh, at Newhall near Dymchurch, to consider 
 of the best mode of inundating the Marsh in case of invasion, 
 when it was determined that, on the appearance of the 
 enemy on the coast, the sluices should be opened to admit 
 the sea so as to fill the dykes, which might be accomplished 
 in one tide, and in case of actual invasion remain open another 
 tide, which would be sufficient to inundate the whole level." 
 
 This scheme of defence, the forts, the canal, and the flooding 
 of the marshes, although quite sound for the military condi- 
 tions of those days, was received with the usual scepticism 
 and ridicule which Englishmen, especially those imbued with 
 the conservatism of rural places, are prone to indulge in. 
 One retired army officer was so incensed that he wrote to the 
 Times offering as an effective substitute, and at considerably 
 less expense to the country, to put his own cocked hat on a 
 stick by way of protecting our sacred shores and striking 
 terror in the breasts of all potential foes. 
 
 As for the scheme of flooding the marshes, it is interesting 
 to note that the level of the land is so much below the sea 
 at high tide in places, that were it not for Dymchurch wall, 
 the steep land at Lympne would be still washed by the waves 
 as when the Romans came, and be something like seven or 
 eight feet deep in spring tides.
 
 STUDIES IN NAPOLEONIC LANDSCAPE 
 
 65 
 
 ,; S > 
 
 ^ ? 
 
 THE HILL COUNTRY NEA1? HVTHE. 
 
 A century has passed and Napoleon's threat of invasion 
 is almost forgotten, or only likely to be revived as part of 
 the centenary remembrances of his death. From the heights 
 of Lympne, with its broad prospect of land and sea — 
 
 Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness, 
 Across the narrow strip of salt, 
 
 our Premier and the French President have met in friendly 
 discussion of their mutual interests. 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Shade of Pitt ! What revenge does time bring. It would 
 have seemed to the patriot of a hundred years ago as mad as 
 the prospect to-day of an Anglo-Prussian alliance against 
 France. 
 
 ROMAN WALLS NEAR LYMPNE.
 
 VI 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT
 
 tfK u^ 
 
 CLIFFE CREEK.
 
 ^ 
 
 THE "WORCESTER AT GREENHITHE. 
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 
 
 T SUPPOSE there is no part of Kent so little known to 
 * those whose lawful occasions do not take them there on 
 business as the river-shore, along the northern limit of the 
 county and the marshes below Gravesend backed by a 
 ridge of hill that divides the Thames from the Medway. Of 
 this last tract of country, known as the Hundred of Hoo, no 
 one seems to have a good word to say. The old rhyme gave 
 the dog a bad name — 
 
 He that rideth in the Hundred of Hoo 
 Besides pilfering Seamen shall find dirt enow. 
 
 And writers since have stuck to it. Mr. Walter Jerrold, in 
 his Highways and Byways in Kent, dismisses the whole
 
 70 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 region in a page and a half, though he allows that " there is 
 much pleasant country to be seen in the wooded hills and 
 cornlands stretching across the central part of the peninsula 
 and a charm in the broad marshes going down to the river." 
 He says " the villages have not much to detain us except that 
 of Cooling." Another Kentish topographer, Mr. Charles 
 Cox, in his Rambles in Kent, speaks of the Hundred of 
 Hoo as having "no claim to be picturesque or attractive." 
 " Probably," he writes, " this dreary peninsula is the least 
 visited of any part of Kent, and the rambler is advised to 
 shun it unless he is a church-lover." Guide-books, as far as 
 I can remember, are equally contemptuous. 
 
 My attention was first called to this part of the world by 
 the delightful scenes in Great Expectations. For inspiration 
 to a landscape painter it would be difficult to find anything 
 more suggestive than some of Dickens's word-pictures. 
 
 " Ours was the marsh country down by the river, within, 
 as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most 
 vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to 
 me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon 
 towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, . . . 
 that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, inter- 
 sected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle 
 feeding upon it, was the marshes ; and that the low leaden 
 line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair 
 from which the wind was rushing was the sea." 
 
 Here is another one — 
 
 " The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then,
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 
 
 7i 
 
 
 OURS WAS THE MARSH COUNTRY DOWN BY THE RIVER. 
 
 "GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 as I stopped to look after him ; and the river was just another 
 horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black ; and the 
 sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black 
 lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly 
 make out the only two black things in all the prospect that 
 seemed to be standing upright ; one of these was the beacon 
 by which the sailors steered — like an unhooped cask upon a 
 pole — an ugly thing when you were near it ; the other a 
 gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held 
 a pirate. 
 
 " It was pleasant and quiet there, with the sails on the 
 river passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes when
 
 72 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 the tide was low, looking as if they belonged to sunken 
 ships that were still sailing on at the bottom of the 
 water." 
 
 " It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, 
 and with a dim horizon ; while the winding river turned and 
 turned, and the great floating buoys turned and turned, and 
 everything else seemed stranded and still." 
 
 These and many other equally effective glimpses of an 
 unknown country fired my imagination many years ago, 
 and, before I came to live in the Medway country, I often 
 rambled about that Thames marshland. I remember landing 
 in a sailing-boat at Cliffe Creek, where there were some curious 
 ruins of long-ago disused kilns. Here is a sketch of them. 
 I struck inland to make Rochester, when on the way I beheld 
 an amazing thing — a crater in Kent. 
 
 Now I was going down to the sea in a ship, and it is given 
 to such people to see the wonders of the deep and a few extras 
 on land thrown in, so I ought not to have been particularly 
 astonished. I will recount the tale, however, for it seemed 
 to me worth remembering. 
 
 The New Geology, or The Story of a Crater in Kent 
 
 One summer afternoon, when the tide had turned against 
 her and when the wind had died down to an almost imper- 
 ceptible stirring of the air, a small sailing craft dropped anchor 
 off the creek at Cliffe. Her captain and crew, with cheery 
 optimism, had given Rochester as their next address, so it
 
 A ROAD QUI OF CL1FFE.
 
 74 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 was decided that an expedition for the purpose of fetching 
 letters should be fitted out. 
 
 I volunteered to be the expedition. Sketch-book in hand, 
 I started on a ramble which had Rochester as a distant objec- 
 tive, chancing such finds as the landscape of the land could 
 afford. The marshes seemed asleep and the dull and distant 
 beat of the paddle of some steamer alone indicated that the 
 activities of time and tide were still proceeding. 
 
 Near Higham I left the marshes and came upon the 
 rising ground towards Great Hermitage, some two hundred 
 feet higher, with broad prospects of the distant river now 
 almost invisible in the haze, led on by the sight of a windmill 
 and some mysterious monument like a damaged edition of 
 Cleopatra's needle. I could not find out what event or what 
 person this obelisk stood for, but a farm labourer volunteered 
 the information that some one, he had forgotten who, had 
 built it, he had forgotten when, to be seen from the river, 
 he had forgotten why. 
 
 He also volunteered the information that "The Stone 
 Horse," the direction of which he pointed out ("Thank you, 
 sir. It is very thirsty weather"), was the departure point 
 for the road into Strood. I thought I would get better 
 acquainted with " The Stone Horse " and see if I could get the 
 landlady to make me some tea. This, remember, was before 
 the days when it was considered necessary for the defence of 
 the realm to force travellers in country places to wait till 
 six o'clock for a drink, however hot the weather, for the 
 practical effect at most inns of closing the bar in the afternoon
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 
 
 75 
 
 is a general exodus of everybody connected with the place, 
 so that the pleasant amenities of tea are no more. At six 
 o'clock it is too late for tea, and by that time the traveller 
 is so thirsty that he will drink the place dry on beer or 
 any other liquid that can be obtained quickly. This state of 
 
 ENTRANCE TO THE TUNNEL AT HIGHAM. 
 
 things is supposed by innumerable simple and well-meaning 
 people to promote temperance. 
 
 I struck across some fields, dipping down towards a little 
 wood of young larches. The place was quiet and seemed out 
 of the world. The ridge of Great Hermitage hid the region 
 of^the Thames, although an occasionally long-drawn note of 
 a siren, distant and attenuated, still told of ships on their 
 way to London. I looked back as I walked, and a little to
 
 76 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 my left beheld an amazing thing — a crater ! The little larch 
 wood, I saw, overtopped a precipitous descent from the depths 
 of which rose wreaths of smoke slowly dissipating themselves 
 in the air as they ascended. Then an ominous rumble. 
 Wonders unceasing, I was just in time for the eruption. The 
 ground trembled, the roar grew louder and then died away 
 suddenly as a column of white steam appeared like a cloud 
 escaping from the nether regions. 
 
 A closer inspection revealed the fact that I was looking 
 down into the railway tunnel of the line between Higham and 
 Strood at a point where there is an opening. It is a place 
 with a curious history. I had, indeed, lost my crater, but 
 instead I found a ghost — the ghost of a dead canal. 
 
 Time was, before the railway had come to kill them, that 
 canals were used for the transport of heavy goods all over 
 England. There are few places that are far removed from 
 shipping and the coast that have not some waterway, linking 
 it up with river and sea. Many of these ways are now derelict 
 or disused, as the Wey-Arun Canal or the Royal Military 
 Canal of Romney Marsh. Had not the introduction of rail- 
 ways checked the activities of the canals no doubt there would 
 have developed a much more connected system of inland 
 water transport. I remember once seeing a map of projected 
 canals in Kent. They were to run all over the place. I 
 cannot remember many details, but I know one scheme was to 
 link the Medway with the Royal Military Canal near Appledore 
 by cutting from a point near East Peckham at a cost of 
 £320,000. A bill was passed for this in 1811, but there was
 
 ^a — „a 
 
 ^ 
 
 "^r.v 
 
 A CRATER IN KENT.
 
 78 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 much delay, and it was finally abandoned, whether on account 
 of the subsequent foreshadowed railway projects or not I do 
 not know. The sketch (facing page 126) of the Straight 
 Mile near Tonbridge is also interesting in this connection, 
 as it shows evidence of a similar abandoned canal project. 
 
 The tunnel which now carries the railway from Higham 
 to Strood was finished in 1824 for the waterway known as 
 the Thames Medway Canal. It was twenty-two feet in 
 breadth with a towpath alongside five feet wide, two and 
 a quarter miles long. An amusing account is given by a 
 traveller who went through this subterranean way by steam- 
 boat soon after it was first opened. 
 
 " After our eyes had become reconciled to the transition 
 to almost Egyptian darkness, relieved, however, by the lurid 
 glare of our flambeaux, we had opportunity to contemplate 
 our rather romantic situation. The steamer filled up nearly 
 the whole channel, and the noise caused by the reverberation 
 of the dash of the paddles in the water, the indistinct light, 
 and the consciousness of being absolutely traversing the 
 bowels of the earth, produced a very odd sensation." 
 
 The canal was not a financial success because, owing to 
 difficulties of tide levels at each end, a barge passing through 
 was not able to get out again as soon as she had made the 
 seven-mile voyage. Thus, if there was any wind, barges 
 could often sail round via Sheerness and be up at Strood as 
 soon as through the canal, incidentally saving dues. How- 
 ever, there was a good deal of use made of it by the Maidstone 
 barges.
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 79 
 
 The South Eastern Railway bought up the canal. The 
 towpath was broadened by carrying out a platform on piles, 
 and on this a single line was laid. A correspondent of the 
 Rochester Journal describes the running of the first train on 
 Christmas Day, 1844. He writes — 
 
 " I was in Frindsbury Church when the first whistle 
 sounded. After the service the Vicar and Churchwardens 
 
 % \l>i ^ 
 
 FRINDSBURY SHORE. 
 
 and most of the congregation went down in a body to see the 
 wonderful machine. On coming through the tunnel the 
 funnel of the engine struck against the chalk at the top, so 
 they took it down and cut it nine inches shorter before they 
 returned to Gravesend." 
 
 The crater-like opening into which I was now looking was 
 a basin in the subterranean canal for the purpose of allowing 
 barges coming in opposite directions to pass, and a quay for 
 the horses and drivers to do likewise. 
 
 1 returned by this same way at twilight, and then it was
 
 80 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 that I saw the ghost of the old canal come out to walk abroad. 
 The railway tries to forget its victim, but the ghost won't let 
 it. Trains, brilliantly lighted, tear by, whistling bravely to 
 keep up their courage, and then, shrieking into the tunnel 
 on the other side, make for lights and London, but they 
 cannot escape the memories of bygone days. 
 
 Down in the dim depths of that strange chasm invisible 
 barges glide silently to and fro and ghostly feet tramp 
 noiselessly upon the grass- grown quays : for the railway is 
 haunted. 
 
 Cooling is generally believed to be the original of " Our 
 Village' in Great Expectations. This is no doubt on 
 account of the tombs in the churchyard, stone lozenges, 
 with rows of little lozenges to commemorate a number of 
 children that died in infancy. These are so exactly described 
 by Dickens that somewhat unreasonably everybody jumps 
 to the conclusion that all the other features of " Our Village " 
 must be of Cooling. As a matter of fact, Chalk contests the 
 honour somewhat successfully, for the church stands on the 
 fringe of the marshes, alone and about a mile from the village. 
 
 I live in Rochester, where we have Dickensian Societies 
 and all sorts of controversy about these things. We write 
 to each other and write to the local papers and take sides 
 when Jones and Robinson are at it hammer and tongs as to 
 what in the Dickens is the right place. No one seems to 
 remember that an author may take an artist's licence and mix 
 things up a bit. It is great fun and adds zest to everyday life.
 
 A BIT OF COOLING CASTLE.
 
 82 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 The principal interest of Cooling (Cowling) lies in the 
 castle with a well-preserved machicolated gatehouse. Built 
 within the area of the walls stands a perfectly modern and 
 ordinary house, looking rather incongruous. Its chief his- 
 torical interest clings round Sir John Oldcastle, in the time 
 of Henry IV. He was arrested, tried for heresy, and taken 
 to the Tower of London. He escaped once, but was re- 
 captured and executed. The castle held out stubbornly 
 against Sir Thomas Wyatt on his ill-starred march from 
 Maidstone to London in the reign of Queen Mary. 
 
 This stronghold was built by John de Cobham in 
 Richard II.'s time as a protection against foreign pirates 
 who had ravaged the district. The purpose for which this 
 old Manor House of Coulyng was thus fortified is still declared 
 in an old tablet affixed to the gatehouse. It is significant 
 that it is lettered in English in a period when almost all such 
 inscriptions and charters were in Latin — no doubt as a sign 
 that it was a defence against foreign foes. It runs — 
 
 Knouweth that beth & schul be 
 That i am mad in help of the cuntre 
 In knowyng of whyche thyng 
 Thys is chartre & wytnessyng. 
 
 My acquaintance with riverside Kent above Gravesend 
 has been made in boats of various kinds. Beginning when I 
 was at school with journeys by steamboat to Greenwich 
 from London I have always delighted in the wonderful shores 
 of our muddy old Thames. 
 
 The first boat of my own was a Turkish dongola which
 
 
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 I.
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 
 
 *3 
 
 *&%£&'' 
 
 AT GREENHITHE. 
 
 I rigged at Teddington with lee-boards and high-peaked sail 
 to the astonishment and derision of the somewhat conservative 
 waterman. My next was the Griffin, which I built in the 
 Alps and sailed — after twenty miles or so of mountaineering — 
 via Lake Zurich, the Limmat, and the Rhine, to Holland. 
 I wrecked her off the Kentish coast a year afterwards. We 
 had an accident in being towed by a smack, and we had to 
 let her go just off Kingsgate Castle. Then I bought a Dutch 
 boat from the police in Holland, sailed her from Flushing to 
 the Black Sea by river and canal, over the Frankischer Jura 
 Alps, without taking her out of the water until she was loaded 
 as deck cargo to a timber ship sailing from the Black Sea 
 to Glasgow. 
 
 Brown and I, with a few other brave spirits, bumped 
 every bridge in London, and had adventures in her that would 
 do credit to Sinbad the Sailor. I have sketched her here, off 
 Greenwich, in rather a lop, getting mixed up with everything, 
 and having that time of concentrated discomfort which the
 
 84 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Briton calls pleasure. I remember once in Teddington Lock 
 being hauled up for not having her properly registered as a 
 pleasure vessel. It was raining hard, we were wet through and 
 generally miserable. I pointed out to an obtuse official that 
 I would pay with alacrity if he would point out where the 
 pleasure came in. 
 
 My next venture in boats was the Penguin and, up to the 
 present, my last. She was built defiantly in opposition to the 
 most earnest reasoning of barge builders and men of the sea. 
 Prophecies of the most gloomy kind were plentiful in the 
 four-ale bars of innumerable riverside hostelries as to the fate 
 in store for her and all who were insane enough to sail in her. 
 
 Her main oak timbers were those of a lug boat bought from 
 the West India Dock Co., and she was built up till she had head 
 room of six feet three inches under her deck. Her water 
 line was thirty-five feet and her beam eleven feet two inches. 
 A leeboard boat, two masted, rigged square forward and 
 fore-and-aft, she caused the most tremendous sensation in 
 bargee society. There was heavy betting that she would 
 sink instantly when she was launched and refuse to go about 
 if she ever did get on to a wind. 
 
 These gloomy forebodings were happily not fulfilled and 
 the Penguin started off at 5 o'clock one morning against a 
 head wind and tacked gaily down the river. Wherever she 
 went she was received with shouts of hilarious delight by the 
 waterside population, who firmly imagined that they were 
 witnessing some sort of historical performance for the 
 " pictures." A tugman at Erith, in intervals between cries
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 
 
 85 
 
 of exhortation to his mates to come and behold the portent, 
 alluded to her as the Ark of Noah. With his memories of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures somewhat dimmed he inquired jovially, 
 as he caught sight of my wife on board, " How's Eve ? " 
 
 A LITTLE SHIP FROM LILLIPUT. 
 
 The advent of the Penguin was a nine days' wonder. When 
 we saw pilots looking down upon us from a position on 
 a ship somewhere above our topmast, we felt that we had 
 justified our existence. It has been reported to me on good 
 authority that one hardened reprobate who beheld us from 
 the balcony of a riverside public-house, immediately " signed 
 the pledge " and became a life-long total abstainer. 
 
 The novelty soon wore off and the Penguin was accepted
 
 86 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 without comment by the intensely conservative population 
 of the barge world. Before we laugh at this attitude of theirs 
 towards something new as something to do with limited 
 education, let us recall the fact that when steam was first 
 introduced, and introduced with evident success, as a means 
 of propelling ships, My Lords of the Admiralty asserted 
 solemnly that such new methods, while possibly useful to com- 
 merce, were derogatory to the dignity of the Royal Navy. 
 
 I remember, too, a very picturesque hulk, looming large 
 in the moonlight over against the Kentish shore near Erith. 
 It was a windy night with a strong ebb tide running, and 
 we anchored close under her lee for shelter. The place 
 seemed very snug and safe, till Brown, at the moment of 
 
 A POWDER HULK NEAR ERITH.
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 
 
 87 
 
 A NOCTURNE OF NORTHFLEET. 
 
 setting the primus stove on fire, discovered that she was a 
 powder hulk. 
 
 When I am at work on a travel book and Brown is with 
 me I suffer a good deal from his enthusiasm. He tries to 
 arrange explorations which will give me good material, and 
 these often end in great waste of time and almost invariably 
 in mud and discomfort. However, I am bound to admit 
 he led me into something really interesting when he produced 
 a small sailing boat at Gravesend and announced that he was 
 going to take me to Mecca.
 
 88 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 I knew Brown well enough to guess he would not say 
 much about his plans till we got there. He told me this 
 much, however, that pilgrims and devotees were always too 
 late. By the time any cult had grown to pilgrim-attracting 
 proportions the exhibit was often in too advanced a stage 
 of ruin to be much to look at. He pointed out that George 
 Stephenson's locomotive, the "Rocket," was almost the only 
 example of the preservation of the first invention leading 
 to world changes. Where is the first aeroplane, the first 
 motor-car, the first steamship, the first gun ? 
 
 Brown insisted on landing at the A.P.C.M. Company's 
 pier at Northfleet, and took me into the labyrinths of some 
 cement works. It was dark now, and we groped our way 
 painfully until we stood before a curious-shaped kiln, much 
 the worse for wear, shaped like a cone with the top cut off. 
 
 " Behold," said Brown, " the Mecca of the future. Pilgrims 
 will come from the East and from the West to see this sight." 
 
 " But," I protested, "it is only an ordinary bottle-kiln 
 of the old type. There are some like that by New Hythe on 
 the Medway (see sketch, page 92). Why should anybody 
 come here ? " 
 
 "There have been many ages and many civilizations," 
 Brown continued. " There was the Flint Age, for instance, 
 and the Bronze Age. The last century, with all its mechanical 
 strides in machinery, might be named — in fact, it has been 
 named — the Iron Age. The coming age will be known as the 
 Ferro-concrete Age. It is the great material of the future. 
 This kiln was set up by one Aspdin, the discoverer of the
 
 THE GIANT JARS OF GREENH1THE
 
 THAMES-SIDE KENT 89 
 
 modern process of cement-making on which ferro-concrete 
 construction depends, just about a hundred years ago." 
 
 I venerated the relic, and we returned to the boat. The 
 wind was fresh, and we were soon beating up towards London 
 with a strong tide under us. 
 
 " The next chapter in this story," declared Brown, " is 
 at Greenhithe." 
 
 We reached the training ship War spite about 11.0 p.m. 
 The moon was up, and everything looked very romantic. Even 
 the back alleys and mean houses of the outskirts of Greenhithe 
 along by the railway seemed like pictures for the Arabian 
 Nights, and the air of reserve and mystery that Brown main- 
 tained as to our destination exactly suited the adventure. 
 
 " Ferro-concrete," said Brown, " is, as its name denotes, 
 a combination of iron or steel in the form of bars, rods, wires, 
 or trellis to reinforce the concrete. The concrete sets and 
 combines with the iron skeleton, making a coherent mass 
 of enormous strength. The first use of ferro-concrete was 
 made by Arnolfo in Florence, when he put an iron chain 
 round his famous dome and embedded it in cement. He 
 established the principle, but no architect seems to have 
 seen the possibilities of the process for building. In like 
 manner the Greeks knew of the power of steam, making toys 
 spin round and round by means of its force; but no one 
 thought of making it do something more useful." 
 
 We came out from the path by the railway embankment 
 and proceeded • down a street of very ugly houses, Brown 
 still discoursing on the wonders of ferro-concrete.
 
 go UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 " The uses to which this material will be put in the future," 
 he continued, " are endless. Already, piles, gates, fences, 
 bridges, domes, and arches are more strongly made in this 
 material and infinitely more quickly. The Pyramids could 
 have been built in a year or so, the Hanging Gardens 
 of Babylon run up in a week, and as for the house in 
 the Arabian Nights, that was built in a single night — 
 behold ! " 
 
 We had turned down at the end of a line of cottages and 
 come into an open space of flat, low land. There, towering 
 above us, like a magic castle in the moonlight, was a vast 
 construction — unreal, unearthly, belonging to no order 
 of architecture. There seemed to be giant jars, a hundred 
 feet or more in height. At first I thought the light had 
 played some trick, and that I should discover an optical 
 illusion ; but no, we walked up to them. They were concrete 
 enough. Stealing along the silent waterway, a topsail barge 
 and a stumpy reflected in the placid river. Beyond, low lines 
 of marshes stretched interminably along the Essex shore, and 
 a foreground of tumbled objects and pieces of machinery 
 gave an air of mystery to the scene. Altogether it was a 
 wonderful fantasy." 
 
 " These," said Brown, with an air almost of proprietorship, 
 11 are the biggest bottles in the world. They are for storing 
 cement, and will, when finished, house some 18,000 tons. 
 There are ten of them." 
 
 Some of these jars were unfinished. The iron rods, like a 
 crop of rushes, could be seen sticking out at the top. They
 
 DARTFORD.
 
 92 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 stood by the side of the river, well placed for loading into 
 ships and barges at the quay. 
 
 Brown had scored this time. The dramatic effect which 
 he had tried to produce for me had failed in our first glimpse 
 of Baghdad, but had come off brilliantly on the Thames shore 
 of the Super-Cement Co. of Kent. 
 
 ASPDIN S KILN, NORTHFLEET.
 
 VII 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT
 
 ■x
 
 **.- 
 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT 
 
 IT was years ago that Brown and I explored the Medway 
 in the Penguin, pushing on beyond the barrier of 
 Rochester bridge till we reached Aylesford. The story of 
 the cruise is quite beyond my powers of description. Suffice 
 it to say that it is a tale of great hardship and incredible dis- 
 comfort. The river was strange to us then. There is 
 practically nowhere to land at high water and nowhere to 
 anchor at low water except right in the middle of the channel, 
 which is very narrow, or where going aground at an angle 
 of forty-five degrees is the result. Picture, therefore, the 
 woes of a ship which cannot stop, doomed to wander up and 
 down, seeking rest and finding none.
 
 9 6 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 We spent our days in strenuous efforts with a kedge anchor, 
 and our nights in accommodating our bunks to the various 
 wild angles which the boat took at various states of the tide ; 
 but we reached Aylesford bridge in triumph, and I do not 
 suppose many craft of the same tonnage have sailed the 
 whole way before or since. 
 
 After a few days of this nightmare navigation, Brown was 
 called to town by an important business appointment. He 
 left suddenly on the homeward journey, when the boat had 
 stuck near Snodland — dropping tide and night coming on. 
 He did not return. For months afterwards the mere mention 
 of a kedge anchor would make him look miserable. 
 
 Although this attempted exploration of the upper Medway 
 had been a failure, we had seen enough of the country to whet 
 our appetite for further voyaging. We wanted to search out 
 the river above Maidstone, where the valley of quarries 
 narrows into the valley of hops. When planning holidays 
 with Brown I often suggested getting towed up in stages to
 
 KSfe^ 
 
 *&&&?'.*,' 
 
 i 
 
 CEMENT WORKS AT BORSTAL
 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT 
 
 97 
 
 THE "PENGUIN BELOW BRIDGE. 
 
 Tonbridge and exploring in a dinghy ; but Brown was 
 markedly unenthusiastic. 
 
 The solution of the problem came about in an unexpected 
 manner by Brown becoming owner of a motor-boat. I believe 
 he bought it (I refuse to refer to it as " her ") out of self- 
 defence, rather than find himself involved in some quixotic 
 attempt to navigate inland waters with a sea-going ship, his 
 last experience having left him with a peculiar horror of such 
 methods of travel. 
 
 I will not describe the boat, for fear of hurting the feelings 
 of the builder, or of Brown, who swears by it. Whenever it 
 broke down Brown could give so lucid an explanation of the 
 cause and prove so clearly that the circumstances were 
 utterly exceptional, that it left him with added admiration 
 
 H
 
 98 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 of its powers. Any other engine would have stopped running 
 long before, and most, he was convinced, would never have 
 started. Whatever spark of admiration I had for the thing 
 was effectually extinguished on the day that Brown left me 
 alone with it. I admit that I am not of a mechanical turn of 
 mind, but I do not think a really nice engine would take 
 advantage of the fact. This one knew Brown, who would 
 caress it and feed it here and there with tit-bits from an oil- 
 can and fiddle about with little taps and things until it fairly 
 purred with delight. 
 
 Whenever I took it on it sulked. I did exactly what Brown 
 did — fiddled about with taps and nuts and poured oil on it, 
 far more than Brown ever did — but it used to back-fire and 
 miss-fire and catch on fire and do all sorts of stupid things. 
 Then Brown would come over and look at it, and it went as 
 merrily as possible. However, it is not so much to tell you 
 of a motor-boat and how I couldn't manage it that I am 
 writing these chapters on the Medway, but rather to show 
 what varied country is accessible above the ordinary limits 
 of a Medway cruise. 
 
 Ye yachtsmen who have motor-boats and who are weather- 
 bound below bridge, I write to make known to you a land of 
 delight, a valley of mystery, a river of romance. 
 
 Marred by intruding commerce and stained by sordid 
 manufacture, a lovely valley has become, they say, a valley 
 of desolation — its villages black with the smoke of the furnace 
 and its fair hills devoured by the encroaching works : doubly 
 betrayed indeed, for has not the ravisher been ravished ?
 
 */- 
 
 ••* 
 
 • . f ' 
 
 1 
 
 
 *»* p Lrr . / • 71 
 
 Tfc 
 
 •' j? n_ v if m H^t J * ~ 
 
 l 
 
 r« 
 
 THE PILLARS OF WOULDHAM
 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT 
 
 99 
 
 ".~ : 'r-^&^^s^m 
 
 WRP 5 ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE HORSE-SHOE BEND: THE MEDWAY AT BURHAM. 
 
 Ruined kilns and tottering chimneys skirt the river, and 
 quarries abound in which red-rusted machinery and decrepit 
 trains of trucks lie abandoned as by a plague-stricken 
 people. 
 
 To those, however, who know this country intimately 
 there is another side. The Medway, even here, has an in- 
 describable charm. The association of tidal river and marsh- 
 land with high wooded country on both sides gives it a unique 
 character. The great chalk cliffs add ruggedness and the 
 smoking furnaces grimness, so that the effect of the whole 
 is singularly impressive. 
 
 Between Rochester and New Hythe, where the river 
 changes its character abruptly, is a succession of cement 
 works and kilns, some working and some deserted, all with
 
 100 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 quarries to feed them. It is probably not necessary to remind 
 the reader that cement is made from chalk, mud, and coke, 
 and the proximity of one or more of these ingredients is, 
 therefore, essential. 
 
 The Medway is particularly well situated, for the mud is 
 brought in barges from the saltings below Chatham, and coke 
 is the only item that has to come from any distance. I have 
 marked most of these quarries on the map, but the whole 
 country in places is quarried. In fact, it would be accurate 
 to say that it is generally the part which is not quarried which 
 is unduly prominent. 
 
 The hills at the back of Hailing are cut through, forming 
 great ravines reminiscent of mountain wildness. About a 
 
 
 ■&:4*te'« 
 
 
 ^ ga^ a^ 
 
 CEMENT LAND FROM ABOVE BURHAM.
 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT 
 
 101 
 
 
 i^^V/i— ill*** * ' 
 
 RUINS OF CEMENT WORKS NEAR NEW HYTHE. 
 
 mile inland, up one of these gorges, a road crosses at right 
 angles and some houses are seen at a giddy height, as if perched 
 upon a gigantic wall. The chalk trains run underneath, and 
 the same level is maintained at the other side of the barrier. 
 The road, it is interesting to notice, is part of the Pilgrims' 
 Way, which soon becomes a mere track at the foot of the 
 downs passing through Wrotham towards Winchester. A 
 view at night from the high ground looking down into quarry- 
 land is most fascinating. 
 
 The chalk ravines are lighted by arc lamps, and busy little 
 trains can be seen industriously puffing about, and men,
 
 102 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 roped like Alpine climbers, hewing at giddy heights on 
 precipitous cliffs. It is worth while, too, to land at night 
 at Hailing to observe the Dantesque effects of lurid light 
 when the stokers throw open the furnace doors and chequered 
 lights appear on the drifting smoke, 
 
 It is a dangerous corner on a falling tide. The current 
 sets across from the ferry-shelter very strongly towards the 
 works, where there are generally some swim-head lighters 
 to get under if your motor fails at this critical time. I know 
 it from experience, having had to negotiate it on a windless 
 day when sailing. Be careful, also, of the other extreme, 
 and keeping so far in at the point that your boat gets caught 
 in an eddy and spins round and round. 
 
 From Hailing to Snodland the river is literally walled on 
 one side or the other with kilns and loading barges, and then 
 we come to more open country and the remarkable horse- 
 shoe bend, which starts just above the paper-mills, winds 
 round by the old church at Burham Court Farm, and back 
 almost to the same place again. 
 
 From a distance across the fields it is bewildering to 
 watch the manoeuvres of tugs and barges, for, unless you 
 happen to know the course of the river, you can make nothing 
 of them. 
 
 In the sketch on page 99, the barge shown on the right 
 of the picture will come down to the black water on left. This 
 is the point to which she will get finally, but only after she has 
 sailed round this big loop, and not, as it would appear, by 
 continuing straight on. I have seen these fields entirely
 
 THE NEARER EAST 
 
 A FANTASY OF BLUEBELL HILL
 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT 103 
 
 covered with water, so that the course of the river was not 
 apparent. There was a tug coming up at full speed, and she 
 suddenly started on what looked like the most eccentric 
 gyrations, doubling back and zig-zagging about. As a matter 
 of fact, she was merely keeping the ordinary channel. 
 
 At New Hythe are remains of deserted cement works with 
 rows of old-fashioned conical kilns. There are some quaint 
 timbered cottages, too, well worth looking at, and one 
 especially to be noticed up a small lane to the left as you leave 
 the river. It is an adaptation of some very ancient building, 
 probably a pilgrim chapel, for at various points here the 
 pilgrims must have crossed from the Way on the downs 
 above Snodland to the corresponding track along the hills, 
 through Boxley and Charing to Canterbury. 
 
 When land floods correspond with a spring tide, New 
 Hythe becomes a Kentish Venice. I have seen barges' boats 
 manoeuvring in the village street almost as far as the level 
 crossing. 
 
 Above the ferry the river changes its character, and Cement 
 Land disappears suddenly from view. 
 
 We brought our boat to shore at a wharf near Aylesford 
 station, and did not proceed on our voyage until we had done 
 what every one should do who undertakes this journey — seek 
 out Bluebell Hill and there get a magnificent panoramic 
 idea of the whole country. On the road that leads thither, 
 joining the main road at the Lower Bell, can be seen the 
 remains of an ancient stone circle — known as the Countless 
 Stones. They lie beneath three trees in a field on the right —
 
 104 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 about one hundred feet from the road, as far as I can remember 
 — almost opposite a stile. 
 
 Brown and I, in common with most people, had imagined 
 that we should see a valley filled with a vast litter of 
 
 -SfflS 
 
 A KENTISH VENICE — NEW HYTHE IN FLOOD. 
 
 rocks, so that at first we were disappointed. The word 
 " countless " has been applied to them, not because there 
 are so many that no one can number them, but because it is 
 said that two people never arrive at the same result in counting 
 them. The number is about a dozen, as a matter of fact.
 
 THE LAND OF CEMENT 105 
 
 They lie in such confusion that it is impossible to see them 
 all at once, and one is apt to tick off the same stone twice 
 in walking round, and some being buried in the ground 
 may protrude at different points, and thus be reckoned 
 as two. 
 
 A little further up the road on the left, prominently 
 situated, is Kits Coty House, the traditional burial place of a 
 British chief. The local story told is that an old woman was 
 carrying three loaves, one on her head and one under each 
 arm, when something or other happened, I forget what, 
 and she has remained like that in a petrified condition 
 ever since. 
 
 Here, too, you can find some outposts of the chalk pits. 
 There are three quarries in Bluebell Hill, two of them have 
 kilns that are being used for lime burning. Some cottages, 
 built of chalk, stand picturesquely in the woods looking 
 down the steep slope. Hewn chalk as a building material 
 is more common in Kent than is usually supposed. One 
 delightful little quarry is hidden away among the trees 
 just above the Lower Bell. The cliff is topped with dense 
 woods and the roots of the pines fantastically fringe the 
 edge. The kilns are round-topped, satisfactory-shaped old 
 things that suggest something romantic and Eastern. I 
 am sure wicked genii emerge from them when you are not 
 looking. 
 
 Some great chalk hummocks have been left as buttresses 
 to give additional strength to these fissured and fire-worn 
 structures, and the whole effect is quite beautiful. If you
 
 io6 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 have not felt the eerie charm of this country, stay here when 
 twilight deepens and watch the furnaces send rays to wander 
 among the clematis-covered trees, and I prophesy that you 
 will be purged of that heresy which teaches that the works 
 of commerce are nothing but the spoiling of the works of 
 nature. 
 
 v. 
 
 
 f. 
 
 ''li%»*% 
 
 >^2KJl 
 
 = h-||W::
 
 VIII 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES
 
 ^ 
 
 AYLESFORD.
 
 AYLESFORD BRIDGE. 
 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES 
 
 THE first view of Aylesford as it comes into sight at a 
 bend of the river is a striking one. The church, built 
 on a steep bank, rises above a cluster of old houses with 
 gardens fringing the water. Nothing could illustrate better 
 the entire change of character which the river undergoes 
 at this point. The land of cement depends upon space 
 for its charm. Its villages are frankly hideous. We are 
 delighted with the scene when the houses are out of sight or 
 sufficiently distant to be vague. 
 
 Here it is different. The scale of everything is far smaller, 
 but a variety of charm lies in multitudinous details. The 
 chief boast of Aylesford is its ancient bridge, which is worth
 
 no UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 a pilgrimage to see. It is the first of five magnificent examples 
 of mediaeval bridge-building which give a special interest 
 to the river scenery for the next twelve miles, and on account 
 of which this chapter is called "The Land of the Bridges" — 
 and on account of these alone. There are other devices for 
 crossing the river, both by road and rail ; but, beside these 
 five, there is nothing worth calling a bridge. 
 
 Aylesford has been altered to the extent of throwing two 
 arches into one, for the barges to go through, but there must 
 always have been one arch sufficiently large for big craft, 
 because there are centuries-old records of small ships trading 
 between Maidstone and the sea. 
 
 These other four bridges — East Farleigh, Teston, and the 
 two at Yalding — are still as they always have been, except 
 for a few minor alterations in the approaches. I do not 
 know if the exact dates of the building of these bridges is 
 known, but the style of work, more especially in the pointed 
 arches, seems to indicate church builders. In the latter half 
 of the twelfth century brotherhoods arose whose special 
 mission was the keeping up of the hospices for travellers and 
 pilgrims, and the building of bridges. They were known as 
 " Hospitalarii Pontifices," and it is to them, probably, that 
 these bridges owed their origin, although often private people 
 built a bridge as a pious act. I came across a record of 1780 
 which speaks of one thus erected near East Barming, long 
 since gone and replaced. 
 
 There is something restful and satisfactory about these 
 relics of Old England. At East Farleigh the arches are ribbed
 
 ;%•'- 
 
 "V.« 
 
 THE MEDWAY NEAR MAIDSTONE
 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES 
 
 in 
 
 underneath like a church 
 roof. It is here that 
 Fairfax and his troops 
 thundered over to the 
 capture of Maidstone. 
 Teston Bridge, standing 
 alone among green fields, 
 brings up an ideal ' ' scene ' ' 
 for a skirmish between 
 Cavaliers and Round- 
 heads, such as Mr. Ernest 
 Crofts has so often de- 
 picted. 
 
 We started from the 
 station wharf at Ayles- 
 ford, nearly on top of the 
 tide, passed The Friars, 
 an ancient mansion, 
 through the bridge into 
 
 the tree-bordered reach which leads to Allington, where is 
 the first lock — a distance altogether of about a mile and a 
 half — and then achieved the tideless waters above it. The 
 lock is delightfully situated at the foot of wooded slopes, 
 and presents a busy scene at high water when the tugs are 
 marshalling the barges that are going up or down. 
 
 The placid reach above this point runs under the battered 
 walls of Allington Castle, a delightful relic of other days, 
 partly restored and in use and partly left in picturesque decay.
 
 ii2 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 A moat runs round it, communicating with the river. Some 
 idea of this can be gathered from the rough sketch on page 
 opposite, a note taken from the high ground on the other side 
 of the Medway, for some reasons the most interesting view of 
 the castle. Hidden from the main road, which passes quite 
 near (a stile by " The Running Horse " shows the foot- 
 path to the riverside), and invisible from the railway, unless 
 you know exactly where to look for a distant glimpse of a 
 part of its walls, Allington Castle is very little known, even 
 to people who live comparatively near. Considering its 
 dimensions and state of preservation, this is remarkable. It 
 was one of the seven principal castles in Kent. 
 
 A fortress stood on this site in Saxon times, and was 
 demolished by the Danes. It was rebuilt, and William the 
 Conqueror gave it to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. A warden of 
 the Cinque Ports obtained a grant for a weekly market on 
 Tuesdays and a three-days' fair on the feast of St. Laurence. 
 It was enlarged to its present dimensions in Edward I.'s reign. 
 From Allington Castle the ill-fated Sir Thomas Wyatt set out 
 on his bold attempt to veto the Spanish marriage of Queen 
 Mary, raising the men of Kent to march to London, where he 
 was defeated and finally beheaded. 
 
 A little more than a mile above the lock, Maidstone comes 
 into sight — a poor approach, like the approach to most towns ; 
 but there is a good view ahead when the group of ancient 
 riverside buildings appear at the bend above the town. The 
 fourteenth-century Palace, All Saints' Church, and the College, 
 which dates from 1260, made a magnificent group. The best
 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES 
 
 "3 
 
 view is obtained from the bridge, or, to be quite consistent, 
 the-device-for-crossing-the-river-by-road. 
 
 1 _ 
 
 "Tl. 
 
 1- 
 
 ALLINGTON CASTLE. 
 
 Were it not for the knowledge of the country I have 
 obtained at other times, I should have singularly little idea 
 
 1
 
 H4 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 of the Medway between Maidstone and Wateringbury, for 
 here it was that Brown left me to manage the boat alone. 
 He had called for letters and found that he would have to 
 run up to town for the day, but first he instructed me in the 
 art of driving the engine. With cheery optimism I suggested 
 meeting him in a few hours' time at Tonbridge. He, with 
 less faith in my mechanical powers, delicately hinted that it 
 was possible I might not get so far. Finally, we arranged that 
 I should telegraph my position in the afternoon and he would 
 join me wherever that should be. 
 
 He started the engine and hopped out, while I shot forward, 
 confident of success. Brown watched me until the corner 
 took me out of sight, looking, I thought, somewhat anxious ; 
 but I was sure there was no need to fear. He had told me 
 exactly what to do in any emergency. I was not in the least 
 disconcerted when the engine stopped as I was passing the 
 wharves at Tovil. I started it again, just like Brown did, 
 with great success and considerable surprise that it was so 
 simple. I thought with some scorn of Brown's statement 
 that the artistic temperament did not go with mechanical 
 skill. Then it stopped again and I started it again — not, it 
 is true, with quite the same facility ; but still the engine was 
 running, if somewhat spasmodically. I then did a fatal thing, 
 as I found out afterwards. I increased the supply of petrol. 
 With base ingratitude the thing stopped altogether, and 
 refused to be coaxed into going at all. 
 
 Tying up the boat, I landed and sought professional 
 advice. The only assistance I could get was from a man
 
 OLD MAIDSTONE FROM THE RIVER
 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES 
 
 ii 
 
 ^ t 
 
 EAST FARLEIGH. 
 
 ^. 
 
 who assured me he understood everything about engines, 
 having spent most of his life among them. By this time I 
 had given up the attempt to find a motor-boat expert, so I 
 accepted his offer. He began by asking where the fire was, 
 which was not encouraging. He explained that all the engines 
 he had ever managed had fires. I told him that the only 
 fires we ever had on board were accidental ; but he said he 
 thought he could soon find out what was the matter. He 
 looked at the motor and said it wanted oiling. Producing a 
 can he pronounced it all right if it were once started. I tried 
 immediately, and it went merrily. What a wonderful thing 
 is expert knowledge ! I thought half a crown had been too
 
 n6 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 easily earned, but I was thankful that the boat was going so 
 well. However, it soon began to fail again, and not far below 
 East Farleigh Lock it stopped dead. This time I found a 
 real engineer, or, at any rate, a man wearing a boiler suit, 
 which inspired not a little confidence in the uninitiated. He 
 started the engine at once, and I could not see in what way 
 his starting differed from mine. But I suppose the engine 
 could. 
 
 Now that the boat was going so well I did not want to 
 stop it just because of a mere lock. Brown had shown me 
 how to move the clutch and thus alter the angle of the pro- 
 peller blades for stopping still or going astern. I therefore 
 dashed into the lock at full speed and then reversed. Some- 
 how the boat did not pull up as quickly as I had expected 
 she would, and I charged the upper gates with considerable 
 force. 
 
 There was a crash, and then I found the reversing business 
 was being overdone, and I was rushing backwards out of the 
 lower gates. I jammed on full speed ahead and made another 
 wild plunge forward, churning up the water all around. I 
 reversed sooner this time, and then settled down to a series 
 of nerve-racking spurts backwards and forwards, but managed 
 to hit nothing. By this time I became dimly conscious of 
 another boat, which had apparently broken adrift in the lock, 
 and beheld an elderly lady climbing in terror up a slippery, 
 weed-covered ladder, shouting for help. Thus the promptings 
 of humanity rather than faintheartedness in experimental 
 motor-boating compelled me to stop the engine.
 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES 
 
 117 
 
 When Brown responded to my telegram by joining me at 
 the lock below Wateringbury, whither I had made my way 
 by means of every device known to navigation, except motor- 
 power, he explained what had been wrong in my management. 
 I had turned on too much petrol. Consequently the valve 
 
 
 
 
 U 'ay 
 
 TESTON BRIDGE. 
 
 soon froze. The work of the two alleged engineers was mere 
 coincidence. In each case there had been an interval for 
 liquefaction, and any one could have started the engine for 
 a time, although it would obviously soon get into the same 
 condition again. Under Brown's control, the boat ran without 
 a hitch, and in about twenty minutes we were entering 
 Yalding Lock. Above this point there is a canal-like reach
 
 n8 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 which saves a tortuous loop of river, joining up again at a 
 delightful spot above Twyford Bridge, where we moored and 
 spent the rest of the evening in exploring what proved to be 
 one of the most unspoiled and unconsciously picturesque old 
 villages we had ever seen — Yalding. 
 
 Above the village, the ridge of hill which I have described 
 more fully further on in " The Amateur Archaeologists " 
 affords glorious views of the Weald. It is worth a stiff climb 
 to stand near the old farm of Burston, once the seat of the 
 Fane family, to look down on the gleaming waters of the 
 Medway as it winds among the level grass lands and loses 
 itself among thick trees. It is from a field near this place 
 that I made the sketch for the plate "The Medway at 
 Yalding" (facing page 152). If you can be up there on a 
 day when there is a tearing wind and a broken sky that 
 chequers the distant country with sunshine and shadow, you 
 will take away with you haunting memories. 
 
 This region is the richest of all the hop country of Kent. 
 West Farleigh, Yalding, and Hunton form together a veritable 
 Mecca of Hops. Hunton, with its old church and shingle 
 spire almost hidden in trees, is worth a visit, and the valley 
 further on holds in store many surprises in the way of half- 
 timbered farm-houses and quaint cottages, but it lies outside 
 the radius of a motor-boat's itinerary. 
 
 Here flows the river Beult, joining the Medway loop and 
 explorable to greatest advantage in a canoe. Yalding is very 
 liable to floods, on account of the sudden narrowing of the 
 valley at this point. The wide level fields suddenly become
 
 THE LAND OF THE BRIDGES 
 
 119 
 
 hemmed in by hills (ABC and DEF on map, p. 127), and the 
 Yalding region is a wedge-shaped plain with the narrow neck 
 at Nettleshead and Wateringbury as the only means of escape 
 
 BRIDGE AND CHURCH, YALDING. 
 
 for the flood water. Consequently the Medway stream at this 
 point between the high land on either bank is unable to keep 
 pace with the demands made upon it when heavy rains have 
 come down from Tonbridge and the Beult. Along the level 
 tracts of grass between Twyford Bridge and Yalding village 
 white posts are placed to mark the roads and paths when the 
 whole place is under water. The Beult is crossed by a rambling,
 
 120 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 buttressed bridge, which is a delight to the eye, of the most 
 sturdy proportions and weather-beaten aspect. 
 
 The most enjoyable way of exploring the little river Beult, 
 when there is enough water to do so, is to take a canoe. Of 
 course there is a good deal of land transport and a good 
 deal of argument with indignant land-owners, but these are 
 necessary evils to an otherwise delightful inland voyage. 
 
 ~V *|. 
 
 ON THE BEULT, YALDING.
 
 IX 
 THE LAND OF STREAMS
 
 
 THE LAND OF STREAMS 
 
 AT 3.0 a.m. I awoke from a troubled sleep to find one of 
 l\ my legs immersed in a lake and the other apparently 
 floating about on a raft. Too drowsy to notice anything 
 unusual in this, I felt vaguely indignant at the situation. 
 My right leg was very cold and my attempts to lift it on to 
 dry land seemed to send the raft which carried my left on 
 spasmodic voyages. I discovered, to my relief, that this leg 
 was still attached to my body though borne about in a manner 
 which was beyond my control. The moon was shining, and 
 it was fairly light. As I awoke more thoroughly, I began
 
 124 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 to reason out the phenomenon. We were evidently still in 
 the boat and under the awning that had been put up. Brown 
 was fast asleep. I observed, however, that he was on a higher 
 level than I, a feature I had not noticed in our arrangements 
 when we turned in. Then it occurred to me it would be a 
 good idea to wake him up and ask him what he thought about 
 it all. My efforts to do this roused me completely, and I 
 realized suddenly that the boat was at a steep angle, half 
 full of water and probably sinking. 
 
 Brown knew at once what had happened. He dived to 
 turn off some tap or other, and we started baling hard with 
 biscuit tins. The raft on which my leg had gone adrift proved 
 to be one of the large air-cushions that constituted our 
 mattress. As my feet had been kept dry until one of them 
 slipped off this support, we had not felt the flood before it 
 had accumulated to formidable proportions. Dawn had 
 broken before order was restored. The dark masonry of the 
 old bridge, contrasting with the foam-flecked waters of the 
 weir, made a delightful picture. 
 
 Sleep, as far as I was concerned, had been fitful before 
 this interruption, but now it seemed little use seeking it. 
 Whenever I began to doze I jumped up, thinking we were at 
 the bottom of the river or adrift or on fire. I had little faith 
 in Brown's boat. If leaving a tap on will sink us, leaving 
 the battery on might electrocute us, and leaving the petrol 
 on might blow up the whole concern. 
 
 The sun was high in the sky. As Brown showed no sign 
 of turning out I went for a walk along the river bank.
 
 HADLOW TOWER
 
 THE LAND OF STREAMS 125 
 
 Incidentally I met a man with much local information about 
 the part of the Medway we were about to explore. There 
 is a place near Tonbridge called " The Stair "—we should 
 pass it — interesting because it had something to do with 
 smugglers. He seemed very hazy about the period, but I 
 made a mental note of what he told me, for I knew a search 
 for smuggling haunts would delight Brown. It seems a 
 strange place to come across smugglers. They would have to 
 smuggle such a long way, and the chances of being caught 
 between the sea and Tonbridge would be frequent. Possibly, 
 if the story be true, they brought up bogus cargoes and this 
 was a quiet place to run them, a point on the river literally 
 above suspicion. 
 
 Breakfast over, we got under way. Through two locks 
 to Branbridges, and then into open country which abounds 
 in wood and innumerable tributary brooks. I have called 
 this chapter " The Land of Streams " because whenever you 
 go on shore you find yourself on an island. Little rivers run 
 out of the main river and in again at will, and the vicinity 
 of the Medway between this point and the shallows above 
 Tonbridge is a network of watercourses. It is a characteristic 
 that is difficult to show by means of drawings, because there 
 is nothing in any one view that gives a clue to the nature of 
 the district. It is a green land, this land of streams, dominated 
 for a long way by the distant spire of Hadlow Castle. 
 
 Since this cruise was done the whole of the Medway between 
 Maidstone and Tonbridge has been "up." It is in the hands 
 of engineers undergoing a transformation. Locks have been
 
 i 2 6 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 enlarged so that barges of one hundred tons can use it. 
 Hitherto vessels of small tonnage only had been able to navi- 
 gate this section, and the locks had fallen into a very bad 
 state, some of them bearing an ominous notice that they 
 can be worked at the user's risk ! Since writing these notes 
 years ago, the reformed and revised Upper Medway has again 
 fallen on evil days, and has an uncertain future. 
 
 "The Stair" is a low hill rising from the flat fields within 
 about a quarter of a mile from the river on the right bank. 
 A large red-brick house, some cottages, farm buildings, and 
 a few oasthouses constitute the hamlet. To reach it we had 
 to cross two streams and make a somewhat meandering 
 approach. We found no trace of smuggling, search how we 
 would. Local inquiries resulted in a wild-goose chase to 
 find a ruined mansion of which a few walls and some green- 
 houses alone remained, but we could get little encouragement 
 and no information. It is wonderful how small is a country- 
 man's knowledge of a thing that he sees every day. I 
 remember once asking an old gardener who worked in the 
 grounds of an abbey, what was the period of the ruin. He 
 told me he thought it was " one o' they old-fashioned places." 
 
 " But," I asked, " don't you know about how old ? " 
 
 " Bless ye, sir," he replied right jovially, " I reckon it 
 was built afore your time, sir." And then he added, as if it 
 would settle the question of its antiquity, " or mine either, 
 for the matter o' that." 
 
 The smugglers cave proving a frost, we pushed on and 
 landed at Tonbridge for lunch. This was a piece of diplomacy
 
 
 u '^%MMt>^ 
 
 Vw** ftMisfflJ. 
 
 THE STAIR, TONBRIDGE
 
 THE LAND OF STREAMS 
 
 127 
 
 
 $--VEST FARLEI&H 
 
 
 TOMISiaDPSrB 
 
 on my part to get Brown 
 keen on Ye Old Chequers 
 Inn, and to suggest later 
 in the day, as if it had 
 been a sudden inspira- 
 tion, that we should 
 pack our bags and put 
 up there for a bit. Two 
 nights in succession like 
 last night would be too 
 wearing to the constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 About a mile above 
 the town there is a tributary river which leads up to some 
 powder-mills. At its junction with the Medway there is a 
 single pair of lock gates. How on earth you could use a lock 
 that possessed only one pair of gates, or how it could even be 
 a lock, neither Brown nor I could determine, nor could any 
 inquiry enlighten us. The water was some feet higher on 
 the inner side and we naturally wondered how a boat could 
 go through. I reproduce here a conversation between Brown 
 and the sluice man which throws some light on the subject — 
 
 Brown : Where is the other pair of gates ? 
 
 Sluice Man : Ain't no other bloomin' gates. 
 
 Brown : But how do you open them ? 
 
 Sluice Man : I opens the bloomin' sluices and that lets 
 out the water, and when the water's level on t'other side the 
 bloomin' gates 11 open.
 
 128 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Brown : But if the water is even on both sides what's 
 the good of the gate ? 
 
 Sluice Man : To keep the bloomin' water up, o' course. 
 
 He seemed to resent our thirst for knowledge, so the 
 conversation flagged. 
 
 We had seen a ballast lighter drifting down the river, and 
 this came into the bend. The sluices were drawn up, and when 
 the water had dropped on the inner side the gates were opened. 
 As a matter of fact, there was considerable flow in the stream, 
 which meant that the levels were only approximately even. 
 The lighter was hauled through and the gates shut again. 
 The canal regained its former level very soon, and the slow- 
 moving craft proceeded on its way. 
 
 We thought over the problem, and decided that the explana- 
 tion was simple. At the far end of a long reach of water it 
 takes some time for an alteration of the level to be felt. There 
 is tremendous inertia in water. When the sluices are opened, 
 the water near the gates finds an apparent level, although there 
 is a slight drop. By the time the bulk of the water above has 
 felt the change, the barge is through and the gates shut again. 
 
 Unless I had seen it, I should not have believed in the 
 efficacy of one pair of gates. The sluice man's explanation 
 would have left me a confirmed sceptic. This thing is a 
 parable, and there is a moral to be found. When people 
 give you an absurd or inadequate explanation of a belief, it 
 does not follow that their belief is not justified. 
 
 We went some distance up the main river, but the limit 
 of motor-boat navigation was in sight. It is possible to go
 
 "KwfiU. 
 
 THE STRAIGHT MILE, TONBRIDGE
 
 THE LAND OF STREAMS 
 
 129 
 
 as far as the Weir, but there is no lock or even rollers for 
 getting boats up. When the river is low there are various 
 possibilities of grounding before this point. One is under the 
 railway bridge, and another is a palisade of snags, sometimes 
 
 
 ' THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 
 
 known as the Twelve Apostles (see sketch), which will cheer- 
 fully knock a hole in your boat or break the propeller, accord- 
 ing to the way you approach them. If you succeed in running 
 the gauntlet there are some more traces of a wooden bridge — 
 I don't know what they are called, but we named them the 
 
 K
 
 130 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Seven Devils. I think the Apostles are the worst, because 
 they are under water. Judas Iscariot is out of the straight, 
 and this is the one that you do not see in time. 
 
 There is another strange thing that the explorer may come 
 upon near Tonbridge. It is a curious, grass-covered trench, 
 starting from near this part of the river, known as The Straight 
 Mile — an attempt, made about a hundred years ago, to extend 
 the navigation of the river in the direction of Penshurst — 
 an attempt which failed. 
 
 Our quest was over : we could get no further. We had 
 done our work, and soon we should get the enjoyment. I 
 mean the enjoyment of recollection, for that is often the best 
 part of a cruise. Brown was easily persuaded to get up 
 the local colour of Tonbridge, and we put up at Ye Olde 
 Chequers Inn for a few days. 
 
 y« QU Ot«wAtvs 
 
 laivSftiOCE.
 
 X 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT
 
 cHBOROi/krt 
 
 OVER 
 
 THE SEA CO/VST ANt> THE. 
 W£AUD Co^ST* 
 
 THE BLACK LINES HERE REPRESENT THE KNOWN ROMAN ROADS AND 
 THE DOTTED LINE A CONJECTURED ROMAN ROAD.
 
 "*!• 
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 
 
 OF the many pleasant places that hide themselves along 
 the southern slope of the ragstone ridge by Maidstone, 
 one of the most delectable corners is a green garden in Sutton 
 Valence. It is right under the ruins of the castle, with broad 
 prospect of the wide Weald of Kent. A spring wells up in the 
 chequered shade of the upper terrace, feeding a lily pond 
 under the trees. This jolly little brook plays hide-and-seek 
 among the clustered flowers ; pauses to fill a clear pool here 
 and there, and then hurries on merrily, to make up for lost 
 time. It dives under a lawn, appears again among the roses, 
 and then laughingly loses itself in an orchard below.
 
 134 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 It was in this garden, on a warm afternoon in the early 
 summer, that Brown galvanized a whole party of slightly 
 soporific people of both sexes and all ages into red-hot archae- 
 ologists, bent on the instant discovery of a Roman road. 
 
 It happened in this wise. We were a merry party staying 
 with the Thornhills at this most delightful spot I have de- 
 scribed. The good Professor, abroad on archaeological work, 
 had settled his family here for the summer. Mrs. Thornhill 
 and Betty were in great form with their delightful archaeo- 
 logical picnics. Now that the Professor was away the subject 
 of archaeology was not even mentioned, but they were just as 
 enjoyable for all that. 
 
 The afternoon was hot, just hot enough to make you 
 realize the delightfulness of the dappled sunshine through the 
 trees, and the coolness of the splashing water. We were all 
 more or less abandoned to the delights of the garden and the 
 drowsy consequences of lunch. Mrs. Thornhill was undis- 
 guisedly asleep. My better half, Eve, nominally reading a 
 book, was getting very near the same state. Scylla and 
 Charibdis, our family, were doing great damage to the garden 
 by violent pursuit of a tortoiseshell butterfly. I was too 
 drowsy myself to take much notice of their tactics, but the 
 progress of their hunt was borne across the garden in shouts 
 of triumph or disappointment, like " hot " and " cold " in 
 a game of hide-and-seek. It is a strange fact of natural 
 history, as yet not sufficiently noticed by science, that 
 whereas animals and adult human beings tend to become 
 quiet and even sleepy after heavy meals, young children will
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 
 
 135 
 
 eat until they cannot manage any more and then leap about 
 and play tumbling games that would kill less remarkably 
 constituted creatures. 
 
 Brown and Betty were examining a large map spread 
 out on the lawn. I think Brown felt it was up to him, now 
 that the Professor was away, to display an interest in the 
 antiquities of Kent, and was consequently trying to enthuse 
 
 THE CASTLE, SUTTON VALENCE. 
 
 Betty with some historical theories of his about roads in the 
 Weald. In this he seems to have been more successful than 
 the Professor, for I never remember Betty to be so attentive 
 to topographical details. I do not know whether it is neces- 
 sary for two people looking at a map to put their heads quite 
 so close together, but I suppose the type was small and they 
 wanted to look at the same spot for a considerable period.
 
 136 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 After all, it is no business of mine. I pretended to be asleep, 
 and so they had a certain amount of chance. However, I 
 think if I had been Brown, I would have dropped the map 
 business and taken her into the rose garden to look for 
 orchids. 
 
 After an interval of something like half an hour, great 
 activity seemed to reign in Brown's archaeological department. 
 He, himself, was crawling about on his hands and knees like a 
 sleuth hound, bending over the map and making excited dabs 
 at it. Betty was wildly borrowing pins from Eve and making 
 them into little red flags. These flags Brown stuck all over 
 the map with bits of crimson paper. Scylla and Charibdis 
 substituted their hunt for butterflies into a hunt for pins, and 
 we all woke up and gathered round. 
 
 At first I thought Brown had discovered a new menace 
 to the safety of the realm, for his array of red flags looked like 
 an army taking up a position along the ragstone hills from 
 Ashford to Sevenoaks ; possibly a line of defence against some 
 attack from the Weald to the south of it. His excitement, 
 however, was so great that the attack must have been coming 
 off this very afternoon and England was totally unprepared. 
 
 He pounced upon a straight line of flags and whistled to 
 himself. 
 
 " Another," he muttered. " Chartway Street." 
 
 " That's only a mile away from here," said Betty. 
 
 " Cock Street," added Brown, sticking another flag into 
 the line. 
 
 Brown looked up and saw us standing in a semicircle,
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 137 
 
 looking down somewhat puzzled at the map with its array 
 of war flags. He read off names with great enthusiasm. 
 
 11 What more do you want ? ' he exclaimed; " Lympne, 
 Coldharbour, Stonestreet Green, Flood Street, Great Chart, 
 Ford, Rooting Street, Little Chart, Liverton Street, North 
 
 ASHF0Rt> 
 
 T„ 6*E*T CHART 
 1 wiuS 
 
 
 '-^T-OOD ST3E£T 
 
 t> Stone st f?t£.T <^RE£jv 
 
 
 O COLOHORfiouft 
 
 COOR.T ftT x v 
 
 o 
 
 FiG. I. 
 
 Street, and Roman Cemetery — and so on to Plaxtoi by 
 Sevenoaks." 
 
 " But what's it all about ? " asked Mrs. Thornhill. 
 
 Brown stood up. " We have discovered," he said with 
 an air of finality, " a Roman road. It is the lost road of 
 Kent." 
 
 I thought it was very nice of Brown to say we, including
 
 138 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Betty as partner in the great discovery, although she had 
 merely provided and manufactured multitudinous little red 
 flags. I think, too, Brown deserves tremendous credit in 
 getting on with any archaeological research at all under the 
 circumstances. A frightfully pretty girl sitting on the ground 
 alongside a man, with her cheek practically touching his, is 
 not generally conducive to his clear thinking. 
 
 " Hilaire Belloc," continued Brown, " says in writing of 
 Kent, that he can find no trace of a Roman road south of the 
 Watling Street. What he means by trace, I don't know. If 
 he means actual sections of road revealing an undoubted 
 Roman origin I expect he is quite right, but there is a good 
 deal of evidence in the names of places. It is unlikely that 
 there were any made roads at all in the Weald in Roman 
 times, although it seems that in the south iron was worked. 
 All this country was an impenetrable tangle of forest; but 
 on the northern side of this tract, along the ridge of hill, one 
 would expect to find some traces of a road. 
 
 " Now in the heart of the Weald you will find few place- 
 names indicating possibly Roman occupation, such as Street, 
 Chart, Coldharbour, etc. ; but there are many on the ragstone 
 hills. In order to demonstrate this, I stuck pins wherever 
 I could find any name that might have some connection with 
 Roman occupation. Coldharbour is generally considered 
 evidence of the Romans. It is a name constantly occurring 
 on known Roman roads. I should say rather the name 
 Coldharbour stands for the thing which was Roman, by some, 
 thought to be a shelter for camping, like a hut in the Alps.
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 139 
 
 The derivation from the French col d'arbres has been suggested, 
 a hill of trees. These camping places were often at prominent 
 places where a plantation of trees would show up, hence the 
 word, if this be the correct derivation. Some doubt, however, 
 has been thrown on this derivation as in the north of England 
 similar sites are sometimes named windy arbour. The word 
 Street, in a country place, often tells of Roman work, and Chart, 
 the Latin charta, a grant or charter of land, sometimes takes us 
 back to days Roman, although it might also be a name relic 
 of Norman times. In a Saxon document concerning some land 
 near Canterbury in 760 a.d. the name Chart (spelt Cert) is 
 referred to as an old name and thus many of these Charts are 
 evidently Roman. For the first period after the Roman 
 withdrawal from Britain the Saxons were hard put to it to 
 maintain the existing Roman strongholds and ways, and were 
 very unlikely to have built new towns. The fact that a 
 place is referred to (in 760 a.d.) as ' known as cert ' is strongly 
 in favour of it being of Roman origin. Individually, there may 
 be no evidence of things Roman because of these names, but 
 collectively the position of these names on the map is striking. 
 Assuming that a good many have no name-place significance 
 there is still remarkable coincidence of such places arranged 
 in a straight line from Lympne towards Maidstone, in fact, 
 roughly a route more or less parallel to the Watling Street. 
 
 " When the pins were all in place, as you can see, the 
 inference is evident. If there is anything at all in these 
 names let us follow the course they indicate. Beginning at 
 Lympne, where Stone Street comes down from Canterbury
 
 140 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 we have first Coldharbour and Court at Street, then Stonestreet 
 Green, then Flood Street, and by continuing in a straight line 
 north-west, strike Great Chart at a place on the stream marked 
 Ford. Continuing for about a mile we pass a place higher up 
 on the left named Upper Coldharbour, and then come to 
 Rooting Street at Little Chart. A continuation of this straight 
 line would lead us into swampy ground abounding in streams 
 likely to be easily flooded. About two miles to the north of 
 this point, however, by Charing is Swan Street." 
 
 " Assuming," Brown went on, " this change of direction, of 
 which the evidence is purely guesswork, and starting off again 
 from Swan Street in a straight line nearly due west we find 
 a remarkable series of names. About two miles on is Water 
 Street, two miles further, Liverton Street, and then another 
 two and a half miles and we are at Chartway Street, a doubly 
 significant name. Then the corner of North Street with its 
 Roman Cemetery just by the school here at Sutton Valence." 
 
 We all provided ourselves with data to follow the argument. 
 One of the advantages of staying with the Thornhills is an 
 unlimited supply of maps. 
 
 I have since looked up what it was that Mr. Hilaire Belloc 
 did write in case Brown had misquoted him and find the follow- 
 ing in The King's Highway, December, 1919, in an article 
 entitled ' The Roman Roads.' " What is interesting, is that 
 the road westward out of Canterbury has been lost ; I think lost 
 entirely. It would be of the highest interest to recover it, for 
 it must have formed the link between Kent and Sussex and the 
 lateral communication of the South, but I have never heard any
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 141 
 
 evidence to re-establish it, and I do not know of any 
 remains." 
 
 I have also verified Brown's statement (page 142) that 
 parish boundaries are strong evidence in looking for a lost 
 Roman road. Here is an extract from the well-known 
 authority on the subject, Codrington, in his Roman Roads in 
 Britain. 
 
 "It is well known that the ridges of Roman roads were 
 often made the boundary between parishes and townships ; 
 and boundaries follow roads which are certainly Roman for 
 many miles together. On Watling Street, south of London, 
 from Midbrook over Shooter's Hill, and through Dartford, 
 parish boundaries run along seven and a half out of twelve 
 miles, and on the north of London parish boundaries follow 
 Watling Street along the Edgware Road continuously for 
 five miles, from Oxford Street to the river Brent, and again 
 for two miles after an interval of one and a half miles, or 
 for seven out of eight and a half miles." 
 
 We made Brown keep quiet for a time and studied the 
 country furiously. He was not going to have it all his own 
 way ; Mrs. Thornhill and Eve started a rival theory of the lost 
 road. They contended that it obviously did nothing so silly as 
 altering its course to the north, but kept away from the 
 stream (the Great Stour) on higher ground and marched nearly 
 straight to Chartway Street. 
 
 I have shown the rival theories in Fig. 2, marking Brown's 
 road as A, and Mrs. Thornhill's as B. I then chipped in 
 myself with a theory, and taking a cautious eclectic line,
 
 142 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 borrowing points from either side, proving that they were 
 both probably right. No doubt the Romans had tried Brown's 
 road, but, finding that the Great Stour in winter kept the whole 
 place under water, got fed up with it. They named part of it 
 Rotten Street or Rotting Street (hence Rooting), another 
 part Swan Street because only aquatic birds could use it, and 
 another section Water Street for obvious reasons. 
 
 Then they hit on the idea of using Mrs. Thornhill's road as 
 an alternative. Edging away to the west a little, on firmer 
 and higher ground, they made a fresh start, and called it New 
 Street, through Upper Coldharbour, as Lower Coldharbour was 
 under water, past Dowle Street, crossing a stream at one point 
 only, Stonebridge, to Chartway Street. I have not as yet 
 received any recognition from the Royal Society for thus 
 harmonizing the two sides of the Brown-Thornhill contro- 
 versy, but it was voted as jolly good by everybody. Having 
 safely arrived at Chartway Street in complete harmony 
 we continued to sit at Brown's feet. 
 
 " A large scale map is now very instructive," continued 
 Brown, producing two sheets (Kent, sheet LIIL, N.W., and 
 Kent, sheet LI I., N.E.), now quite excited in following his 
 argument. 
 
 " It is a well-known rule," continued Brown, " when hunting 
 for the position of Roman roads to pay great attention to 
 parish boundaries, as often the road was the division between 
 two parishes. To the west of Chartway Street, the road and 
 the parish boundary run together and then by Chart Corner 
 we come, a mile further on, to Cock Street. Now it does not
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 
 
 143 
 
 follow that where the present road coincides with a Roman 
 road that the track is exactly the same. In many cases the 
 old Roman work was used as a quarry for material for making 
 the more modern road, and in many cases also local con- 
 
 CrtAfiTwAY STREET 
 . A 
 
 CHAR.1N& 
 
 vyvres HReeT 
 
 SWUK STREET 
 
 STONE 'BRlB^e- 
 
 HHo*0*J*Y 
 
 LITTLE CttMT 
 
 T^OOTiNG- STREET 
 
 T>awi-B iTRCE-T . % 
 
 V 
 
 J 
 
 Miu&S. 
 
 FIG. 2. 
 
 B * 
 
 opf>eR. 
 
 GReffT CHftftT 
 
 new smssy 
 
 siderations had arisen to make it desirable to take the road 
 along a slightly different bit of country near. About 700 yards 
 west of the cross roads at Cock Street and about 300 yards 
 south of the school is the boundary stone at the corner of the 
 parish of Linton. The road is almost dead straight as we
 
 144 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 CHpRTwft\UjRE£" T 
 
 ]& 
 
 CHRRiNG- 
 
 FIG. 3. 
 
 proceed west. Parallel to it and at a short distance from it 
 is this parish boundary of Linton. It is at this zone of the 
 road that trenching would be most likely to succeed. I mean 
 the digging of a trench at right angles to the supposed site of 
 the road so that we could find any traces of a causeway that 
 might be there, although it is quite possible that this way, 
 being on firm ground, might never have been metalled. For 
 a distance at Cox Heath it coincides with the road, as does 
 the boundary of Hunton which continues it. For nearly five 
 miles these parish boundaries either run very near or actually 
 coincide with the road. Then the road goes off at a tangent 
 by Quarry Wood, but the parish boundary continues in the 
 direction of the Medway and Wateringbury." 
 
 OF 
 
 
 FIG 4.
 
 THE LOST ROAD OF KENT 
 
 145 
 
 " Here," said Brown, with a certain amount of pride. 
 " my pet lost road of Kent vanishes for want of evidence and 
 probably because of the river crossing. However, it is last 
 seen making straight for Plaxtol, which is five miles further 
 on and rich in Roman remains. 
 
 WUNTCN 
 
 MILES 
 
 CWPiRTWftY 
 
 STR6ET 
 tOMfltv CeMETeftY 
 
 FIG. 
 
 Like one man we all joined up and put ourselves at Brown's 
 disposal as auxiliaries in the discovery of Roman roads. We 
 would start at once. Never, since the great day, or rather, 
 night, when Brown led us from Rochester on our pilgrimage 
 ^Canterbury had there been so much enthusiasm. 
 
 a.-../ T 
 
 ft-, 5 
 
 PFlK.JH OF X.INTON 
 
 fc.S 
 
 %^ 
 
 ~_T- _^ ~ <t*RTCX.ftM6U 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 (-lit£- 
 
 TVte. cowjet-ruReD Road anoui.0 fi£ marker 
 
 AS FRO^ JDl=-=;^=^.-(Bn BUT foR £f\K€- OF 
 Ck£flRN£Si MAS B££« PlXEO ^UST iOvJTrt 
 
 OF pTS COURSE. 
 
 FIG. 6.
 
 146 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Tea was a meal symbolic of impending action. With 
 staves in our hands, and with our loins girded, did we eat. 
 We took few provisions for the journey and we made no plans. 
 
 It was sufficient that we were about to startle the archaeo- 
 logical world with our discoveries, and so, with a small car 
 grossly overloaded as means of transport, we started out from 
 Sutton Valence at 5 p.m. in the direction of Chartway Street 
 
 (JJim 
 
 f^*^ yW 
 
 ItitoMuWAUlfld^Oi 
 
 CABLES AT YALDING.
 
 XI 
 THE AMATEUR ARCH&OLQGISTS
 
 *n 
 
 SUTTON VALENCE.
 
 •s-q. 
 
 THE AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS 
 
 THE pursuit of a Roman road on a map has many advan- 
 tages over the method of outdoor exploration. A false 
 scent does not entail much delay and the general directions of 
 bits of road are so much clearer on paper than in places where 
 buildings, hills, and trees can interrupt the view. A com- 
 parison, for instance, between the rival claims of Brown's 
 road and Mrs. Thornhill's can be made in a few minutes on a 
 large scale map, but when we came to run over the ground in 
 our much overloaded car we could make very little of it. 
 Hedges, clumps of bushes, and all sorts of things not apparent
 
 150 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 on the map rendered the verification of our theories lengthy, 
 difficult, and often impossible. After a few hours of it we 
 retraced our way to Chart way Street. From this place, 
 travelling west, the road is the northern boundary of East 
 Sutton. After half a mile we came to a kink and continued, 
 the road still forming the parish boundary for another three- 
 quarters of a mile. 
 
 Mrs. Thornhill and Eve strongly objected to this kink. 
 Well-behaved Roman roads did not go in for kinks, except 
 in very unusual circumstances, as in the case of Stone Street 
 from Lympne to Canterbury. 
 
 We all developed the gravest doubts about Brown's road 
 and felt that Brown would have to look out with such keen 
 critics around him. We would not be put off with airy 
 generalizations. If this were indeed the track of a Roman road 
 which had also been the parish boundary, how did Brown 
 explain the kink ? There was no reason for it, such as the 
 steep hill in Stone Street near Lympne. There was no 
 doubt about it, Brown had been going a little too far, trying 
 to palm off a road on us with insufficient evidence. 
 
 He made a spirited defence, however, and introduced a new 
 theory. It was to the effect that when a Roman road was also 
 a parish boundary there would be comparatively few boundary 
 stones along its course. In subsequent years a later road, for 
 various reasons, would not follow it exactly, hence numerous 
 bends and turns for purely local reasons Thus the parish 
 boundary, still reckoned by the road, would cease to be straight ; 
 but the fixed points might still be in a straight line. To
 
 THE AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS 
 
 151 
 
 »,*, 
 
 C0«7OOfc 
 
 SOWN 
 
 FIG. 7. 
 
 illustrate this he took a sheet of a large scale map (Kent, 
 sheet LIII., N.W.), and proceeded to mark off the existing 
 boundary stones, five in number, along the northern limit of 
 the parish of East Sutton. The effect was startling when he 
 ruled a line through four of them. They were dead straight 
 in spite of the road's winding course. In Fig. 8 you can see 
 it for yourself. Two of these boundary stones are left out, 
 falling out of alignment to the south. This, Brown explained, 
 was probably because they were markings of later date made 
 at points where the parish boundary crossed the present 
 road and was, after all, not at the corner like stone A. He 
 held that, if his theory of the track of the Roman road is 
 right, the points XX would have probably been the original 
 boundary. 
 
 The space, ABCX in Fig. 8, is certainly a very curious 
 one. If the road ever ran from the boundary stone at A to 
 the one at D as surmised, then it is natural to expect the
 
 152 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 boundary FC to have ended with the road at X. When the 
 later road was made to curve down at BCD the whole space 
 ABCD would be included in the northern parish. In the 
 next diagram this course of conjectured road is extended by 
 dotted line to Chart Corner. Note that this piece of country 
 is right at the top of the ridge. I have indicated the 400 
 foot contour on either side (Fig. 7). 
 
 I nearly launched out with a discovery of my own. Brown 
 had apparently not noticed that the second turning to the 
 left after Chartway Street is named Friday Street. Had 
 it not been getting so late in the day I should probably have 
 evolved an entirely fresh Roman road running south from 
 this point to Wheeler's Street, some four miles on, by Headcom, 
 and ended up with great feasibility at a farm about a mile 
 further on bearing the name Cold Harbour; but I thought 
 better of it. I did not expect, knowing Brown, we should 
 any of us get home to-night, as it was, and one Roman road 
 was quite enough at a time. 
 
 We all declared our conversion to Brown's reasoning, and 
 passed a sort of informal vote of confidence in his leader- 
 ship, pursuing our quest with renewed vigour. We stopped 
 and consulted the map again. A curious thing now becomes 
 apparent. There are two roads, almost parallel, some 200 
 to 300 yards apart. The lower road runs for a mile and a 
 quarter and then turns at right angles, northwards, to the five 
 cross roads at Cock Street. From Cock Street, for over two 
 miles, there is a perfectly straight run of road with one very 
 slight change of direction for over four miles. But note this,
 
 
 THE MEDWAY AT YA1.DING
 
 THE AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS 
 
 153 
 
 « 
 
 « 
 
 ' t 
 
 •TjT-7. • 
 
 FIG. 8. 
 
 that if a line be projected straight on at this right-angle turn 
 of the lower road to Cock Street we jump across a distance 
 of 1000 yards and find ourselves on the parish boundary of 
 Linton, exactly 200 yards south of this straight piece of the 
 modern road and keep straight on parish boundaries for four 
 and a half miles, following the modern road or coinciding with 
 it until it ends abruptly in a road running at right angles. But, 
 wonderful to relate, when this road unaccountably changes 
 its direction the parish boundary goes straight on into Quarry 
 Wood, aiming for a point on the river by Nettlestead where the 
 50 foot contour lines on each side of the Medway are barely 
 200 yards apart. 
 
 We felt now that the Roman road could not possibly 
 escape us and tore onwards, much exceeding the speed limit 
 and causing considerable astonishment to the other road 
 motorists, who did not know that we were makers of history 
 and consequently not to be judged by ordinary standards.
 
 154 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 When we reached the X corner by Quarry Wood we turned to 
 the left and then to the right again, coming out on the crest 
 of the hill above Yalding, looking down on a magnificent 
 panorama of the Weald of Kent. To the right, lay the distant 
 chalk hills along which runs the Pilgrim's Way, and ahead of 
 us the narrow neck of valley where the Medway passes 
 Nettlestead. We called a halt and rested for a while. 
 Some giants were moving to and fro among the poles, 
 training up the vines or mending damaged strings. I think it 
 will be well to give a sketch, made earlier in the year, of these 
 supermen at "stringing," and incidentally to write something 
 about hops for the benefit of the vistor to Kent. 
 
 Most people's interest in hops begins and ends with beer. 
 The denizens of East London, however, have an annual 
 experience of country life on their own account, when whole 
 families go a-picking. Yet in Kent, " a land of hops and 
 poppy-mingled corn," the interest in hops is a perpetual one, 
 for these vineyards of the north, as they may be called, need 
 work upon them for the whole round of the year. 
 
 As soon as the picking is over — in the case of late varieties, 
 not till October — the land must be turned and manured. It 
 is sometimes ploughed, but this is rare, as the poles and wires 
 make all sorts of difficulties. Then the roots of the vines are 
 pruned. In April the shoots, thin reddish tendrils, can be 
 seen pushing their way up through the earth. 
 
 There are many methods of training the vines, all variants 
 of arrangements with poles, wire, and strings. The poles are 
 from twelve to sixteen feet high, and " stringing," as well as
 
 >- 
 
 "H 
 
 THE GIANTS OF YALDING.
 
 156 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 numerous other operations, necessitate the use of stilts. The 
 effect of giants striding about among the poles, as shown here 
 on the ridge above Yalding, is curious and startling. The 
 performance, as may be imagined, requires no little skill, and 
 is irresistibly reminiscent of a music-hall turn. 
 
 The alternative to this high-level performance is the 
 placing of a ladder against the hops, and a continual descending, 
 moving, and ascending again — a process in a day's work which 
 becomes far more tiring than the difficult walking progress 
 which is shown here. 
 
 The hop- vine is a prodigious grower, averaging something 
 like a foot a week, or one-sixteenth of an inch per hour, and 
 taking about five months to reach maturity. During this 
 period it is attacked by insects, and incessant war is waged 
 between the cultivator and the aphis, a small green fly. To 
 get rid of this pest, a solution of soft soap and water is sprayed 
 on the plants from a hose, either by means of a horse machine 
 that sprays automatically in all directions as it travels along, 
 or by a tank on wheels, with hand pump, which supplies hoses 
 to be directed by workers among the vines. It is generally 
 said that hops are behaving themselves properly when they 
 reach the top of the poles by the longest day. 
 
 When the hops are picked they are taken and placed in 
 the oast-houses, which are kilns for the purpose of curing the 
 hops. An open grid floor of wood is built across the structure, 
 and on this is stretched a horsehair carpet to keep the hops 
 from being burnt. A fire is kindled underneath, and the 
 smoke, which will contain a certain amount of sulphur, will
 
 THE AMATEUR ARCH/EOLOGISTS 
 
 157 
 
 have the effect of killing any insect life and giving the hops a 
 golden-brown colour. Nice coloured hops, like brown eggs, 
 are more saleable commodities than poor coloured ones, but 
 it is doubtful whether there is any great virtue really in the 
 exact colour of either. The hops, during this process, are 
 
 ^r 
 
 FIG. 9. 
 
 turned by men with wooden shovels to ensure the proper 
 curing of every part of them. 
 
 I cannot claim to be one of those who would be very hard 
 hit if this country were to go dry, but I do feel that the beer 
 of old England is the cause of much that is picturesque in our 
 country-side — the woodland clearings, where the poles are
 
 158 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 being barked and tipped with creosote, the green avenues of 
 a clustering hop garden — especially when they border a river, 
 and the quaint oast-houses, " bosomed high in tufted trees." 
 The world of Kent and Sussex would lose much of its character 
 were it without these things. 
 
 Of the many varieties of hops the three principal groups 
 are Prolific, the earliest to mature, ready to be picked by the 
 end of August, Goldings, ready in the month of September, 
 and Colegates, the latest to ripen, and often picked as late as 
 October. Growers often arrange to have different kinds so 
 that the picking period is spread over some weeks, and the 
 number of pickers required simultaneously is less. 
 
 BY IWYFORD BRIDGE, YALDING.
 
 THE AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS 
 
 159 
 
 "»*! 
 
 A RIVERSIDE HOP GARDEN. 
 
 We rallied our forces and proceeded on our quest, but 
 after Quarry Wood there seemed to be little evidence to 
 be deduced from anything except that the general direction 
 the road had been taking was an opportune one for the 
 crossing of the river at a point where a very narrow neck of 
 valley gave good opportunity for a ferry with dry banks, 
 unliable to flood, facing each other across a narrow strip of 
 lowland skirting the river. 
 
 Fig. 9 will serve to illustrate the problem. I have shown 
 the contours. Brown insisted on my drawing an arrow in 
 continuation of the line we have taken. It leads towards
 
 i6o 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Plaxtol and keeps more or less hobnobbing with parish 
 boundaries. I think myself that the ascent at Nettlestead, 
 if this straight line were rigidly adhered to, would be rather too 
 steep, even for the Romans, but there is no reason why the 
 line should not be broken, especially at a ferry. There are 
 plenty of instances of Roman roads winding up and down hills, 
 and sometimes following the crests of a ridge in order to keep 
 to the same level. If you will look on the map (Fig. 9) and 
 measure off a distance of half an inch to the right of Nettle - 
 stead Church, you will find a boundary stone marked with a 
 dot. To the right of this mark, if you will measure three- 
 quarters of an inch again, you will find another. 
 
 The dotted line shows the present boundary coinciding 
 with the present road. 
 
 But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the 
 boundary stones are old marks and the road has been taken 
 in a curve to avoid the steepness of the rise, which the Romans 
 never seemed to mind, you will notice that the stones exactly 
 
 follow the straight line 
 of our conjectural road. 
 With a large scale 
 map you will find that 
 this section of road, 
 where there are no houses 
 and where no village has 
 ever been, still bears the 
 name of Hunt Street. 
 When we had dis- 
 
 RATS CASTLE, 
 NEAR MEREWORTH.
 
 THE AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS 
 
 10 1 
 
 fair Rosamond's bower,' 
 
 HANGER. 
 
 WESTEN- 
 
 covered this fact we gave 
 a vigorous cheer and pro- 
 ceeded, after crossing the 
 river by the bridge at Water- 
 ingbury, to locate another 
 boundary stone (showing 
 here on the left of Fig. 9). 
 
 I have not space here to 
 go into details about Mere- 
 worth and West Peckham, 
 but give a small sketch of 
 an old house rejoicing in the 
 name of Rats Castle. There are many houses in Kent 
 bearing this curious name, which is generally supposed to 
 have been given in derision because of centuries of neglect. 
 
 There is another name, Spider's Castle, which seems to 
 justify this derivation. I am unskilled, as I have said before, 
 in these place-name problems, but I wonder whether the 
 Saxons brought with them the word Rath, as in the German 
 Rathaus. 
 
 Well, to end the story of the great discovery. Night fell 
 and we became less and less scientific, until we reached 
 Oldbury Camp via Plaxtol. The urgent need for food made 
 us decide without controversj' that this was as far as we 
 need go. Let others carry on the work. We at least had 
 done our bit ; so we ordered everything that could be obtained 
 at the local inn and fell to. We were convinced that this 
 Lost Road, now found, could take care of itself. 
 
 M
 
 l62 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 There is many a true word spoken in jest. Although I 
 have told the tale of our amateur quest with all its crudities 
 and uncritical enthusiasm, I submit that the evidence, 
 much of which is put forward for the first time, is of im- 
 portance and in the hands of a trained archaeologist might 
 lead to definite results. Evidence is evidence, whether arrived 
 at by a ludicrous or a serious method of collection. 
 
 Although on Stone Street and off the track of our con- 
 jectured road, I have sketched the picturesque remains of 
 Westenhanger Castle near Lmypne, and by Brown's special 
 request included Fair Rosamond's Bower (traditional), a ruin 
 which is probably some 300 years too late to have acted in so 
 romantic a capacity. This same tower shows to the left of 
 the barn-like building sketched below. 
 
 -■y.frf 
 WESTENHANGER CASTLE.
 
 XII 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT
 
 tjiVBL. SAND 
 
 fyft»GffT£ 
 
 RftftlSGrflTE 
 
 T> UN GEN £55 
 
 HASTINGS 
 
 /. 0XN£Y 
 £>. GRAIN 
 
 2. THANET 3 SHE.PPEY 4. HART^ 
 
 y. 8URNTWKK. 
 
 s ELUMLE^ 
 
 . - iND'Orres -RovJTS. TRrte.N dX -SHiPJ FRcNv. 
 l»cHt>o«v To "TH£ ^ew^i : A 1-5° CHANNELS into 
 
 -THE WE*U> NEAR Te' s f"i'E. R - c, EN 
 
 THE6EYEH fSLANDS OF KEJ-Tt
 
 ^=^pgmi 
 
 
 MINSTER IN SHEPPEY. 
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 IN the early Middle Ages, a ship setting sail from London 
 would have been able to make an inland voyage nearly 
 as far as Deal, and then wait a favourable opportunity to slip 
 across to France. Ships were comparatively small craft 
 then, not, in fact, very different in calibre to the sailing barges 
 that still use the only part of this route still navigable — the 
 Swale, which divides Sheppey from the mainland of Kent. 
 
 A glance at the map will show how this sheltered cruise 
 was made. The dotted line represents the sea-route as it 
 was then. Keeping a course inside the Isle of Grain, entering 
 the estuary by the now much-narrowed inlet known as Yantlet
 
 166 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Creek, a vessel would keep across the wide waters of the 
 Medway, through the region now known as Chetney Marshes, 
 then open water, and take the course inside Sheppey. This 
 course was more or less where the Swale now lies, emerging 
 by Whitstable. In those days the land beyond Warden 
 Point stretched out several miles, and it is probable that many 
 of the banks ending in the shoals now known as Margate 
 Hook and Margate Sands were marshes and saltings. Thus 
 sheltered water would extend to Reculvers, where the broad 
 estuary of the Wantsum cut off the Isle of Thanet. 
 
 Coming out by Sandwich into the Stour, which then 
 flowed into the sea near Deal, and not, as it does now, by 
 Pegwell Bay, there only remained some thirty miles of open 
 sea before reaching the coast of France. But first of all let 
 us set out a list of the Kentish islands. Here they are — 
 
 Oxney 
 
 Thanet 
 
 Sheppey 
 
 Harty 
 
 Elmley 
 
 Grain 
 
 Burntwick. 
 
 Oxney, now an island only in name and surrounded on 
 all sides by a level tract of rich, green pasture land, was an 
 island, in fact, till the inning of the marshes cut it off more and 
 more from the Rother and the sea. It reached its palmiest 
 days about the latter end of Elizabeth's reign. Thanet
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 167 
 
 approached nearest to the mainland at Sarre, and Sarre Wall, 
 on which the road runs to-day, no doubt became a causeway 
 at the narrowest section known as the Ferry. 
 
 I should imagine an almost exact parallel to-day could 
 be found in the road that leads from the mainland to tjae 
 island of Foulness in Essex. A causeway, uncovered at low 
 
 KING S FERRY BRIDGE. 
 
 water, makes a dry road, but at high tide there is sufficient 
 depth to allow the passage of barges or small ships. 
 
 I remember, during the war, a horse and cart were swept 
 away by a rising tide on this causeway, I don't know under 
 what circumstances. The horse was drowned, and it was 
 thought locally that no trace of either horse or cart had been 
 found. I could spin a yarn, however, about the sequel. 
 It is one of my war stories, not so dull as some, so I will set 
 it out in full.
 
 168 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 The Story of the Imperishable Horse 
 
 Once upon a time, when I had temporarily given up being 
 an artist to become a horribly handsome naval officer, I was 
 defending the shores of this so-called country against the 
 ravages of the Germans. In order to do this most effectively 
 I was put in command of a Motor Launch and given a patrol 
 on the coast of Essex and a lot of petrol. Besides providing 
 mild amusement to the visitors to Southend, who generally 
 referred to the M. L. as a submarine, and mild excitement 
 every time she caught fire, we searched for mines, retrieved 
 torpedoes, salved seaplanes, and delivered picture postcards 
 to the Mouse light-vessel. 
 
 Now, one day a signal was received from a destroyer that 
 some wreckage had been sighted near Foulness. Apparently 
 it was in water too shallow for her to investigate, so the M. L. 
 was told off to find out what it was. She could make out 
 nothing in the failing light, but on the next morning a cart 
 with a dead horse harnessed in it appeared off the pier at 
 Southend. This was probably the "wreckage" referred to. 
 
 We salved the cart and unharnessed the dead horse, 
 towing it out to sea to dispose of it as best we could. We did 
 not realize for a long time how difficult this was going to be. 
 We had target practice at it and riddled it with all sorts of 
 projectiles. We tried ramming it, but had to desist for fear 
 of breaking our stem. At last we had to make a kind of big- 
 meshed net with cord, weighted all round with such heavy 
 objects as we could find on board. This seemed to do the
 
 A NOCTURNE OF MARGATE ROADS
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 169 
 
 
 trick, and we had the satis- 
 faction of seeing the whole 
 thing thus weighted sink out 
 of sight, and, as we thought, 
 out of mind. 
 
 A few days afterwards, a 
 report from the captain of 
 an incoming ship described 
 a floating mine with three 
 horns as in the vicinity of 
 the Shivering Sand. Actceon 
 unleashed her hounds and 
 we tore over, great and small 
 loud yelling for our prey. 
 Of course it proved to be 
 our horse. I had to report 
 to the Admiralty the circum- 
 stances of my temerity in allowing a horse from Southend to 
 be there when it had once been in my keeping, dead or alive. 
 My instructions were to dispose of it. The tone of the order 
 suggested that I insisted on keeping dead horses, in spite of 
 all advice to the contrary, on purpose to cause confusion 
 in shipping circles, a habit which must be discontinued 
 forthwith. 
 
 Well, it is a long story. We used hundredweight upon 
 hundredweight of sinkers, but nothing seemed to keep the 
 horse permanently at the bottom of the sea. It would wash 
 up on a bank and the surf would tear away our netting. 
 
 ALONGSIDE " ACTiEON.
 
 170 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 Again and again the horse turned up, although it was not 
 apparently again reported to the Admiralty. 
 
 Now, during the war, even against an unscrupulous foe, 
 it has been the pride of every naval officer to keep his hands 
 
 SEA REACH, CALM. 
 
 clean. I have to confess, however, that I once hit below the 
 belt, not against the enemy, but, more is the shame, against 
 a brother officer. Regardless of the awful responsibility that 
 I took, I ordered the horse to be taken in tow, and against a 
 flood tide reached the extreme limits of my patrol at high 
 water. Then the horse was let go, and with six hours' spring 
 tide to help it would inevitably be thrust well into the
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 171 
 
 Harwich patrol. We never heard of it again, so it is possible 
 that the great wrong that I intended to do was overruled by 
 Providence. 
 
 Each of these seven Kentish islands has some particular 
 characteristic. Oxney I have described elsewhere. Thanet, 
 
 ££=5=3 
 
 
 ^^« c 
 
 SEA REACH, FRESH. 
 
 with its proper seaside resorts, might be called the Island of 
 Holidays. Sheppey is the Island of Flying. Harty and 
 Elmley are now parts of Sheppey, one having a noticeable 
 height across the flat islands and the other noted as one of 
 the most thinly populated parishes in England. There is a 
 story told that the school there boasted four pupils, three of 
 which were the children of the schoolmistress.
 
 i 7 2 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 _.«• -<flee> ~ s- T 
 
 THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE A COMIC PICTURE. IT SIMPLY SHOWS WHAT CURIOUS 
 THINGS PEOPLE WILL DO FOR PLEASURE. 
 
 Grain might now be called the home of the seaplane and 
 Burntwick is quite an upstart, but its war record brings it 
 into line with the proudest of Kent's islands. I may be a 
 prejudiced person, as during a great part of the war I was one 
 of Actceon's hounds, and Burntwick island, although so small, 
 was part of H.M.S. Actceon. It is a little bit of " inned " 
 marsh and was piled with nets and sweeps and depth-charges 
 for the trawlers and drifters which swept the sea-road to 
 London. 
 
 The Isle of Grain is now an island only in name. The road 
 and the Hundred of Hoo railway to Port Victoria, and the 
 general silting-up of the saltings and the upper end of Yantlet 
 Creek have hidden the fact that it ever was one. 
 
 By Grain Fort, and just opposite Garrison Point, Sheerness, 
 stands a lonely tower in the water. It is similar to the
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 173 
 
 PAINTING A CRUISER S FUNNEL. 
 
 Martello towers of the 
 
 south coast. From this 
 
 point was built a pier 
 
 during the war, and a 
 
 boom defence to close the 
 
 Medway. 
 
 On the whole the Island 
 
 of Grain is not an exciting 
 
 place in which to dwell, 
 
 though it enjoys wide 
 
 views of sea and sky and 
 
 a river-bank silhouette of 
 
 warships, lying at anchor. 
 
 There is an astonishing amount of mud on the sea-reach side, 
 
 where the island faces Southend. I remember anchoring there 
 
 once in the Penguin, having failed to make Sheerness. The 
 
 tide was ebbing and I can still remember an idiotic attempt 
 
 to get various stores on 
 board from the island. 
 In another tide we could 
 have got them at Sheer- 
 ness, but it is amazing 
 what hideous discomfort 
 human beings will endure 
 " if only they can persuade 
 themselves that they are 
 doing it for pleasure. 
 
 the "penguin " and h.m.s. "magnificent." From the entrance to
 
 174 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 ^■M. 
 
 THE TOWER AT GRAIN. 
 
 the Medway at Grain barges going Margate way can take 
 what is known as the " overland " route along the shores 
 of Sheppey. It is a pleasant run with a shallow-draft vessel, 
 under steep shores of red clay, tumbling in picturesque 
 ruggedness into the sea. At Warden Point there stood, 
 within living memory, the ruins of a church, but it has long 
 since disappeared. I remember a gruesome story told me 
 by the skipper of a barge, that his father remembered seeing 
 skeletons stalking out from the crumbling cliff which was 
 part of the churchyard. 
 
 The name Sheppey means the island of sheep. Lambarde 
 wrote of this region in the sixteenth century as follows : — 
 " It shoulde seeme, by the dedication of the name, that this 
 Islande was long since greatly esteemed either for the number
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 175 
 
 of Sheepe, or for the fineness of the fleece, although 
 aunsient foreign writers ascribe not much to any part of 
 all England — and much less to this place — either for the 
 one respect or the other. But whether the Sheepe of this 
 Realme were in prize before the coming of the Saxons or 
 no, they be now (God be thanked therefore) worthy of great 
 estimation, both for the exceeding fineness of the fleeshe and 
 fleese (which passeth all other in Europe at this daye, and is 
 
 RECULVERS AND MARGATE HOOK.
 
 176 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 to bee compared withe the aunsient delicate wool of Tarentum, 
 or the Golden Fleese of Colchos itself) and for the abundant 
 store of flockes so increasing everywhere, that not only this 
 little Isle, but the whole Realme also, might be called 
 Sheepey." 
 
 Norden, in 1593, alludes to an industry which has now died 
 out, namely the making of Cheese from ewes milk. " Neere 
 untoe the Thames," he writes, " there are certaine Islandes 
 converted to the feeding of ewes, which men milke and 
 thereof make cheese, and of the curdes and the wheye make 
 butter." Camden also says, " This Isle of Sheepe, whereof it 
 feedeth mightie great flockes, was called by our auncestours 
 Shepey." 
 
 One side of Sheppey, the side bordering the sea, is hilly 
 but falls away to the south and towards the Swale is marsh- 
 land. This flat land is relieved at intervals with mounds. 
 The traditional view of the origin of these is that they are the 
 burial places of Danes slaughtered by thousands in the great 
 fights which the island saw. If so, it is strange that these 
 battles should have occurred with extraordinary regularity in 
 the neighbourhood of ditches constructed long since for the 
 draining of the marshes. Also it seems sufficient Danes 
 must have been slain to account for half the population 
 of England at the time these sanguinary contests took 
 place. 
 
 It seems more probable that the earth from these dykes 
 accounts for the hillocks. There is to be found growing in 
 the marshes of the Swale, and said (on what authority I do
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 177 
 
 not know) to grow nowhere else, a low-growing plant with a 
 dull red bloom known as Dane's Blood. 
 
 Almost at the extreme eastern end of the island, at Leys- 
 down, stands an old house, now called the Mussel Manor. It 
 is a historical place in two ways. In an ancient map, a portion 
 of which I have copied, the place is marked as Mosehold and 
 
 -I 
 ..'■ '<.-■• 
 
 *.... 
 
 >ii 
 
 THE MUSSEL MANOR, LEYSDOWN. 
 
 it stood on a creek which divided it from a marshy island, 
 Schotton. 
 
 This island has long since become part of Sheppey and 
 the house now looks over a sea of grass. 
 
 In 1907 it became historical in another way. The Hon. 
 Charles Rolls, Mr. Moore-Brabazon, Mr. Frank McLean, 
 Mr. Ogilvy, and others, and the brothers Short, began making 
 more English history. The brothers, Wright, too, the great 
 
 N
 
 178 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 m 
 
 tr 
 
 \fN& 
 
 KS3 
 
 a ?= 
 
 pioneers from America, visited the community. Eastchurch 
 evolved the sea-plane, and finally the R.N.A.S. 
 
 It is so short a time ago that it seems unbelievable. I can 
 remember flights of 30 yards while men lay down to see that 
 
 the machine did leave the ground. 
 Then there were joyous celebrations of 
 the event in the old house. I remember 
 the four first heroes, Samson, Longmore, 
 Gregory (R.N.), and Gerrard (Marine) 
 being taught to fly by Mr. McLean. 
 I remember sketching Samson flying off 
 the Africa with air bags tied on to his 
 skids and then the first sea-plane. Short 
 brothers, with indomitable faith, but by 
 mwMBiwmMi dim oil lights held aloft by successive 
 
 -l. IHIf D slaves of the lamp, often supervised 
 
 their men all night as they worked to 
 prepare a machine for flight in the 
 morning. 
 
 It is easy now to realize the military 
 importance of master}' of the air. We 
 have been taught that thoroughly, 
 painfully, during years of stress. Yet 
 these men had nothing but imagination 
 to look to, for war science. There was 
 no tradition, and the future was an 
 unopened book. 
 
 PLATES FOR SHIPBUILDING. . 
 
 in Chatham dockyard. Recently, on a visit to Leysdown,
 
 ■'■■ ■■'"■■~'^- : * ; . 
 
 ^:--: 
 
 
 -. • vi &■ ':t> .■*-• •; :iH<i""i A-'W'-' :-»•.'•? 
 
 '.Xi"*---»-- ■ 
 
 Y 
 
 \ 
 
 IN GILLINGHAM REACH
 
 THE SEVEN ISLANDS OF KENT 
 
 179 
 
 OLD MAP SHOWING LEYSDOWN. 
 
 I came upon a few 
 stones by a dyke. I 
 examined them and 
 found traces by them 
 of a cement floor and 
 the relic of what had 
 once been the bed of 
 an engine. It was no 
 less a piece of history 
 than the old founda- 
 tions of Short brothers' first factory of heavier-than-air 
 machines. 
 
 One day, with guide book in hand (I had almost written 
 Baedekar) people will come from the east and from the 
 west and gaze upon this ground, for out of it there grew 
 a great service and a great tradition. Although the Royal 
 Naval Air Service has long ago been merged in the Royal 
 Air Force, no one will forget the grit and go of those early 
 days. 
 
 It sounds unbelievable but it is true, that the great branch 
 of the Navy known as the R.N.A.S. was practically the 
 creation of Mr. Frank McLean, who, a civilian, taught the 
 Navy to fly on his machines and at his own expense, on 
 ground that he had bought. It is truer to say that the Navy 
 was allowed to fly, for it needed a lot of push at the Admiralty. 
 There were, however, senior officers with imagination and by 
 means of these the great thing was done. And when the 
 war was over, and the enormous use of flying demonstrated
 
 i8o 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 even to the dullest intelligence, did the advisors of the King 
 make amends and see that honour was given where it was 
 most due ? 
 
 The answer is in the negative. 
 
 OLD BOATS. 
 A DOCKYARD SCENE.
 
 
 XIII 
 CANTERBURY AND THE SEA
 
 ggjaSton 
 
 "»1 
 
 DOVER.
 
 TjORCfcRWA 
 
 
 Tortus LEWAi 
 
 CANTERBURY AND THE ROiMAN PORTS. 
 
 
 PORJUS *DUBR(S 
 
 CANTERBURY AND THE SEA 
 
 THE importance of Canterbury as the centre of radiating 
 roads to various posts cannot be too clearly emphasized. 
 It was this position, within a day's march of any one of five 
 ports north, east and south, that made it a sort of clearing- 
 house for sea-borne commerce. It was the favourable situa- 
 tion of Canterbury with regard to communications, especially 
 with the Continent, that made it particularly suitable as the 
 headquarters of the Church in South England. The life 
 and progress of the Church was, to a large extent in early 
 days, fostered by the position of the city, and the greatness 
 of Canterbury was thrust upon it, by the vagaries of our much 
 abused climate. 
 
 Sudden changes in wind and weather made it necessary
 
 184 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 for alternative sheltered harbours to be available. In a 
 north-easter it might be very difficult for a ship to make the 
 northern Kentish ports, or gain the sheltered waters of the 
 Wantsum inside Thanet ; but the harbours east of Dover 
 would be easy. If the wind chopped round to south-west, 
 however, and this became a lee shore a ship might have to 
 run round to the north and make for a weather shore. Thus a 
 merchant would never know where his cargo would be landed 
 and the line of least resistance was to sit snugly at Canter- 
 bury, whereto all roads led, and wait for his goods. Thus 
 Canterbury would grow in importance as trade from the 
 Continent increased. 
 
 Even in Roman times this key situation of Canterbury 
 with regard to ports was all important. Five Roman roads 
 served the five harbours, Regulbium, the estuary of the 
 Wantsum inside the Isle of Thanet, Portus Ritupis (Rich- 
 borough), Portus Dubris (Dover), and Portus Lemanus 
 (Lympne). Of these five roads I will give a brief account, 
 as they have a great bearing on our history ; the Saxons 
 developed them and the Cinque Ports, with their members, 
 in later days owed their land intercommunication principally 
 to their long-established ways. 
 
 I. Stone Street, leading almost due north from Lympne 
 to Canterbury, is a classic example of a Roman road. It is 
 quite straight, except when it has to negotiate a very steep 
 ascent. Here it takes a curved path, but soon becomes 
 straight again all the way to Canterbury. Camden describes 
 this road as paved with stones.
 
 CANTERBURY AND THE SEA 185 
 
 2. Dover to Canterbury. This is the beginning of Watling 
 Street. It runs very much on the line of the modern road. 
 Near Lydden a trace of the Roman road lies to the west side 
 of the present road. On Barham Down are the remains 
 of a Roman camp. From Lydden Hill to Canterbury, the 
 Roman road ran absolutely straight for nine miles. 
 
 3. Richborough to Canterbury. Portus Ritupis was in 
 Roman times an island in the channel between Thanet and 
 the mainland — connected no doubt by a tidal causeway as 
 was Thanet by the continuation of Sarre Wall. "It is 
 curious," writes Codrington, " that there are few traces of 
 the Roman road from Portus Ritupis, the usual port of entry 
 into Britain, to Canterbury." 
 
 4. Thanet to Canterbury. This road became a causeway 
 between Thanet and Sarre Wall to allow ships to pass over 
 at high water. It ran to a point near Sturry. 
 
 5. Reculver to Canterbury. The present road to Sturry 
 is more or less its course. Up Street is the only trace left, 
 by name, on the map. This road and the one from Thanet 
 unite and the road crosses the Stour at Fordwich proceeding 
 to Canterbury. 
 
 This old-time connection of Canterbury with the sea is 
 not of any vital importance to-day. Except for the fact that 
 it happens to be on the line between Dover and London, no 
 one now thinks of this old haunt of merchants and sea captains 
 as having any nautical flavour at all. Richborough, with its 
 wonderful train ferry during the war, revived once again the
 
 186 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 old sea road and it is interesting to remember that one of the 
 first railways in England connected Canterbury with the sea, 
 at Whitstable harbour. This was before the days of loco- 
 motives, when trucks were hauled by winding engines along 
 straight sections of line. 
 
 Speaking of Whitstable and its connection with the sea, 
 do you know the old legend of its origin ? It was from Canter- 
 bury, this time-honoured extravaganza tells us, Whitstable 
 was formed and by no less an agent than the Devil himself. 
 
 I cannot give chapter and verse, but it is taken from a 
 magazine cutting of seventy years ago. 
 
 How Whitstable was formed out of pieces 
 
 of Canterbury 
 
 " Canterbury, as all the world of Kent knows, is ' no 
 mean city ' now ; but six centuries ago, when it was the 
 resort of thousands of pilgrims, it was so glorious that it 
 excited the wrath of the foul fiend : and its inhabitants, being 
 as bad as Jerome describes the people of Jerusalem to have 
 been when that city, too, was famous for pilgrimages, he sought 
 and obtained permission to cast it into the sea if the service 
 of prayer and praise usually performed by night and by day 
 at the tomb of St. Thomas the Martyr should be once sus- 
 pended. Long and eagerly did Satan watch ; but though 
 the people grew worse daily, the religious were faithful to 
 their duties, and he almost gave up the hope of submerging 
 the proud city. 
 
 " At length, however, his time came. A great festival
 
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 ST. MARGARET'S BAY
 
 CANTERBURY AND THE SEA 187 
 
 had been held at which the chaplains at the saint's tomb had, 
 of course, borne a prominent part, and when night came, 
 utterly exhausted, they slept — all, and every one. 
 
 " The glory of Canterbury was now gone for ever. Down 
 pounced the fiend and endeavoured to grasp the city in his 
 arms ; but though provided with claws proverbially long he 
 was unable to embrace one half, so vast was its size. A 
 portion, however, he seized, and having with a few strokes 
 of his wings reached the open sea he cast in his evil burden ; 
 thrice all but annihilated, when the prayers of the neglected 
 St. Thomas prevailed, and an angelic vision was sent to Brother 
 Hubert the Sacristan, which roused and directed him what to 
 do. He rushed into the church, and seizing the bell rope, he 
 pulled vigorously. The great bell, Harry, which gives its 
 name to the centre tower of the minster, ordinarily required 
 the exertions of ten men to set it in motion, but it now yielded 
 to the touch of one, and a loud boom from its consecrated 
 metal scared the fiend just as he reached the verge of the sea ; 
 in despair he dropped his prey and fled, and Canterbury has 
 never since excited his envy by its splendour. 
 
 " There was a remarkable difference in the fate of the 
 different parts of Satan's last armful from which a great 
 moral lesson was justly drawn by my informant. Those 
 very few houses in which more good than bad were found were 
 preserved from destruction by falling on the hill-side, and 
 they thus gave rise to the thriving port of Whitstable ; while 
 the great majority dropped into the sea a mile off ; but 
 antiquaries, ignorant of the facts of the case, have mistaken
 
 188 . UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 them for the ruins of Roman edifices submerged by the 
 encroaching ocean." 
 
 In order to verify by analogy my arguments for the lost 
 Roman road from Lympne to Sutton Valence and Maid- 
 stone, I followed the Roman roads from Richborough to 
 Dover and from Dover to Lympne, and learnt much about 
 the habits of these lateral ways that came in useful. It is 
 clear that Richborough, now known as rusty Richborough, on 
 account of mountains of scrapped lorries and machinery from 
 France, was in Roman times an island and the road from the 
 higher ground to the south must have been in the nature of 
 a causeway, covered by the tide, as at Sarre in Thanet. 
 
 The Roman road to Dover, however, is not so picturesque 
 a route as the coast road, along the headlands. This way, 
 through breezy Deal and comfortably circumstanced Walmer, 
 approaches white walls at Kingsdown and a pleasant path, 
 looking down on the sea, with glimpses of France and of the 
 shipping going up or down Channel, skirts the edge of the 
 headlands. The monument to the Dover Patrol stands 
 boldly out on the highest point and the nearest to France, 
 and then comes St. Margaret's Bay, charmingly situated and 
 utterly unexpected. I have sketched here the first glimpse 
 of it, as the traveller finds it at his feet with the South Foreland, 
 with its squat lighthouse, beyond it. 
 
 In Roman times, Dover harbour was situated between the 
 high ground on each side, where most of the town now stands. 
 It is thought that the Pharos, which still stands by the castle, 
 was matched by a similar tower on the other heights, now
 
 lien-*** Mft»sEli, 
 
 A DOVER FORESHORE
 
 CANTERBURY AND THE SEA 189 
 
 known as Shakespeare's Cliff. Thus at night, when both were 
 showing beacon lights, the entrance to Dover was far descried 
 by the galleys coming across from Gaul. 
 
 It is probable that a great deal of these western heights 
 has crumbled away. The slope of the ground suggests that 
 they may have been higher, though the oft-quoted lines from 
 King Lear could not be descriptive of any height less than 
 several thousand feet, except in the vaguest and most poetical 
 sense : 
 
 "... and yond tall anchoring bark 
 Diminish'd to her cock ; her cock, a buoy 
 Almost too small for sight ; the murmuring surge 
 That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes 
 Cannot be heard so high." 
 
 It has always seemed to me rather far-fetched calling this 
 headland Shakespeare's Cliff, as the famous quotation from 
 King Lear is not descriptive of any actual place. The scene 
 is given as " Fields near Dover " and it is not anywhere steep 
 or high up because Edgar is trying to persuade the blind 
 Gloucester that he is ascending a height. 
 
 Edgar : You do climb now ; look, how we labour. 
 
 Clon : Methinks the ground is even. 
 
 Edgar : Horrible steep. 
 
 Hark, do you hear the sea ? 
 
 Clon : No, truly. 
 
 The famous description, supposed to be of a view from 
 these cliffs, is an invention of Edgar's, and a magnificent word- 
 picture to try and make Gloucester believe indeed that he is 
 at the edge of a tremendous precipice.
 
 igo 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 I have sketched this famous headland as it appears from 
 the beach near the Lord Warden Hotel. 
 
 A reader protests that one of the fishermen on the left is 
 exactly like a mouse. As a matter of fact it is a boat upside 
 down, on trestles. I reply, however, by pointing out the 
 remarkable resemblance, in any case, between the fishermen 
 of Dover and mice. Shakespeare says so, and surely he was 
 a keen observer of men. Here it is, chapter and verse : 
 
 " The Fishermen that walk upon the beach 
 Appear like mice." 
 
 King Lew, Act IV. Scene VI. 
 
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 KINGSDOWM.
 
 XIV 
 WIND AND WATER
 
 DELCE MILL, 
 
 ROCHESTER.
 
 WIND AND WATER 
 
 WERE it not that the term huffling was in vogue before 
 Lewis Carroll invented the portmanteau word, we 
 might have explained its origin by saying that it was meant to 
 denote a combination of hurrying and scuffling. It is certainly 
 an expressive word. It is a still more exciting occupation. 
 The manoeuvring of a sailing barge, lowering her mast as she 
 negotiates the bridge, and then getting all her tackle up again, 
 if possible, without having to anchor — this is the work of a 
 huffier, or bridge-pilot. In the London river a pilot must be 
 licensed, but in the Swale and Medway, at King's Ferry and 
 Rochester, it is a case of the survival of the fittest. Any of 
 us could take a boat and cadge for a job, but I don't think 
 
 o
 
 194 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 we should be at it long. It is quite easy to get killed or to 
 lose a mast by any of a hundred and one errors of judgment. 
 For a barge to engage a huffier is practically compulsory, 
 because the insurance companies would repudiate a claim 
 for accident made by a skipper who had taken the bridge 
 without assistance. 
 
 The huffier waits in his boat about half a mile from the 
 bridge. He boards his barge — you can always tell a barge 
 with a huffier on board by the two boats in tow — takes charge, 
 for he is now responsible, and, with the skipper and mate 
 assisting, gets the tackle ready for lowering away. With a 
 following wind it is simple to lower and get up tackle again with- 
 out risk of getting stuck or having to anchor, but the niceties 
 of huffling are to be seen when the barge is tacking ; the wind 
 blowing from the direction of the bridge she is approaching. 
 A tack to the side of the river, then she goes about and makes 
 a short tack to the central arch. Then, when perilously near 
 the bridge, she lowers away, dives into the teeth of the wind, 
 and passes under the arch. As soon as she is through, her 
 helm is put over to keep her at an angle to catch the wind 
 again, and all hands strenuously work at the winch, her heavy 
 canvas flapping noisily and everything, apparently, at sixes 
 and sevens. With luck she will have her mast sufficiently 
 raised to go about before reaching the shallows of the bank, 
 and then get off in proper trim. Sometimes her foresail is 
 gathered up on the stay before lowering. Sometimes, 
 however, when the wind is light she will duck her canvas with 
 foresail still spread to give her the maximum sail area.
 
 WIND AND WATER 
 
 195 
 
 THE MEDWAY FROM ROCHESTER STATION. 
 
 I have known a barge 
 dismasted owing to a gust 
 of wind filling her sail at 
 the last moment of lower- 
 ing, so that her mast 
 would not budge. In 
 bad weather it is often a 
 dangerous game, and men 
 have been killed through 
 tackle breaking. On the 
 
 whole, however, it is amazing how few accidents happen. 
 At times, in windy weather, you can see half a dozen 
 barges flopping about the river like wounded birds, and at 
 night there seems to the onlooker on shore to be a scene of 
 indescribable confusion, yet they will sort themselves out in 
 a few minutes and proceed on their journey as if bridges 
 were things that had never entered into their calculations — 
 thanks to the huffier. 
 
 This exciting manoeuvre of getting down tackle and up 
 again, if possible without dropping anchor, can be witnessed 
 in a lesser degree at King's Ferry bridge, near Queenborough, 
 but the strong tides of the Medway give an extra zest to the 
 huffler's art in Rochester. 
 
 Barges with their picturesque lines and pleasing colouring 
 seem to show no signs of being displaced by modern progress. 
 The sailing ship may become a thing of the past, but the 
 sailing barge, on account of its cheapness, will stay. It is 
 amazing where they can go, handled by only two men, and
 
 196 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 sometimes by a man and a boy. In Holland, in Germany, in 
 Belgium, and in France the traveller will see the familiar red 
 sails of Thames and Medway barges. In old pictures of a 
 hundred years ago the English sailing barge seemed to be 
 almost identical with her successor of to-day except for the 
 square sail, which was a feature of those times. It is probably 
 the difficulty of handling this auxiliary that has led to its 
 abandonment. 
 
 Probably in those days, when labour was cheaper, more 
 hands were carried. Two men can negotiate almost any 
 weather with a spritsail barge, because the mainsail is brailed 
 as it stands, and the foresail and topsail come down with a 
 run on letting go the halyard and cannot very well get into 
 difficulties. 
 
 Rochester, too, can boast of another unique feature, a 
 feature which I think no other city can produce. Amidst 
 dense streets, and built in by a hundred houses, can be seen 
 an old-time windmill, still at work, a classic example of rus 
 in urbe, defying change and even glorying in it. The jolly 
 miller laughs at miners and cares not twopence for the present 
 price of coal. The mill is Delce Mill, and the jolly miller is 
 Mr. W. J. Glover, who has " sailed " this mill for the last 
 fifty years. 
 
 The Rochester mill, however, though it glories in its past, 
 is quite up to date, and is fitted with the modern shutter sails, 
 with slats set at right angles to the sweep. When the milt 
 is idle, to bring it into action the slats are slanted (like those of 
 a Venetian blind) according to the amount of wind to be
 
 WIND AND WATER 197 
 
 " held." Weights check the angle of the slats and they work 
 automatically like the governor of an engine, so that a sudden 
 gust will open them slightly and let the wind through. I 
 found that if in windless weather — and there is not much of 
 this in the Medway Valley — there was work that would not 
 wait, an auxiliary steam-engine was used to drive the mill 
 using up half a ton of coal. 
 
 In spite, however, of all these devices, the miller admits 
 that it is impossible, under the present conditions of working, 
 to compete with mills which are operated by means of steam, 
 owing to the lowness of the horse-power which can be secured 
 and the smallness of the plant. Mr. Glover is, nevertheless, 
 something of a prophet. Looking back into the past he can 
 remember the time when no less than twenty-two windmills 
 were visible from this ridge above Rochester. Now there are 
 only two, one a ruin and the other out of action. Looking 
 forward into the future, he foresees a time when the present 
 difficulties about fuel will, to some extent, be overcome by 
 making use of the literally unlimited power of the winds. 
 The wind cannot be used up. A hundred windmills, unless 
 built too near together, will have a hundred times the power 
 of one. If for want of room these had to be packed rather 
 tight, a line of them built close together at right angles to the 
 prevailing wind would seldom suffer through this proximity 
 on account of the fact that the wind would not often blow 
 from the disadvantageous quarter. 
 
 One of the practical difficulties in the way of getting many 
 disused windmills into working order, is the fact that the
 
 ig8 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 millwright's craft is, in some counties, almost a defunct one. 
 However, the windmill of the future will probably be on 
 different lines from the old-time windmill, and will be con- 
 structed of steel. " Wind towers " of open trellis will carry 
 the sweeps, and many wheels will co-operate to drive one 
 plant. The system that is already in use in many country 
 houses for generating electric light will possibly be used on a 
 larger scale. 
 
 IN THE ROCHESTER RIVER.
 
 XV 
 THE SILVER DARENT
 
 
 EYNESFORD BRIDGE.
 
 HORTON KIRBY. 
 
 THE SILVER DARENT 
 
 DO you know what it is to have in your imagination a 
 place which you seem to know quite well, which you 
 have never seen ? For years I used to romance about a little 
 bit of valley in the Vosges. A glimpse of it could be obtained 
 from the main line of the Ostend-Basle express. Every time 
 I proceeded with sketch books and paints on lawful occasions 
 to Switzerland or Italy or Austria — nearly always travelling 
 by this route — I looked out for my little valley. I saw it 
 by moonlight, by grey light and sunlight, but never had time 
 to stop. At last, one day, I packed a bag and started for this 
 valley of mystery, changed at Strassburg into a local train 
 and found that my anticipations were delightfully fulfilled.
 
 202 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 There is a little place on the line between London and 
 Chatham, it is just beyond Farningham Road station to the 
 right, which for years exercised somewhat the same fascination 
 upon me — a green valley with wandering streams and willows, 
 a church and a mill and the promise of high lands and hanging 
 woods beyond. I have sketched this glimpse of it at the head 
 of the chapter. Most people naturally think it is Farningham 
 because of the station's name, but it is Horton Kirby, Farning- 
 ham being some two miles further up the valley. For the 
 same reason as in the case of my valley in the Vosges I never 
 explored it, because I was always hurrying on the way to 
 or from London and never had time. 
 
 One day, however, when this view looked altogether 
 delightful in the early morning sun, I decided on an impromptu 
 tour. I was bound for London, but I decided that London 
 should wait. I imagined it might bear up if I didn't arrive 
 till the next day. I therefore sacrificed my ticket to Victoria. 
 As I am a Scotsman as well as a Man of Kent this shows how 
 excited I must have been. 
 
 I found the valley of the Darent held the delights that I 
 had expected. As it narrows between steep-wooded hills 
 there are a hundred harmonies in green and silver. Horton 
 Kirby church, in spite of an ugly tower, is a surprise within — 
 old and built of a white stone not unlike marble. The old 
 Elizabethan manor, Franks, is a delight to the eye, reflecting 
 itself in the quiet waters of the stream. This place was 
 somewhat marred by modern alterations and incongruous 
 oriental additions, but Lord Bathurst acquired this home of
 
 *v 
 
 l 
 
 FRANKS.
 
 204 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 his ancestors when it was in the market some time ago — it had 
 been unfortunately sold out of the family — and restored it 
 to its original style. 
 
 I found that the neighbourhood of Eynesford boasted 
 two castles and a quaint bridge and then, pursuing my way 
 up stream as the valley sides steepened towards Knockholt 
 and Sevenoaks, discovered a mill. It is an old-time affair. I 
 came upon it down a steep road, as sketched opposite, and 
 indeed in the evening light it might have been a little bit of 
 the Black Forest. It is used for the manufacture of hand- 
 made paper. 
 
 Talking of paper, however, reminds me that I have come 
 to the end of my space, so I will end my story of Kent here, to 
 the pleasant noise of waters by Shoreham Mill. 
 
 It is a fragmentary story and one with obvious and 
 lamentable gaps, but I hope the reader will look upon these 
 chapters as overtures to his own further exploration. Here 
 and there I have suggested a road that will yield great delight 
 to the traveller if he will push on, although I myself have not 
 had time to go far upon it. Of all the counties of England, 1 
 think Kent, perhaps, holds the greatest variety of subject for 
 the painter. 
 
 Contrast the rolling chalk downs of Dover and long level 
 marshlands of the Thames. Compare the high woods of 
 Knockholt with the wind-blown shores of Sheppey. Think of 
 the breezy downs as seen from Kingsdown, and the quiet 
 meadows of the Weald by Tenterden Tower. Call to mind 
 nocturnes in blue and gold among the magic night scenery of
 
 ^s 
 
 ■rZXrify' :?X -gxTpGdZ 
 
 
 SHOREHAM MILL.
 
 206 
 
 UNKNOWN KENT 
 
 the land of cement and of the Medway, and then remember 
 haunts of ancient peace nestling silently beneath unfrequented 
 hills, or grim Chatham with its walls of steel, and tell me if 
 there is any other county with such a goodly range of subject. 
 
 " Not these alone, but every landscape fair 
 As fit for every mood of mind 
 Gr gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there 
 Not less than truth designed." 
 
 \ 
 
 A MILL ON THE DARENT.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Action, 172 
 
 Africa, H.M.S., 178 
 
 Allington, in, 112 
 
 All Saints, Maidstone, 112 
 
 Anderida, Forest of, 38 
 
 A.P.C.M., 88 
 
 Appledore, 50, 51, 62, 76 
 
 Armada, 41 
 
 Arnolfo, 89 
 
 Ashurst, 35 
 
 Aspdin, 88 
 
 Aylesford, n, 36, 95, 96, 109, no, in 
 
 Baker, Christopher, 39 
 Barham Downs, 185 
 Banning, no 
 Bathurst, Lord, 202 
 Belloc, Hilaire, 138, 140 
 Beult, 118, 119 
 Black Sea, 83 
 Bluebell Hill, 103 
 Bockington, 28 
 Borstal, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 
 Boughton, 24 
 Boulogne, 64 
 Boxley, 19, 103 
 Branbridges, 125 
 Brent, 141 
 
 Bridgewood, Fort, 10 
 Burham, 18, 102 
 Burntwick, 166, 172 
 
 Camden, 40, 176, 184 
 Canterbury, 103, 139, 145, 150, 183, 
 185, 186, 187 
 
 Chalk, 80 
 
 Charing, 103, 140 
 
 Chart, 138 
 
 Chart Corner, 142 
 
 Chartway Street, 136, 140, 141, 142, 
 
 145, 150, 152 
 Chatham, 7, 100 
 Cinque Ports, 184 
 Cliff, 72 
 
 Cobham, John de, 82 
 Cock Street, 136, 143, 152, 153 
 Codrington, 141, 185 
 Coldharbour, 137, 138, 140, 152 
 Cooling, 70, 80, 82 
 Countless Stones, 103 
 Court at Street, 103 
 Cox, 70 
 
 Cox Heath, 144 
 Crofts, Ernest, in 
 
 Danes, 176 
 
 Danes' blood, 177 
 
 Darent, 202 
 
 Dartford, 141 
 
 Deal, 165, 188 
 
 Delce Mill, 196 
 
 Dickens, 70, 80 
 
 Dover, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190 
 
 Dowle Street, 142 
 
 Dungeness, 35, 63 
 
 Dymchurch, 64 
 
 Eastchurch, 178 
 East Peckham, 76 
 East Sutton, 150
 
 208 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Edgware Road, 141 
 Edward I., 112 
 Edward VI., 50 
 Elmley, 168 
 Erith, 84, 86 
 Essex, 168 
 Eynsford, 204 
 
 Fairfax, hi 
 Farleigh, East, no, 116 
 Farningham, 202 
 Flood Street, 137, 140 
 Flushing, 83 
 Ford, 137, 1 40 
 Fordwich, 185 
 Foulness, 167, 168 
 Franks, 202 
 Friars, Aylesford, in 
 Friday Street, 152 
 Frindsbury, 79 
 
 Garrison Point, 172 
 
 Gerrard (Marine), 178 
 
 Glover, W. J., 196 
 
 Grain, Isle of, 165, 166, 172, 173, 174 
 
 Gravesend, 69, 79, 82, 87 
 
 Great Chart, 140 
 
 Great Culand Farm, 1 8 
 
 Great Hermitage, 74, 75 
 
 Greenhithe, 89 
 
 Greenwich, 82, 83 
 
 Gregory (R.N.), 17S 
 
 Godwin, Earl, 49 
 
 Goodwin Sands, 49, 50 
 
 Hadlow Castle, 125 
 Hailing, 17, 100, 102 
 Ham Street, 51 
 Harty, 158 
 Harwich, 171 
 Hayling Island, 51 
 Headcorn, 152 
 Henry IV., 82 
 Henry VIII., 47 
 Hermitage, Great, 74, 75 
 Higham, 74, 76, 78 
 Hind, Lewis, viii 
 Holland, 83 
 
 Hoo, Hundred of, 69, 70, 172 
 Horton Kirby, 202 
 Hospitalarii Pontifices, no 
 Hungary, 43 
 Hythe, 50, 62, 63 
 
 Institution, Borstal, 6, 1 o 
 
 Jerrold, Walter, 69 
 
 Kentish Islands, 166 
 Kingsdown, 188 
 King's Ferry, 193, 195 
 Kingsgate Castle, 83 
 Kits Coty House, 105 
 Knockholt, 204 
 
 Lambard, 174 
 Lamberhurst, 42 
 Latimer, Hugh, 50 
 Lebanon, 44 
 Leeds Castle, 16 
 Lewis Hind, viii 
 Leysdown, 177, 178 
 Linton, 143, 144, 153 
 Little Chart, 137, 140 
 Liverton Street, 137, 140 
 London, 75, 80, 82, 87, 141, 168, 172 
 Loose, 19 
 Lower Bell, 105 
 
 Lympne, 52, 64, 65, 137, 139, 150, 
 162, 184, 188 
 
 Maidstone, 15, 16, 17, 19, 29, 35, 36, 
 82, 96, no, in, 112, 114, 125, 133, 
 139, 188 
 
 Mailing, 36 
 
 Margate, 166, 174 
 
 Martello Towers, 63, 173 
 
 Mary, Queen, 82, 112 
 
 McLean, Frank, 177, 178, 179 
 
 Mecca, 87 
 
 Medway, 3, 6, 69, 72, 76, 78, 88, 96, 98, 
 99, 112, 114, 118, 119, 125, 126, 127, 
 144, 153, 154, 166, 173, 174, 193, 
 
 195. 196 
 Mereworth, 160 
 Midbrook, 141 
 Moore-Brabazon, 177
 
 INDEX 
 
 209 
 
 Moore, General, 64 
 More, Sir Thomas, 47, 48 
 Mouse Lightship, 167 
 Mussel Manor, Leysdown, 177 
 
 Nashenden, 7 
 
 Napoleon, 63, 65 
 
 Nettlested, 119, 153, 154, 160 
 
 Newhall, 64 
 
 New Hythe, 88, 97, 103 
 
 New Street, 142 
 
 North Downs, 35 
 
 North Street, 137, 140 
 
 Norden, 176 
 
 Nuneaton, 38 
 
 Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, 112 
 Ogilvy, 177 
 Oldbury Camp, 161 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 82 
 Old Chequers Inn, 127, 130 
 Oxford Street, 177 
 Oxney, Isle of, 51, 166, 171 
 
 Parker, Archbishop, 39 
 
 Peckham, East, 76 
 
 Peckham, West, 161 
 
 Pegwell Bay, 166 
 
 Penshurst, 130 
 
 Pilgrims' Way, 35, 101, 154 
 
 Pitt, 63, 64, 66 
 
 Plaxtol, 137, 144, 145, 160, 161 
 
 Playden, 52 
 
 Portus Dubris, 184 
 
 Portus Lemanus, 184 
 
 Portus Ritupis, 184, 185 
 
 Port Victoria, 172 
 
 Quarry Wood, 144, 153, 154, 159 
 Queenborough Castle, 16, 195 
 
 Rats Castle, 161 
 Reculvers, 166, 185 
 Red Hills, 35, 36, 37 
 Regulbium, 184 
 Rhine, 83 
 Richard II., 82 
 
 Richborough, 185, 186 
 
 Rochester, 6, 7, 10, 11, 72, 74, 80, 95, 
 
 99, I45» !93. I95» !96 
 Rolls, Hon. Charles, 177 
 Rolvenden, 51 
 Roman, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 144, 
 
 145, 149, 151, 153, 160, 184, 188 
 Romans, 61 , 64, 142 
 Romney Marsh, 50, 61, 63, 64 
 R.N.A.S., 178, 179 
 Rooting Street, 137, 140, 142 
 Rosamond's Bower, 162 
 Rother, 50, 51, 52, 54, 62, 166 
 Royal Military Canal, 50, 63 
 Rye, 5°. 51. 52, 62, 63 
 
 Sackville, Sir R., 39 
 Samson, Commander, 178 
 Sandwich, 48, 50, 56, 166 
 Sarre, 167, 185, 188 
 Schotton, 177 
 Sevenoaks, 136, 137, 204 
 Shakespeare's Cliff, 189 
 Sheerness, 172 
 Sheffield, 38 
 
 Sheppey, 51, 166, 174, 177 
 Shivering Sand, 169 
 Shooter's Hill, 141 
 Shoreham, 204 
 Short Bros., 177, 178 
 Sittingbourne, 19, 20 
 Small Hythe, 51, 54 
 Snodland, 96, 102, 103 
 Southend, 168, 175 
 South Foreland, 188 
 Spain, King of, 41 
 Stair, 125, 126 
 Stanhope, Lord, 36 
 Stephenson, George, 88 
 Stone, 51, 53, 62 
 Stone Horse, 74 
 Stone Street, 150, 154 
 Stonebridge, 142 
 Stour, 141, 142, 166, 185 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, 42 
 Straight Mile, 78, 130 
 Street, 138, 139
 
 210 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Strood, 74, 76, 78 
 
 Sturry, 185 
 
 Super-Cement Co., 90 
 
 Sutton Valence, 133, 140, 145, 188 
 
 Swale, 176, 193 
 
 Swan Street, 140 
 
 Syria, 44 
 
 Tenterden, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56 
 
 Terry, Miss Ellen, 54 
 
 Teston, no, in 
 
 Thames, 72, 75, 90 
 
 Thames-Medway Canal, 78 
 
 Thanet, 49, 62, 166, 171, 184, 185, 188 
 
 Tonbridge, 78, 114, 119, 125, 126, 130 
 
 Toronto, 42 
 
 Tovil, 28, 114 
 
 Twelve Apostles, 129 
 
 Twiss, General, 64 
 
 Twyford Bridge, 118, 119 
 
 Upper Coldharbour, 140, 142 
 Up Street, 185 
 
 Walmer, 188 
 Wantsun, 166, 184 
 
 Warden Point, 51, 166, 174 
 
 War spite, 89 
 
 Wateringbury, 114, 117, 144, 161 
 
 Water Street, 140, 142 
 
 Watling Street, 138, 139, 141, 155 
 
 Weald, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 47, 49, 
 
 56, 133. 135, 136, 138, 154 
 Westenhanger, 162 
 West Indian Dock, 84 
 West well, 39 
 Wey-Arun Canal, 76 
 Wheeler's Street, 152 
 White Hills, 35 
 Whitstable, 166, 186, 187 
 William the Conqueror, 112 
 Winchester, 101 
 Wittersham, 53 
 Wright Bros., 177 
 Wrotham, 101 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 82, 112 
 
 Yalding, no, 117, 118, 119, 154, 
 
 156 
 Yantlet Creek, 165, 172 
 
 Zurich, Lake, 83 
 
 THE END
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Btctr tM-Lb 
 
 AUG 8 1866 
 JAN 21 1987 
 
 Form L9-50m-7,'54 (5990)444 
 
 TBK LIBRARY
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 400 273 
 
 J