The Dover Road Part 11

The era of the Roman colonization of Britain is so remote that few antiquaries even ever stop awhile to consider how long those hardy aliens occupied this island, or how effective that occupation was, either in a military or social sense. Four hundred years just measure the length of time the Romans were with us; and what can not be done in so lengthy a period! Four hundred years would suffice to create a high state of civilization from mere savagery, and that is what the Romans accomplished here in that s.p.a.ce of time. They not only conquered, but they eventually pacified, the fierce and fearless Britons; and they established export and import trades that rendered Britain the most prosperous colony of the Roman Empire, and the Romano-British merchants and people the wealthiest colonists of those times. Stately villas beyond the towns, but sufficiently near them to invoke, if needs were, the protection of the cohorts, rose up on all sides, where the rich traders in British produce took their ease or engaged themselves in cultivating the cherry and sweet-chestnut trees which they had introduced from the sunny hillsides of Italy. There is to this day a manor at Milton-next-Sittingbourne called "Northwood Chasteners," so called from an ancient grove of chestnuts (_castaneas_), the descendants of the first chestnut trees introduced by the Romans. Vast Roman potteries had their being in the lowlands beside the Medway; Upchurch, Faversham, and Richborough furnished the tables of Roman Emperors and epicures with the "native" oysters that were even then famous and the cause of an immense trade; while manufactures poured in from Rome to suit the British taste.

Durolevum must, then, be sought amid the potsherds of a hundred settlements, any one of which might have been a suburb of that forgotten station; but the site where the present village of Newington stands was probably fresh ground when the Saxons came and drove out with ruthless slaughter the luxurious and enervated Romanized British, who speedily fell a prey to barbarians when once the Roman garrison was withdrawn.

Archaeologists have remarked that the Saxons generally occupied the Roman towns that were left after the Romano-British fled from them; but although they sometimes did so, there are many instances where they established towns on new sites closely adjoining the old, but carefully separated from them. Such was the case at Wroxeter, where the Saxons built an entirely new town, adjoining, but not actually on, the ruined and deserted city of Uriconium. Probably the Saxons found Durolevum wrecked in the internal struggles that rent Britain asunder after the legionaries were withdrawn; and, being a Pagan and superst.i.tious people, they shunned the almost deserted heap of ruins as being the abode of evil spirits. The stagnant and fetid wreck of a great city, whose fallen houses covered the bodies of many slaughtered citizens, and whose site was very likely overflowed with choked drains and freshets from the swollen streams, was not exactly the place to appeal to strangers, even though uncivilized, as a suitable site for dwelling upon; and, indeed, it may readily be imagined that these rotting remains of a dead civilization would be infinitely more awe-inspiring to a barbaric race than to the few remaining Britons who had seen the place in all the pride and circ.u.mstance of better days. And, indeed, the black, polluted earth of a long-inhabited town, and the will-o'-wisps and phosph.o.r.escent bubbles bred from the corruption below, that would float at night upon the surface of the water, would have frighted most people of those superst.i.tious times.

Newington stands on elevated ground, away from such chances, but in its immediate neighbourhood have been found many Roman relics, and all around, the fields, the meadows, and the hillsides are rich in legends and broken pottery. Standard Hill is so called from a tradition that the Roman eagle was there displayed, and a field adjoining is known as Crockfield, from the great number of Roman pots and fragments of pottery turned up there by the plough. The name of Keycol Hill, too, is said to have had a Roman origin, and Hasted derives it from Caii Collis, or Caius Julius Caesar's Hill. Finally, the modern roadside hamlet of Key Street, between Newington and Sittingbourne, is said to owe its name to _Caii Stratum_, or Caius Street.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEY STREET.]

The inn at Key Street, now called the "Key," was previously to 1733 known as the "s.h.i.+p." It stands near the hill-top where Key Street commences, and commands a long, straight dip of the road towards Sittingbourne, whose outlying houses are just beyond the farthest clump of trees.

[Sidenote: PLACE-NAMES]

The chance wayfarer little thinks how abundant are the vestiges of antiquity here, both in fragments of pottery, and in the time-honoured names of manors, fields, and meadows. Such things are only to be brought to light by the painstaking local historian who has access to Court Rolls and ancient estate maps. It is little known or considered by the dwellers in populous towns that almost every meadow, field, croft, pasture, down, or woodland has its name, as distinct and as well-known locally as that of any London street included in the Directory. More than this, these names are often the survivals of a state of things existing a thousand years ago. They are frequently rendered obscure by the corruption and evolution of languages, and by the physical changes that have come over the face of the country during so long a period; but with research, and linguistic scholars.h.i.+p, and a knowledge both of local history and the ancient history of the country in general, much that seems at first obscure, or even utterly inexplicable, may be finally resolved into meaning. The study of these place-names has all the attraction of original exploration, and leads on inexhaustibly. But while the tracking of apparently meaningless names to their origin has all the fascination of sport, it gives rise to many hazardous conjectures and lame conclusions, and names that do not yield their secrets to patient inquiry are too often thrust into some ill-fitting category from which they are rescued, to the shame and derision of those who placed them there. In fine, "c.o.c.k-sureness" is nowhere more out of place than in these inquiries, and in nothing else is the mental effort of "jumping to conclusions" met with such ludicrous accidents. It has, for instance, long been a commonplace in these inquiries to refer the names of towns, villages, or hamlets ending in "ing" to the settlements of Saxon patriarchal tribes; and the Hallings, Coolings, Bobbings, Detlings, and Wellings are set down as having been originally the homes of Teutonic clans taking their names from chieftains named Halla, Coela, Bobba, and so forth.

But while this rule may generally hold good, it must not be applied automatically, and the "learning" that has given this origin to the names of Sittingbourne, Newington, and Ospringe must be regarded as a grotesque exercise of imagination, creating previously unheard-of clans, the Soedingas, the Newingas, and the Osprings, who are not only new to archaeology, but probably have never existed. Of course, in the utter absence of all evidence, save that of the places themselves so named, no statement can be _proved_ correct; but these mystic Soedingas may almost certainly be dismissed to the realm of fairy-tales, and if there ever was a tribe of Newingas, they _took_ their name _from_ the village which they built and where they lived, instead of _giving_ it _to_ the place. Where others have come to grief, it would be rash to seek new derivations; but it seems evident that Ospringe derives its name from the stream flowing through the village, and that the name of Sittingbourne is nothing other than "seething burn," or "the bubbling brook," a poetic name which the place no longer merits. Place-names of Roman origin may be sought in the several _Vigos_ that exist, some now the names of fields, marshes, roadsides, and commons where there is not a house to be seen, but which were originally the sites of Roman villages, the name of "Vigo"--the Latin _vicus_--having been traditionally handed down to the present day many centuries after the last traces of those settlements have disappeared.

Many fields, too, here and in different parts of the country, are named "Whitehall." How did they get that name? The answer is sought in the Roman word "_aula_," the residence of a magistrate or a chief man in authority.

When the Saxons came, they found these grand _aulas_, built of stone, dotted about the country, some ruined, others tolerably perfect; and they must have made a strong impression upon these barbaric Pagans, used at that early period of their history only to wooden dwellings of the rudest construction. They would have demanded the names of these places from the Romano-British, who would tell them they were _aulas_; and they would have called them "hwit aulas," from the stone of which they were built. It was thus that the many villages called "Whitchurch" got their name, from the stone (or "white") churches that were so remarkable as compared with the dark-hued temples and churches of wood to which the Saxons were accustomed.

But if this origin of the "Whitehalls" does not satisfy, there is another which may be even more likely. They were, possibly, at one time the sites of village Witan-halls, where the wise men of the Saxon villages a.s.sembled their local Parliaments, the "witans" or "witenagemots," those remote forerunners of the village- and parish-councils which statesmen of the late nineteenth century have established, as items in a more or less admirable scheme for restoring the Heptarchy. There are "Whitehalls" in the immediate outlying fields of Sittingbourne, and there is one within the Roman encampment overhanging the railway cutting at Harbledown; but at none of these places are there any traces of buildings above ground.

Excavation might reveal ancient foundations.

XXVIII

[Sidenote: HERMITS]

As mediaeval travellers approached Sittingbourne from the direction of London, the first objects they perceived were the chapel and hermitage of Schamel, dedicated to Saint Thomas a Becket, and standing on the south side of the road. They are gone now, and a wayside public-house--"The Volunteers"--stands on, or near their site; but the hermitage was, from the time of King John to the impious days of Henry the Eighth, a resting-place for those devout pilgrims who sought the shrine of the "holy blissful martyr" at Canterbury. In the reign, however, of that "Defender of the Faith"--when it suited him--the chapel and the hermitage were scattered to the winds, and the hermit thrust out into a world that had grown tired of making pilgrimages. But, while it lasted, the Hermitage of Schamel did a very thriving business; so thriving, indeed, as to excite the jealousy of the Sittingbourne people, who conceived themselves injured by the intercepting of pilgrims before they could reach and fertilize the town with streams of gold. Rich pilgrims were a source of wealth to many towns and villages on the Dover Road, and hermits, bishops, priors, and abbots contended for them like 'busmen for pa.s.sengers before the introduction of the bell-punch and the ticket system.

We first hear of Schamel Hermitage in the time of a priest named Samuel, whose duties consisted in saying ma.s.s daily, in wearing a hair-s.h.i.+rt, refraining from soap and water, and in attending upon those pilgrims and travellers who did not mind the apostolic dirt in which he wallowed; and by whose alms he supported himself and the chapel. Samuel died and was gathered to his fathers, and the building presently fell into decay, to be rebuilt by an Augustinian monk, during whose lifetime the annals of the Hermitage are too placid for recounting in this place. His successor was one Walter de Hermestone, who was appointed by the Queen about 1271.

Imagine his disgust, though, when he came here and found the place a wreck, the work of the Vicar and the townsfolk of Sittingbourne. This estimable clergyman, whose name was Simon de Shordich, and who seems to have brought the manners and customs of his native place with him, had carried off the Hermitage bell and altar as prizes to his own church, and the men of Sittingbourne had left both the Hermitage and the Chapel in the likeness of a Babylonic ruin. History does not record what became of Walter de Hermestone, but it seems likely that he departed for some more peaceful spot. Meanwhile, Simon de Shordich died, perhaps from the effects of the eremitical curses which the disappointed inc.u.mbent of the ruinated place doubtless showered on him; and he was followed, both in his Vicarage and his evil courses, by a certain Boniface, who carted away the ruins and sold them.

[Sidenote: SCHAMEL]

Sixteen years later an inquiry was held on these matters, at the instance of the Queen, who, holding the manor of Milton-next-Sittingbourne, was patron of the chapel. There seems to have been a hamlet of Schamel at this time, for a certain William the Weaver, and others who gave evidence before the commission, are located here. It must have been about this era that the chapel was rebuilt, but little is heard of it until June, 1358, when the Queen of Edward the Third pa.s.sed by, and gave 20s. in alms. Friar Richard de Lexeden was then in possession. Two years later, King John of France pa.s.sed, on his way home, and gave twenty n.o.bles, a sum equal to no less than 120 of our money; and that is the last we hear of the Hermitage until it was for ever destroyed in 1542-43.

Meanwhile, the chapel of Swanstree, at the east end of the town, was as much upheld and cared for by the Sittingbourne people as the Schamel chapel was robbed and injured. Wealthy tradespeople left money in their wills to its altars and for the repair of the roads thither, and the Vicars of Sittingbourne approved of it, because it not only did not take away from them, but gleaned anything that the pilgrims had to spare after they left Sittingbourne, and before they came to the next town. But although so favoured, this chapel has gone the way of the other, and not a vestige of it remains. It stood on the grounds of the present Murston Rectory.

[Sidenote: SITTINGBOURNE]

Sittingbourne was not a large place in the days that ended with the advent of railway times, but it had an astonis.h.i.+ng number of hotels, inns, and beer-houses. People had not at that time begun to see that the royal road to fortune lay in the making of bricks and tiles, and so they ama.s.sed riches by plundering the travellers whose evil stars sent them down the road to Canterbury and Dover; and in the lulls of business when no travellers were forthcoming, they probably "kept their hands in" by overcharging one another. I believe Sittingbourne must have been a town of inns, and but little else, and that the population lived in hotels and drank wines, beer, and spirits all day long and a great part of the night, just for the fun of the thing.

Not that mine host of the "Red Lion" was at all extortionate when he entertained Henry the Fifth in 1415, on his return from Agincourt. On the contrary, the bill was decidedly reasonable, amounting only to nine-and-sixpence, including wine. You cannot, unhappily, dine conquering heroes of any sort--much less kings--so reasonably nowadays, and I suspect that, even a century or more ago, when the First and Second Georges were used to put up at the "George," on their way to or from Hanover, prices must have ruled much higher. The "Red Lion" was undoubtedly the chief inn at Sittingbourne from a very early time, and it kept its good repute for centuries; for here it was that Henry the Eighth stayed when "progressing"

along the Dover Road in 1541, and here he held what in those autocratic times answered to our present Cabinet Councils. If I were a licensed victualler I could wish those days back again. Beside the "Red Lion" and the "George," there were at this time the scarcely less inferior hostelries of the "Horn," the "Saracen's Head," the "Bull," and the "White Hart"; and, what with Emperors, Kings, Archbishops, Cardinals, and other dignitaries, with trains of attendants numbering anything from two thousand down to fifty, they must all have been needed. In the sixteenth century, then, Emperors and Kings were the usual guests of the "Red Lion."

The landlord at that time sniffed at Princes and Archbishops, and turned away such riff-raff as Dukes and Earls. So soon, however, as 1610, we find a mere unt.i.tled traveller received at the "Red Lion"; one Justus Zinzerling, a German, who came posting up the road from Canterbury. We know from his own account that posting was not in those days very expensive. He paid three s.h.i.+llings for riding these fifteen miles, and alighting at the "Red Lion," put up for the night, glad to get here, past the body of a robber who had been hanged from a roadside tree for murdering a messenger. The body was so surrounded with chains and rings that Herr Zinzerling was of the opinion it would last a long time for the due reading of a much-needed moral to others. He found the landlord of the "Red Lion" to be a Scotchman who knew Latin, and on this common ground of good-fellows.h.i.+p they drank to one another and quoted the cla.s.sics until drink tied their tongues and deposited their bodies under the table.

I have already had occasion to mention six first-cla.s.s inns that flourished here three hundred years ago; but in the middle of last century there were a great many more. The "George," the "Rose," and the "Red Lion"

seem to have been the chiefest of them about this time; and, if we may believe Hasted (and there is no reason why we shouldn't), the "Rose" was "the most superb of any throughout the kingdom, and the entertainment afforded in it equally so." But where is the "Rose Hotel" now? Gone, alas!

with the snows of yester-year. Where, also, the "George," which at the time of Waterloo kept forty pairs of post-horses? and where the "Red Lion"? It would, I fancy, puzzle most folks to say, for although they still stand, the change that came over the spirit of their dream about 1840 has caused them to be cut up into separate houses and tenements.

We can, however, by intensive observation, identify the "Rose." It is a handsome red brick building on the left-hand side, now occupied by a firm of grocers. The identification is from a beautifully-carved rose in a red brick panel on the first floor, with the initials "R. I." and the date 1708. The building is large, and has eight windows in a row. But the "George" has nine, and the "Lion" twelve.

About this time, too, the people seem to have given up living in hotels and inns, and to have taken to private houses. Also, they drank tea instead of beer; and so presently we find the inns disappearing that at one time stood next to one another, in a long line on both sides of the High Street, and even in the branch thoroughfares. Here was the "White Hart," large enough in 1815 to have eighteen soldiers quartered in it daily. It is now divided between a Bank and a Brewery. Here, also, was the "Gun," which, aptly enough, had as many vicissitudes as the fortunes of war, for it was turned into the Parish Workhouse, opened again in 1752 as the "Globe," and presently became the workhouse again, with, probably, the landlord as its first inmate! But it was no greater a success as what our grandfathers with an ironical humour termed a "House of Industry" than as a hostelry, and so it was not long before the paupers were marched out and another phase of its strange eventful history commenced. This time it became a coachmaker's workshop, and there we will leave it.

Sittingbourne innkeepers had an inordinate fancy for changing their signs, and some of their houses have borne as many aliases as an old and hardened swindler. Thus the "Seven Stars" became in turn the "Cherry Tree," the "Union Flag," and finally the "Volunteers"; while the present "Plough Inn"

(only they may have changed its name again already) in East Street has been successively the "King Henry the Eighth," and the "Royal Oak." Other houses were the "Bull," the "Adam and Eve," the "Walnut Tree," the "King's Head," "Six Bells," "Black Boy," "Boatswain's Call," "s.h.i.+p," "Chequer,"

"Three Post Boys," "Crown," "Bird in Hand," "Lamb," "Three Kings,"

"Angel," "Portobello," "Bell," "Duke's Head," and "Cross Keys"; to name but a selection, but age has withered, and want of custom staled, the most of them, and, instead of entertaining travellers, the inhabitants of Sittingbourne poison them with the appalling smells that arise from the numberless brick-kilns round about.

[Sidenote: BRICKS AND TILES]

For the making of bricks and tiles is the chief industry of Sittingbourne nowadays, and a very large and flouris.h.i.+ng industry it is; so much so, indeed, that there will be presently nothing of Sittingbourne left at all; because, like maggots that live _in_ cheeses--and _on_ them--the Sittingbourne brickmakers find their sustenance in the ground on which they live, and have carted away nearly all the surrounding country. When they have worked down to the chalk and the bed-rock, I don't know what they _will_ do. Already all the hills have vanished and have been distributed over England in the shape of bricks, and when folks return who have known Sittingbourne in their youth, they don't recognize the place, and go away wondering whether curses will fall upon it because its people have thus removed the old landmarks.

Changed, indeed, it is, not only from those days when the great ones of the earth sojourned here, but also from those comparatively recent times when the traveller's only choice was the road. Then three parts of the population were engaged in hotel-keeping, licensed-victualling, or coach-building; innkeepers, job-masters, hostlers, post-boys, chamber-maids, and boots, were their styles and t.i.tles, and if you are curious enough to turn the pages of Sittingbourne registers you will find such entries as these to be the chiefest of their contents: "John Slater, innholder, of the White Hart, was buryed, 22nd Feby, 1708/9"; or "Joseph, ostler at the Crowne, buryed Oct. 23, 1708."

When the railway came, ruin, swift and terrible, fell upon this busy community. Gra.s.s grew in the stable-yards; the old high-hung yellow chariots and the light post-chaises rotted to pieces that were used to be hired by travellers who did not care so much about the price as the pace they went; the price of horses fell; the vast interiors of the hotels with their numberless bedrooms, and one-time cosy coffee-rooms, echoed to the casual tread of some unfrequent guest, uncomfortable and half-frightened at the solitary state in which he sat; hostlers, grooms, and washers lounged miserably about the mouldy harness-rooms in company with dejected post-boys; chamber-maids departed to other scenes and occupations; and "boots" gradually lost the encyclopaedic knowledge for which he was renowned, and forgot alike the number of miles to the next post-town and the proper way to clean a pair of Bluchers.

The last post-boy is dead now, and the chaises and the chariots are represented--like so many other obsolete things--at the South Kensington Museum; and the typical innkeeper of that day should be also, for his like is no more seen on earth. He was a burly man with a red, good-humoured, clean-shaven face. He wore, frequently, knee-breeches and sleeved yellow waistcoats with black stripes that made him look, to the youthful imagination, like a great wasp or b.u.mble-bee. He wore short white ap.r.o.ns, too, and high collars encircling his thick red neck, so that one gazed upon him in constant dread of his falling down in an apoplectic fit; he wore--but enough! Let it be said, though, that he resembled a Blue-coat boy in one respect, for he was never known to wear a hat.

All this is changed. Sittingbourne had grown into importance because its situation was convenient for travellers to stay here to change horses at, and when the roads became deserted the place would have fallen back into its original obscurity had it not been for bricks, hops, and cherries.

Bricks, and the surrounding fruit country have prospered it anew, and have made it what it is; a dusty, thickly populated, dirty town whose old aspect has been altered from a broad and roomy street to crowded lanes and a High Street filled with frowzy alleys, and many Dissenting conventicles of different degrees of ugliness.

[Sidenote: PAPER]

Of late years, paper has been added to the interests of Sittingbourne.

Outside the town, on Milton Creek, leading muddily to the Swale, there you will find paper in its crude wood-pulp stage, as imported from the mills in Norway and Sweden. Closely viewed, it is not attractive. Slabs of wood-pulp, stacked forty or fifty feet high, with a narrow-gauge railway running between cliff-like acc.u.mulations of this merchandise, present a scene made squalid by the torn and bedraggled fragments of paper packing that the winds sport with. But, seen from the Swale, or indeed from a distance on land, these towering stocks of the raw material for newspapers have a peculiarly romantic appearance; looking indeed like a reminiscence of the temples of the East.

The village of Milton itself, properly "Milton Regis," is full of queer old corners. The church stands aloof, dignified, on a remote country road.

In its churchyard is a stone mentioning a woman who had six husbands:--

"Here lyeth interred the Body of Abraham Was.h.i.+ton (_sic_), late husband of Alise Was.h.i.+nton now liveing in Milton, whome had in all six Husbands: John Ailes, John Ricard, Thomas Gill, John Jeefrre, Alexander Flet. Anno 1601."

It will be observed that this lady who collected husbands is described as "now liveing." Possibly the sixth was not the last; but by that time the men of Milton must have grown rather timid.

In any case, the history of Mrs. Was.h.i.+nton was evidently considered remarkable, to be detailed on this stone, either by herself or by the admiring or astonished neighbourhood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YARD OF THE "LION" INN. SITTINGBOURNE.]

Sittingbourne parish church, and some remaining walls of the more ancient inns, are all that need detain the stranger. The ma.s.sive square tower of the church, which is a prominent feature of the High Street, is the oldest part; the body of the building dates only from the Perpendicular period.

To this time belongs a singular monumental effigy of a lady, placed in a niche of the north chancel wall; a mysterious figure, represented with an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes lying across its wasted breast. No inscription remains to tell its story. The church fronts on to the highway, and in days of pilgrimage (and even so lately as 1830) the bourne to which Sittingbourne owes its name, which comes from the Anglo-Saxon "Saethingbourne," the seething, or bubbling, brook, trickled and welled up in the likeness of a spring across the road. Through it splashed the mounted pilgrims, while the weary-footed palmers crossed by stepping-stones, or cooled their feet in the water. Many halted to cross themselves, to kneel and pray before the figure of Our Lady which filled the niche still remaining in the b.u.t.tress of the Chilton Chapel, and was called thence "Saint Mary of the b.u.t.tera.s.se." This little shrine was defaced in 1540, and now the running stream is enclosed in pipes that discharge the water into Milton Creek.

[Sidenote: MURSTON]