The Dover Road Part 17

Many Coldharbours are in exceedingly exposed places, as indeed here, on Barham Downs,[8] and many more are in quite sheltered situations, in places where dense woodlands once spread, giving work and shelter to charcoal-burners. This fact has led to the formulation of another theory, one which holds that these strangely named places were, prosaically enough, "coal-harbours," or storage-places for charcoal. It is much to be desired that some leisured antiquary would devote himself to the elucidation of the name and the rescuing of the purpose of these Coldharbours from the mists of a remote and romantic antiquity. The other Kentish Coldharbours to be found near the Watling Street are at Bishopsbourne, Bridge, Newington, Northfleet, Sittingbourne, and Woolwich, and all--so close is the connection between the name and ancient dwellings--near the site of undoubted Roman stations or villas. Alike with the equally mysterious name of "Mockbeggar," which also occurs with great frequency, the meaning of "Coldharbour" will probably never be discovered.[9]

Standing here beside the road at evening when the sun is going down and these bleak unenclosed uplands grow dark and mysterious, the centuries pa.s.s away like a fevered dream. Here and there the solemn expanse of the barren land is diversified by a few trees; here and there a few yards of hedge, beginning nowhere in particular and ending with equal strangeness, skirt the way; weather-beaten sign-posts start suddenly out of the moorland, and occasional hayc.o.c.ks take on a dead and awful blackness as the evening light dies out of the sky in long and angry streaks of red.

When the moon rises and casts her cold beams upon the road and plays strange pranks with the shadows of trees and bushes, then the days of the Romans are come once more, and the legionaries live again. They rise from their camp of nineteen hundred years ago; they march along the Watling Street that was made by their descendants; and the sheen of their armour, the glitter of the pale moonlight on their eagle standards, and the tramp of many feet are as real to the imaginative traveller, if not of a greater reality, than the moaning telegraph that runs on countless poles in a diminis.h.i.+ng procession beside the road as far as eye can reach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATLING STREET: MOONRISE.]

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By daylight the traveller can see that the barren chalk of Barham Downs, although left so long in repose, has been lately cut up into golf links. A racecourse, little frequented now, also stands on the ridge. Bourne Park skirts the road for some distance on the right, and the spire of Barham Church, rising from behind a thick clump of trees in a little valley, shows where the village of Barham lies secluded, some three hundred yards down a country lane.

[Sidenote: THE BARHAM FAMILY]

How few the wayfarers who either notice where Barham stands or who visit it even when they know its situation! And yet that place, together with its hamlet of Denton, is full of memories of one of the best and most genial among the humorists of the nineteenth century. There is a great deal of history, ancient and modern, genealogical and literary, about Denton and Barham, and the genealogical part of it commences in the reign of Henry the Second. At that time, the manor, including Denton and a great number of other hamlets round about, belonged to that Sir Randal, or Reginald, Fitzurse, who has come down through the ages as one of the murderers of Becket. Immediately after their crime, the murderers fled, Fitzurse escaping to Ireland, where he is said to have taken the name of MacMahon, which, meaning "Bear's son," was an Irish form of his original patronymic. He died an exile, leaving the Manor of Barham to his brother, who, so odious had the name of Fitzurse now become, changed it for that of his estate, and called himself De Bearham. His successors clipped and cut their name about until it became plain "Barham," and the manor finally descended to one Thomas Barham, who, in the reign of James the First, alienated it to the Rev. Charles Fotherby, Archdeacon of Canterbury. Thus were the Barhams torn from their native soil and rendered landless, for already they had sold their adjacent manor of Tappington Everard situated at Denton. Some improvident Barham had done this deed in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and the property pa.s.sed through a number of hands until it was bought from Colonel Thomas Marsh by a wealthy hop-factor of Canterbury, Thomas Harris. The hop-factor died in 1726, leaving as sole heir his daughter, married to a Mr. John Barham. In this manner the Barhams became once more owners of a portion of their ancient heritage, and from this John Barham was descended that witty Minor Canon of St.

Paul's, Richard Harris Barham, author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_. To one who knows his _Ingoldsby_ well, and is possessed, moreover, of some antiquarian fervour, the neighbourhood of Denton and Barham must needs be of the greatest interest. Fact and fiction are so inextricably mixed up in those delightful tales of mirth and marvels that it would require all the knowledge of an expert in local and family history to disentangle them.

The countryside appears in those pages under fict.i.tious names, and the deeds or misdeeds of local families are decently veiled under many an _alias_; and yet here and there are real names, and actual facts are cited, leaving the stranger in a delightful uncertainty what to accept for truth and what to disbelieve. The manor-house of Tappington, where Barham spent his youth, would seem to readers of the _Legends_ to be a grand Elizabethan mansion, approached by a long avenue and guarded by gates bearing "the saltire of the Ingoldsbys." Indeed, Barham's fertile imagination led him to picture such a place on the frontispiece of the _Legends_; but the stranger would seek for it in vain. Instead, he would find an ancient farmhouse, standing in a meadow skirting the road to Folkestone, a mile from the place where it branches from the Dover Road.

An ancient farmhouse, its roof bent and bowed with age, and the greater part of it shrouded in ivy, from which Tudor chimneys peep picturesquely.

In the meadow are traces of walls and an old well which before the greater part of Tappington Manor-house was destroyed stood in a quadrangle formed by the great range of buildings. Within the farmhouse there remains much that is quaint and interesting. The chief feature is a grand oak staircase of Elizabethan or Jacobean period, with the merchant's mark of that "Thomas Marsh of Marston," familiar to readers of that fine legend _The Leech of Folkestone_, carved on the newel. On the whitewashed walls, crossed here and there by beams of black oak, hang portraits of half-real, half-legendary Ingoldsbys, and on the staircase landing, outside the bedroom of the "bad Sir Giles," are still shown bloodstains, relics of an extraordinary fratricide that was committed here while the war between Charles and the Parliament was raging.

[Sidenote: TAPPINGTON]

It is quite remarkable that while Barham clothed Tappington with many a picturesque legend and detail of his own invention, he never alluded to the genuine tragedy. The secret staircase, the "bad Sir Giles," "Mrs.

Botherby," and many another picturesque but fict.i.tious character or incident are introduced, and perhaps the visitor may feel somewhat disappointed at not finding the turrets, the hall, or the moat described so fully in the _Legends_; but the story of the fratricide is genuine enough for the most sober and conscientious historian. It seems that when all England was divided between the partisans of Charles and his Parliament, Tappington Manor-house was inhabited by two brothers, descendants of the Thomas Marsh whose mark is on the staircase. They had taken different sides in the great struggle then going on, and had quarrelled so bitterly that they never spoke to one another, and actually lived in different parts of the house; only using this staircase between them as they retired along it at night to their several apartments. One night they met on top of the stairs. No one knew what pa.s.sed between them, whether black looks or bitter words were used; but as the Cavalier pa.s.sed, his Puritan brother drew a dagger and stabbed him in the back. He fell and died on the spot, and the blood-stains are there to this day.

Opposite Tappington is the modernized Denton Court, with the old chapel of Denton standing in the Park. Of this you may read in the _Legends_, but those who seek the bra.s.s of the Lady Rohesia, with its inscription--

"Praie for ye sowle of ye Lady Royse And for alle Christen sowles!"

will be disappointed, for it is one of Barham's embellishments upon fact.

"Tappington Moor" is, of course, Barham Downs, and the wild characteristics of the place are very well described in _The Hand of Glory_. The nearest approach to the Tappington gates existing in fact are the entrance gates to Broome Park, standing on the road near the lane leading to Barham; and the mansion of Broome, an Elizabethan country house, bears a strong resemblance to the stately seat seen in Barham's drawing.

[Sidenote: THE "HALFWAY HOUSE"]

The whole district abounds with legends and folk-lore suitable to this wild and treeless country, and that so romantic a humorist as Barham should have sprung from a local family of Kentish squires is only fitting.

The terror of these parts at the end of last century was Black Robin, a highwayman who frequented the roads and made his headquarters at a little inn on the by-road between Bishopsbourne and Barham. "Black Robin's Corner" it is still called, but the negro's head of the sign is a libel upon that "gentleman of the road." He took his name, not from the colour of his skin, but from the c.r.a.pe mask and the black clothes he wore, and from the black mare he rode. Not a pleasant fellow to meet

On the lone bleak moor at the midnight hour, Beneath the gallows tree;

but almost preferable to the spectre horseman who led a foreign traveller out of his way on these Downs. Night had come on, overtaking a party of mounted travellers making for Dover, and so dark had it grown that they soon became separated. However, the hindmost party dimly perceived two cavaliers in front, and spurred towards them; but when the horses' hoofs in advance flashed fire and their riders were seen to grow strangely luminous, these pixie-led travellers thought it time to turn back. It _was_ time they did so, for already their horses were sinking in a bog, and as they turned they heard the rest of their party blowing their horns in quite another direction. Possibly they turned in at the "Halfway House"

that stands away back from the road behind a screen of trees, just past the eighth milestone; both to take something to enliven their spirits withal and to tell the landlord of these strange happenings. If they did, I have no doubt that they saw stranger sights still when they came forth, when the earth would rise up and smite them in the face, and the swinging sign of the "Halfway House" would perform a somersault over the constellations. For they dealt in strange and curious liquors here in the days of old; spirits that had never paid tribute to the Excise, and were ever so many degrees over-proof, made the heart of man glad and his legs to tie themselves into Gordian knots. You cannot get so immediately and incapably drunk nowadays at the "Halfway House," and 'tis better so, but I have seen the place drunk dry in the s.p.a.ce of an hour by thirsty Volunteers marching from London to Dover at Eastertide. When they had gone, it was as hopeless to call for a draught of ale as I imagine it would have been to ask the hostess for that old-time Kentish delicacy, the "pudding-pie," that was once to be had for the asking at any inn during Easter week. The "pudding-pie" has almost entirely vanished from Kent, but, "once upon a time," not to have tasted one was regarded as unlucky, and it was the usual thing for ale-house customers to ask for a "pudding-pie" as a right. "Neow, missus," the Kentish yokel would say, "let uz teaste one o' them 'ere puddeners o' yourn," and the "missus"

would hand him a flat circular tart, about the size of a saucer, and filled with custard sprinkled thinly with currants.

Downs extend all the way from here to Lydden, three miles away, and Lydden itself lies enfolded in a chalky bottom through which the road runs steeply. Downs stretch on either side of the tiny village and frown down upon it, making its insignificance more marked and its little cottages and little church look like toys. On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, goes the railway, past that old village of Sibertswould, which railway directors in a conspiracy with Kentish rustics have agreed to call "Shepherdswell," and it continues in a deep, precipitous cutting through the chalk to Kearsney station, another three miles ahead; and so presently into Dover. And now the road leads uphill to Ewell, where the springs of the little river Dour burst forth and gem all the valley hence to Dover with gracious foliage. The good folk of Ewell have recovered the "Temple"

prefix to the village name. As "Temple Ewell" it was anciently known, for here once was situated a Preceptory of the Knights Templar.

[Sidenote: THE DRELLINGORE STREAM]

The Dour, whose name means simply "water," bubbles up in springs at Temple Ewell, and is fed by a stream which comes down the valley on the right, from Alkham, two miles or so away, and from Drellingore, a further mile.

That stream is intermittent; being a "nailbourne," or chalk stream; storing up water in its caverns until, these being filled, either by exceptional rains, or long acc.u.mulation of springs, there comes an overflow, generally doing more than fill the usually dry bed. The Drellingore stream will then very often flood the road.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLOODS AT ALKHAM: THE DRELLINGORE STREAM.]

The romantic name comes from the old Norman-French "Drelincourt," the name of an extinct manorial family once holding land in these parts. The watercourse is often dry for years, and the filling of it is thus a local event, long ago made the subject of legends of dread and prophecies of scarcity. Thus the old saying:

When Drellingore stream flows to Dover town, Wheat shall be forty s.h.i.+llings and barley a pound.

So much a quarter is understood by that.

Well, then, Drellingore stream burst out with exceptional floods in April, 1914, and flowed to Dover town, and flooded the valley at Alkham. Wheat was then round about 37_s._ 10-1/2_d._ a quarter, and barley was 20_s._ 4-1/2_d._

Wheat had been steadily rising from its lowest, at 22_s._ 10_d._ in 1894; and barley from 21_s._ 11_d._ in 1895. Barley was never so low as 20_s._ What, therefore, is the implication of the ominous legend, in respect of barley?

In less than four months the Great War, 1914-18, broke out, and wheat in 1915 was up to 52_s._ 10_d._, and barley 34_s._ 7_d._ The course of prices, 1916-1921, was:

_Wheat._ _Barley._

1916 58/5 53/6 1917 75/9 64/9 1918 72/10 59/0 1919 72/11 75/9 1920 80/10 108/11 1921 85/4 73/7

Prices during the Great War very reasonably agitated the community, but in the period of the Napoleonic wars wheat rose to its highest recorded price: 126_s._ 6_d._ in 1812; that is, thirty-one s.h.i.+llings and twopence a quarter dearer than ever it has been in our own times. Barley, on the contrary, was very much dearer in 1920 than ever it had been; for the top price then was 40_s._ 5_d._ above the former highest: 68_s._ 6_d._ in 1801.

The road now grows suburban to Dover, and the valley commences to open out toward the sea. Where the Dour flows, all the vegetation is luxuriant, and there are lovely ponds decked with water-lilies beside the Crabble meadows, below the highway to the right and near the prettily named village of River; but as the hills rise on either hand they grow barren again and stretch for miles right and left. One green spot amid these eternal chalky undulations lies off to the right. This is Saint Radigund's Abbey, sometimes called by two _aliases_, either "Kearsney" or "Bradsole"

Abbey. The first is the legitimate name, the others are given by its neighbourhood and by the wide (or "broad") pond (or "sole") that stood beside the ruins. Little is left of the old abbey but a gatehouse and some beautiful stone-and-flint diapered walls, built into an old farmstead; but, although so little remains, what there is left deserves a visit from either architect or artist. Through this valley came King John on that shameful day when, having previously made an informal submission to Pandulf the Papal Legate in the Templars' house at Ewell, he proceeded to formally ratify the gift of himself and his kingdom in the Templars'

Church on Dover Heights.

Where the Dour crosses the road at Buckland the open highway ends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. RADIGUND'S ABBEY.]

[Sidenote: BUCKLAND]

Buckland church was enlarged in 1880, and it was then found necessary to move the ancient yew, reputed to be over a thousand years old, in the churchyard. A writer calling himself "Old Humphrey" mentions the tree in his _Country Strolls_, 1841:--"The tree is hollow, and time and the elements have writhed it into fantastic shapes. I can see, or fancy I can see, snakes and dragons in its twisted branches."

It was not without some anxiety that the people of Buckland viewed the proposed removal by some sixty feet of a tree for which they have much affection. The weight was estimated at fifty-six tons. The contractor was to have forfeited a great part of his price if the removal and replanting caused the tree to die; but the work was done skilfully, and the old yew seems actually to have become more flouris.h.i.+ng for its change.

Henceforward are streets, first suburban, but presently continuous and crowded, for the two miles that remain. Dover is reached, and the road is done.

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