The seaboard of Kent, and indeed the south coast of England in general, is no little-known margin of our shores. It is not in the least unspotted from the world, or solitary. It lies too near London for that, and began to be exploited more than a hundred and fifty years ago, when seaside holidays were first invented. The coast of Kent, socially speaking, touches both extremes. It is at once fashionable and exclusive, and is the holiday haunt of the Cockney: a statement that is not the paradox it at first sight appears to be, for the bracing qualities of its sea-air have always attracted all classes. We all ardently desire health, whether we are of those who romp on the sands of Margate or Ramsgate and eat shrimps in the tea-gardens of Pegwell Bay, or are numbered2 among those who are guests at the lordly Lord Warden, the Granville, or the Cliftonville.
Where does the coast of Kent begin? It begins at Deptford, that crowded London suburb which would doubtless be considerably astonished in contemplating itself as a seaside town, and in fact does not do so. Yet Deptford’s old naval history and ship-yard associations give it a salt-water flavour, and so we must needs say that the coast begins there. True, it is but the Thames whose murky waters lap the shore at Deptford; but the Thames here is the great commercial “London River,” as seamen call it, the port to which resorts a goodly proportion of the world’s shipping; and sea-going vessels crowd the fairway at all hours of day and night.
Past Greenwich, Woolwich, and Erith the Thames goes in its gradually broadening course, and at length comes to Gravesend. Gravesend Reach is, and has always been, by general consensus of opinion, the Sea-gate of London, and therefore, without any manner of doubt, on the coast.
The length of the coast of Kent, reaching from Deptford, and tracking round Sheppey and up the Medway estuary to Rochester, and in and out of the queer places wherever the foreshore wends, I make to be about one hundred and thirty-eight miles. It is—the whole of it—extremely interesting, and in places grandly beautiful and in others quietly pretty; and also along some other stretches, scenically (but never3 historically) dull and drab. Below Gravesend, round the Isle of Grain, and round Sheppey and the Swale to Whitstable and Herne Bay, for instance, no one could perceive much of nobility actually in that coast-line of London clay and of low, muddy, or shingly foreshores. But where the chalk begins at Westgate, and the sea, ceasing from washing the clay and receiving the contaminations of the Thames and Medway, becomes more cleanly, the coast, grows by degrees more striking.
As for the history that lies in the landings and embarkations, all along the coast of Kent, why, there was never such another coast as these storied shores. The fame of them begins at Gravesend, to which those foreigners who did not by any chance land at Dover generally came in the dangerous old days of the road between Dover and London. At Faversham a king who sought secretly to leave his kingdom was detained; at Ebbsfleet landed the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa, and a hundred and fifty-seven years later came to that same spot a Christian missioner who came missionising very much against his own inclinations. At Deal, 1970 years ago—a tolerably long stretch of time—a great personage set the fashion in these numerous landings. I name Julius Cæsar, the noblest Roman of them all, who, as far as history tells us, was the first of any importance who ever burst into these unknown seas. Great personages have been doing the like ever since. The reason for this exceptional4 honour shown the Kentish coast, which has thus from the earliest times been the Front Door of England, is quite easily glimpsed on any sunny day anywhere between Deal and Folkestone, in the gleaming coast of France, which reminds us that most of those world-famous characters, in common with modern voyagers across the Channel, disliked the sea, and crossed by the “shortest route.”
For the rest, Dover has been the scene of comings and goings uncountable, and to attempt recounting them would be wearisome indeed. Charles the Second, who had lively experiences in a hunted embarkation from our shores, experienced a welcome change in 1660, being received on his “glorious restoration” by his loyal subjects on Dover beach, and in 1683 came ashore at what was at that time “Bartholomew’s Gate,” in Thanet, which, in honour of that act of kingly condescension, has ever since been called “Kingsgate.”
Kent, the Cantium, or country of the Cantii, mentioned by Julius Cæsar B.C. 54, and by other ancient writers, is thought to take its name from the peculiarity of its geographical position, jutting boldly out (or, in other words, “canted out”) in an easterly direction, beyond the estuary of the Thames. There is another view taken of the origin of the word, a view which derives it from caint, the “open country,” as distinguished from the woodland character of Sussex, the ancient “Andredswald”; but, against this, it does not5 seem to be sufficiently established that Kent ever was such an open country, while the evidence of maps shows us that it does indeed project most markedly.
The Kentish Coast, then, begins little more than two and a half miles below London Bridge, the county boundary between Surrey and Kent being placed at Earl’s Sluice, on the Grand Surrey Canal, in Deptford, just beyond the Surrey Commercial Docks. There, where the Royal Victualling Yard fronts the busy Thames, midway between Limehouse Reach and Greenwich Reach, begin the 138 miles of this strangely varied and exceptionally historic coast-line.
Undoubtedly the noblest and most fitting introduction is to proceed down river by steamer to Greenwich, for that way you perceive the greatness of the Port of London, and the majesty of the commercial and maritime interests of the capital; while to come “overland”—thus to dignify the approach by mean streets through Bermondsey and Rotherhithe—is an effect of squalor.
Deptford of to-day is an integral part of London. Not an ornamental part; indeed, no. Rather an industrial and wage-earning place. One does not “reside” at Deptford, and there are not a few who find it difficult even to live. It is thus not easy to associate it with that “Depeford” of which Chaucer writes in his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” in 1383: “Lo, Depeford, it is half-way prime.” The deep ford whence it obtained6 its name is—or rather was—on the Ravensbourne, or the Brome, as that stream has sometimes been called, at the Broadway, on the Dover Road; but the many changes that have taken place have of necessity abolished any possible likeness to the passage that existed in Chaucer’s day. In any case, the Deptford around the Broadway, the present bridge over the Ravensbourne, and the road on to Blackheath is not the real intimate Deptford. That is only to be found on the river side of Evelyn Street, and in the neighbourhood of Creek Road, where the Ravensbourne broadens out into Deptford Creek. Here is the real Deptford; more especially along the winding old street oddly—and with a curiously shipboard suggestion—named “Stowage,” and so to the old original church of Deptford, dedicated, as it should be in a waterside church, to St. Nicholas, the sailor’s patron.
From the church, Deptford Green leads to the waterside, and adjoining is “Hughes’ Fields.” Pleasantly rural although these names sound, candour compels the admission that they are, in fact, streets, with no suggestion of grass or meadows about them. The church of St. Nicholas dates from about 1697, and is a red-brick building in the curious taste of that time; retaining, however, its old stone fifteenth-century tower. Flourishing plane-trees render the churchyard in summer not unpleasing, but the stranger is apt to see with a shudder the grisly stone gate-piers, surmounted by great sculptured skulls decoratively8 laurelled, as though Death were indeed the conqueror and the hereafter merely a vain thought. You might travel far, and yet find nothing so truly pagan.
Where does the coast of Kent begin? It begins at Deptford, that crowded London suburb which would doubtless be considerably astonished in contemplating itself as a seaside town, and in fact does not do so. Yet Deptford’s old naval history and ship-yard associations give it a salt-water flavour, and so we must needs say that the coast begins there. True, it is but the Thames whose murky waters lap the shore at Deptford; but the Thames here is the great commercial “London River,” as seamen call it, the port to which resorts a goodly proportion of the world’s shipping; and sea-going vessels crowd the fairway at all hours of day and night.
Past Greenwich, Woolwich, and Erith the Thames goes in its gradually broadening course, and at length comes to Gravesend. Gravesend Reach is, and has always been, by general consensus of opinion, the Sea-gate of London, and therefore, without any manner of doubt, on the coast.
The length of the coast of Kent, reaching from Deptford, and tracking round Sheppey and up the Medway estuary to Rochester, and in and out of the queer places wherever the foreshore wends, I make to be about one hundred and thirty-eight miles. It is—the whole of it—extremely interesting, and in places grandly beautiful and in others quietly pretty; and also along some other stretches, scenically (but never3 historically) dull and drab. Below Gravesend, round the Isle of Grain, and round Sheppey and the Swale to Whitstable and Herne Bay, for instance, no one could perceive much of nobility actually in that coast-line of London clay and of low, muddy, or shingly foreshores. But where the chalk begins at Westgate, and the sea, ceasing from washing the clay and receiving the contaminations of the Thames and Medway, becomes more cleanly, the coast, grows by degrees more striking.
As for the history that lies in the landings and embarkations, all along the coast of Kent, why, there was never such another coast as these storied shores. The fame of them begins at Gravesend, to which those foreigners who did not by any chance land at Dover generally came in the dangerous old days of the road between Dover and London. At Faversham a king who sought secretly to leave his kingdom was detained; at Ebbsfleet landed the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa, and a hundred and fifty-seven years later came to that same spot a Christian missioner who came missionising very much against his own inclinations. At Deal, 1970 years ago—a tolerably long stretch of time—a great personage set the fashion in these numerous landings. I name Julius Cæsar, the noblest Roman of them all, who, as far as history tells us, was the first of any importance who ever burst into these unknown seas. Great personages have been doing the like ever since. The reason for this exceptional4 honour shown the Kentish coast, which has thus from the earliest times been the Front Door of England, is quite easily glimpsed on any sunny day anywhere between Deal and Folkestone, in the gleaming coast of France, which reminds us that most of those world-famous characters, in common with modern voyagers across the Channel, disliked the sea, and crossed by the “shortest route.”
For the rest, Dover has been the scene of comings and goings uncountable, and to attempt recounting them would be wearisome indeed. Charles the Second, who had lively experiences in a hunted embarkation from our shores, experienced a welcome change in 1660, being received on his “glorious restoration” by his loyal subjects on Dover beach, and in 1683 came ashore at what was at that time “Bartholomew’s Gate,” in Thanet, which, in honour of that act of kingly condescension, has ever since been called “Kingsgate.”
Kent, the Cantium, or country of the Cantii, mentioned by Julius Cæsar B.C. 54, and by other ancient writers, is thought to take its name from the peculiarity of its geographical position, jutting boldly out (or, in other words, “canted out”) in an easterly direction, beyond the estuary of the Thames. There is another view taken of the origin of the word, a view which derives it from caint, the “open country,” as distinguished from the woodland character of Sussex, the ancient “Andredswald”; but, against this, it does not5 seem to be sufficiently established that Kent ever was such an open country, while the evidence of maps shows us that it does indeed project most markedly.
The Kentish Coast, then, begins little more than two and a half miles below London Bridge, the county boundary between Surrey and Kent being placed at Earl’s Sluice, on the Grand Surrey Canal, in Deptford, just beyond the Surrey Commercial Docks. There, where the Royal Victualling Yard fronts the busy Thames, midway between Limehouse Reach and Greenwich Reach, begin the 138 miles of this strangely varied and exceptionally historic coast-line.
Undoubtedly the noblest and most fitting introduction is to proceed down river by steamer to Greenwich, for that way you perceive the greatness of the Port of London, and the majesty of the commercial and maritime interests of the capital; while to come “overland”—thus to dignify the approach by mean streets through Bermondsey and Rotherhithe—is an effect of squalor.
Deptford of to-day is an integral part of London. Not an ornamental part; indeed, no. Rather an industrial and wage-earning place. One does not “reside” at Deptford, and there are not a few who find it difficult even to live. It is thus not easy to associate it with that “Depeford” of which Chaucer writes in his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” in 1383: “Lo, Depeford, it is half-way prime.” The deep ford whence it obtained6 its name is—or rather was—on the Ravensbourne, or the Brome, as that stream has sometimes been called, at the Broadway, on the Dover Road; but the many changes that have taken place have of necessity abolished any possible likeness to the passage that existed in Chaucer’s day. In any case, the Deptford around the Broadway, the present bridge over the Ravensbourne, and the road on to Blackheath is not the real intimate Deptford. That is only to be found on the river side of Evelyn Street, and in the neighbourhood of Creek Road, where the Ravensbourne broadens out into Deptford Creek. Here is the real Deptford; more especially along the winding old street oddly—and with a curiously shipboard suggestion—named “Stowage,” and so to the old original church of Deptford, dedicated, as it should be in a waterside church, to St. Nicholas, the sailor’s patron.
From the church, Deptford Green leads to the waterside, and adjoining is “Hughes’ Fields.” Pleasantly rural although these names sound, candour compels the admission that they are, in fact, streets, with no suggestion of grass or meadows about them. The church of St. Nicholas dates from about 1697, and is a red-brick building in the curious taste of that time; retaining, however, its old stone fifteenth-century tower. Flourishing plane-trees render the churchyard in summer not unpleasing, but the stranger is apt to see with a shudder the grisly stone gate-piers, surmounted by great sculptured skulls decoratively8 laurelled, as though Death were indeed the conqueror and the hereafter merely a vain thought. You might travel far, and yet find nothing so truly pagan.
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