ROMNEY MARSH (continued)

There is no fault to be found with the present condition of the road that leads from Warehorne to Snargate. It winds amazingly, but the surface is good and the width sufficient to keep the most inexpert drivers of traps or riders of cycles from steering into the black dykes that line it. Far otherwise, however, is it with the tracks that branch off boldly here and there and lure the unwary into extraordinary remotenesses where the guide-book measurements and acreage of the marsh seem a mockery, and its limits recede with every step. Lonely cottages, where the "lookers," or shepherds, or the dykers live, are passed at infrequent intervals, each one a forbidding box of dull brick, with its generally unkempt garden and numerous chickens, and its great pile of faggots or brushwood for winter's firing. In this wilderness may be found many of those deserted sites already mentioned; the shapeless walls of ruined churches alone telling silently of the great flood and the drowned villages. Eastbridge Chapel, Orgarswick, Blackmanstone, and Hope Chapel are the chief of these. Newchurch and Ivychurch are striking exceptions to this old tale of destruction. They belong to the same Early English period, with later additions, and are large, handsome structures. Standing on ground rising ever so slightly higher than the sites of their unfortunate neighbours, they escaped destruction, to tell us how well, and on how grand a scale they builded who first brought the marsh under cultivation.

Romney Marsh is still so greatly in a state of nature that the black-headed gull breeds freely in its reedy dykes, although, to be sure, the demand for plovers' eggs causes much havoc to be wrought among its nests by denizens of the neighbourhood, who earn a very excellent livelihood by supplying London poulterers. The simple native and the honest poulterer both do very well, and so long as the London consumer of expensive "plover's" eggs knows no better, why, no harm is done.

Snargate stands on that fine, straight, broad, and level road from Appledore to New Romney which bears the strongest evidence of having once been a raised causeway across the morasses, and is in fact identical with the Rhee Wall, already mentioned as having been built by the Romans to keep out the river Rother. "Snargate" was originally the name given to a sluice from the marsh into the river at this point. An inn, the church, a few old cottages, the vicarage—that is now the sum-total of Snargate, whose flint and stone battlemented church-tower peeps over the surrounding trees, and forms a pretty picture for a great distance down the long perspective of the road. A near approach shows it to be not only surrounded with trees, but hemmed in by them, and so closely that they obscure the light from the plain, leaded casement windows, and cast a green, mildewy, fungoid shade over all. Great gloomy churchyard yews, planted, perhaps, by the first church-builders, grow at close quarters and carpet the ground with thick and vivid moss, and two giant trees that look like pollard beeches, but on closer inspection are seen to be ashes, stand sentinel by the south porch, and lift eerie phalanginous branches dramatically upright.

It is a fine old church, built in the graceful Early English style, and on quite a large scale; but now uncared for and horribly damp. When, having obtained the keys, you swing back the groaning door, the reek of the dampness smites you coldly in the face, and the odour of it produces a sneeze that goes hollowly reverberating up and down the mildewed interior. Emptiness and damp are the interior characteristics of Snargate church—its pavements slimy with moisture, the walls alternately livid and green with it. It is not surprising that Barham preferred to live at Warehorne.

Brenzett village is larger and livelier than Snargate. From it Brookland, Ivychurch, and Newchurch are most easily reached—the first, on the right-hand side of this causeway road to New Romney, in Walling Marsh; the others to the left, in the Marsh of Romney. Brookland is distant one mile from the main road, on a by-way that, if you follow it long enough, brings you dustily into Rye; dustily, because the traffic that resorts to Brookland station cuts up the surface to an astonishing extent; astonishing, because that traffic is necessarily of small dimensions, seeing that this is merely a branch railway leading to the very verge and outer rim of the world at Dungeness. An infallible sign of this scarcity of road traffic is the action of the keeper of the level crossing by the station, whom one suspects to be also station-master, ticket-collector, porter, and signalman combined. He touches his hat to the passing tourist, and, glad to hear the voice of a stranger, exchanges remarks on the weather.

From afar off, along the flat road, the whimsical bell-tower of Brookland church rises, like some strange portent. If the stranger has not heard of it before, he speculates, perplexed, as to what it can possibly be, for, seen in silhouette against the sky, it presents the weirdest kind of outline. Imagine three old-fashioned candle-extinguishers, placed one upon the other, and you have that odd campanile very closely imitated. It stands apart from the church, is of massive oak framing, weatherboarded, and thickly and most liberally tarred. The wildest local legends exist, purporting to account for this freak, the most specious of all telling how the builder of the church finding he had lost by the contract, set this up in place of the stone tower originally contemplated. The real reason for this detached wooden belfry is found in the old-time nature of the site, too waterlogged to be capable of giving support to so heavy a structure as a stone tower. A wicked old satirical allusion to this unusual feature, still current in the village—or perhaps rather, considering its nature, in the surrounding villages—declares that when a bachelor and a maid are married in Brookland church, the belfry will leap up and occupy a place on the roof. As marriages here are not uncommon, and the belfry keeps its place, this, it will be allowed, is a grievous saying. An old writer, with a naive assumption of innocence, noting this example of local humour, pretends not to understand the libellous gibe. "What it doth portend," he remarks, "I know not." He should have inquired, say, at Brenzett—or, indeed, anywhere save at Brookland, whose inhabitants are still touchy on the subject; as well they may be, since every passing stranger, posted in local lore, lets off a joke or makes jocular inquiry.

Returning to the main road, a signpost directs into the heart of Romney Marsh, by way of Ivychurch and Newchurch. Ivychurch, whose tower is dimly visible from the road in the soft atmosphere of the marsh, is a mile and a half distant, and stands as isolated from the world as a place well may be and yet remain a "going concern." What is there of Ivychurch? A few farmsteads, a few more cottages, an oast-house or so, a village inn, and an amazingly large church. Apart from New Romney church, which is that of a town and therefore not comparable with that of this rural parish, the great church of Ivychurch is by far the largest in the whole district, and fully deserves to be called the Marshland Cathedral. It could accommodate, fifty times over, the present population of the parish, and the irresistible inference is that this must, six hundred years ago, when the great church was built, have been the most densely peopled region of the marsh. Nowadays, like all its fellow churches, it is damp and mouldy and a world too large. Nay, more: its vast empty interior is falling into decay, and the north aisle is made to serve the purpose of a coal-cellar; while, because the windows are broken, the wildfowl of this "recondite region" have made it a favourite roosting-place. It is an eerie experience, having procured the keys and unlocked the door, to be met with a tremendous whirring of wings, and to be almost knocked down with the surprise of a moorhen flying in one's face. Funds are accumulating for a restoration of this church; but, unless the people come back to the land, why expend so much good money? Better were it that this should go the way of the other ruined churches of the marsh if there be none to worship. The wheel of fortune, however, still turns. God grant the time be at hand when the yellowing corn becomes again that predominant feature in the landscape it never has been in the eyes of the present generation; that the farmer may again find his industry pay, and we be no longer dependent upon the foreigner for our food supplies.

Newchurch, nearly three miles farther into the marsh, was new seven hundred years ago, when the church was built. It is second only in size to Ivychurch, with the same lichenous damp,[Pg 105]
[Pg 106] but better cared for, and the centre of a quite considerable village, as villages go in these parts. There must actually be sufficient inhabitants in the parish to quarter fill the building! Newchurch makes a pretty picture, thoroughly characteristic of the marsh. From it the eye ranges to the wooded cliffs at Bilsington, to Aldington Knoll, and to Lympne, with its castle and church, looking fairy-like and ethereal in the shimmering light of a summer afternoon; or in the other direction to where the marsh is bounded by the sea. The picture of Newchurch itself is seen here, and is more eloquent than mere words can be. In it you perceive how this is an epitome of the marsh, with windmill and rushy dyke in the foreground, and farmsteads, rickyards and church, companionable together, and in appearance mutually dependent, in middle distance: the infinite levels of this interesting district appearing in the background. It is not by mere chance or by any figment of literary imagination that farms and church here look so dependent upon one another. They actually were so in the marsh, much more than is indicated by that tithing of the unhappy farmer customary all over the country. It was the Church, in the form of the monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, that originally reclaimed the marsh and brought it under cultivation, and the Church was, by consequence, landlord. Long years of patient labour had resulted in winning these lands for agriculture, and the monastery fully earned the profits it eventually secured from its long-continued enterprise. Its piety was of two kinds,—of that practical sort which makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, and thus improves our temporal condition in this vale of tears; and of that spiritual and intellectual variety which, having founded settlements for the husbandmen, saw to it that his immortal as well as his earthly part should have due sustenance. This is no place to tell how in the course of centuries that Church fell away from its high ideals: here still survive neighbourly farm and parish place of worship, to prove that they once existed.

It is here, in the middle of the marsh, that you perceive how little given to change are the local methods. Sheep are still to be found here in thousands, and still tended, as from time immemorial, by that variety of shepherd known in these parts as a "looker." Ingoldsby names the manservant of Thomas Marsh of Marston, "Ralph Looker," and derived the name, doubtless, from this local title for shepherd.

The terms of a "looker's" employment are curious, and look wretchedly poor, but as they have survived, and show no signs of being revised in these times when labour is scarce on the farms and farmers eagerly compete for help, they cannot be worse than methods of paying shepherds in other parts of the country. A "looker" does everything connected with sheep-tending at an inclusive payment of one shilling and sixpence an acre per annum. For this he looks after the flocks, sees them through the horrors of the lambing season, shears them in summer, succours them in winter, and cures their ailments throughout the year. The sum seems pitiful, but when calculated on farms of six hundred acres or so, works out fairly well.

One comes to love the marsh, to delight in its byways, and to welcome opportunities for extended exploration. From Newchurch it is easily possible to find a way back to the main road without retracing one's footsteps. That way lies near the spot marked on ordnance maps as "Blackmanstone Chapel," a ruin so thoroughly ruinated that it is difficult to find—and not worth seeing when found. Blackmanstone Chapel was apparently founded by one Blacheman, who held the manor in the time of Edward the Confessor, but, in common with many such chapels, it seems to have been founded more for the repose of a single erring soul than to satisfy any crying spiritual need of the neighbourhood. The adjoining parish of St. Mary the Virgin is more fortunate. It keeps its ancient church in excellent condition. On its pavement the curious may note an epitaph to one Daniel Langdon, "Common Expenditor" of Romney Marsh, 1750.

The cautious explorer of the marsh is careful to carry his nosebag with him, in the shape of some pocketable light refreshment, for the inns are infrequent, and the farm-folk, although hospitable enough, cannot always supply even the most modest demands of the stranger. Milk even—that unfailing product of a farm—is not always to be had, for the morning's supply may already have been sent off to the nearest railway station, and the five o'clock afternoon milking hour be not yet come. Moreover, farmers generally entering into a contract to supply a certain quantity cannot always afford to sell even a single glass. As for farmhouse bread and cheese, dismiss from your mind all thoughts of home-baked bread or local cheese in these times. The bread will often be a tin loaf from the baker's of Ashford, Hythe, or Littlestone; and the cheese—well, here is the apology of a farmer's wife: "I'm sorry we've no Dutch cheese, but here is some American; we think it very good." Can such things be? you ask. Can they be, indeed? Are they not the commonplace experiences of all those few who really explore the innermost recesses of the country and feel the pulse and count the heart-beats of rural life? Is there not something radically wrong with England when a farmer's wife can make such a speech as that, and not think it strange? In the dying words of the late Lord Winchilsea, a true friend of farming, "God save Agriculture!" when in an English dairying district the farmers buy Dutch and American cheese.

But that is not the only alien article in the farmhouses. Tawdry German glassware and "ornamental" china "decorate" the "best parlour," and the doleful wailings of American organs on Sundays give evidence of the religious instincts of the farmer's family and agonise the unhappy wayfarer. Old England is certainly being cosmopolitanised (good word!) in every direction; here is another instance, for what do we see on the barn-walls and posting-stations but the announcement, addressed to the rustics, of a "FÊte ChampÊtre" to be held in aid of a church restoration fund. In the days before Hodge left off saying "beant" and took to using the more cultivated phrase "is not," like the Squire and the Parson, he would—supposing him able to read at all—have asked, wonderingly, "What be this 'ere Feet Shampeter?"—and that would have been a very learned Squire or Parson who could have correctly explained the meaning.