THE BACK OF BEYOND: THE HINTERLAND OF FOLKESTONE AND HYTHE The business of getting out of Folkestone is a weariful affair, for there are not only the heavy rises in the roads to be surmounted, but the great rolling chalk hills that shut in the valleys reverberate the heat of the sun to a degree that is often stifling, and in these latter days the tiresome hindmost suburbs of Folkestone conspire to render the explorer's lot a hard one, going back dustily inland, beyond Radnor Park, until they join forces with what was once the rural village of Cheriton Street. It is a remarkable stretch of country to which one comes at last; a tumbled area of bare, grassy chalk downs, rising up into bold sugarloaf peaks and cones, very dry and parching. Shorncliffe Camp is hard by, occupying the high ground between Cheriton and Sandgate, and up and down this valley and these hillsides it is the fate of the brave defenders of their country to be manoeuvred, in season and out. When the soldiers of Shorncliffe Camp look down from their windy eyrie upon the long, dry course of the valley, they feel tired and thirsty, and as they look on it every day this amounts to saying that the thirst of Shorncliffe Camp is a transcendent thirst, and not to be He and his forebears have been learning their martial trade here for considerably over a hundred years, for it was in 1794 that Shorncliffe Camp was first founded, to house the despondent and ragged troops landed from the disastrous retreat of Sir John Moore upon Corunna. They learn their drill with every circumstance of unmilitary squalor and untidiness at Shorncliffe, and although they are turned out with pomp and display on grand occasions, the dirt and raggedness of the camp itself, and the makeshift out-at-elbows appearance of men and material, do not form a picture of military glory. Tommy "at home" at Shorncliffe is a very different creature from the oiled and curled darling of the nursemaids on the sea-front at Hythe or Seabrook; and with unshaven face, short pipe in mouth, in shirt-sleeves and with braces dangling about his legs, wandering among the domestic refuse and garbage that plentifully bestrew the place, looks very little like a hero. It is very pleasant to leave the struggling shops of the ultimate Folkestone suburbs behind, to forget the strenuous struggles with bankruptcy waged by those pioneer shopkeepers at the Back of Beyond, and to bid good-bye at length to the last outposts of the pavements, the kerbstones, and the lamp-standards. It is not, however, so pleasing, having put all these evidences of civilisation behind one, to observe, peering over the distant hillside, a It is a relief to turn away from this evidence of Folkestone's prosperity, and to secure a quiet hillside nook whence, on one of those insufferably hot days invariably selected for elaborate evolutions and parades, to watch the sweating Tommies harried up and down the blistering valley in the service of their country, to the raucous and unintelligible yells of commanding officers, comfortably and coolly supervising their heated efforts from the easeful vantage-point of horseback. The contemplative pilgrim finds the energy thus displayed by rank and file to be what a tradesman would call "splendid value" for the reward of a shilling a day, but dolefully admits to himself that not for less than four times that pay can he obtain a man to do a job of honest, but less laborious and exacting, work in a private capacity. Up yonder, on the hillside, the signallers are working the heliograph and energetically waving flags. Their energy makes one positively feel tired. It is "CÆsar's Camp" whence the bright dot-and-dash signal-flashes of the heliograph are proceeding; if we were clever enough, or duly trained, we could read the messages sent. We must not suppose, because "CÆsar's Camp" is so named, that CÆsar A complete change from this scene of martial glory and perspiration is Cheriton itself, where the ancient church stands on a hilltop, away from Cheriton Street. In the rear go the chasing lights and shades of sun and clouds, racing over the yellow-green of the grassy hills; ahead plunges a tree-shaded winding line leading unexpectedly to the sea. It is the one unspoiled little rural oasis in the urban and suburban deserts of a seaboard that has grown fashionable. All too soon it ends, and the villas of Seabrook are reached. Seabrook and Hythe we have already seen. Now let us strike boldly inland, and, leaving Hythe to the left, tackle the perpetual rise and fall of the roads that lead past the romantic castle of Saltwood to the bosky glades of Westenhanger. SALTWOOD CASTLE. Saltwood Castle is a peculiarly interesting object in the Ingoldsby Country, for it was the place where the four knights who murdered Becket assembled, on the night before the tragedy, and FitzUrse, among them, was, as we have already seen, claimed by Barham as his ancestor. The massive circular From very early times Saltwood Castle was held by the Archbishops of Canterbury. It was, indeed, the seizure of this archiepiscopal castle and demesne by the Crown, and the grant of them to Randulf de Broc, that formed one of Becket's bitter grievances against Henry II. De Broc and his relatives were not only seated on the Archbishop's property, but were given the custody of his palace at Canterbury during his long six years' banishment, and on his return in December 1170, strenuously set themselves to be as insolent and as injurious as possible. Randulf himself hunted down the Archbishop's deer with the Archbishop's own hounds, and seized a vessel off Hythe laden with wine, a present from the King to Becket, killing some of the crew and casting the survivors into the dungeons of Pevensey. It was ill business quarrelling with that heady family, unanimously bent upon spiting and spoiling his Grace, from bloody murder and the seizing and destroying of property down to acts of wanton and provocative petty buffoonery. While Randulf de Broc was committing murder and piracy upon the high seas, his kinsman Robert, a renegade monk, on Christmas Eve waylaid one of the Archbishop's sumpter-mules and one of his horses and Saltwood Castle, however, and the De Brocs bore a still further part in the tragedy of Becket, now fast drawing to its final act. When the four knights, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Bret, rushed forth from the King's presence at his court of Bur, in Normandy, on the night of December 24th, with murder in their hearts, they agreed to cross the Channel by two different routes, landing at Dover and at Winchelsea and meeting here, in this fortalice of Saltwood, where hatred sat embattled, already excommunicated and given over in any case to damnation, and so ready for any deed. Ghastly legends, theatrical in the rich gloom of their staging, tell how the four from over sea and Randulf de Broc met here, and plotted together on this night of December 28th the deed that was to be done on the morrow; arranging all the details of that act of blood in the dark, with extinguished candles, fearful of seeing each other's faces—so strong a hold did the event take of the popular imagination. The next morning, calling together a troop of soldiers in the King's name, they galloped off to Canterbury, along the Stone Street, to the commission of that crime whose echoes have come down to us, still hoarsely reverberant, despite the passing of more than seven centuries. But it must not be supposed that here at Saltwood we see the veritable walls that sheltered those One is altogether indisposed to quarrel with the very thoroughgoing restoration that has given these great entrance-towers so striking an air of newness, for one instinctively feels that these towers must have looked so in times when the garrison was still kept up. While the place remained a fortress-residence it would have been simply suicidal not The arms of Courtenay—the three-pointed label and the three bezants—supported by an angel, still remain over the entrance, but Courtenay himself, before whose frown his unfortunate tenants trembled, and in whose rare and uncertain smiles they dared to breathe in deprecating fashion, is forgotten locally. In Cornwall, in Wales, or in any Celtic part of Great Britain he would have survived in wild diabolic legend, but in Kent, which has been phlegmatic and matter-of-fact ever since Hengist and Horsa and the rest of the Teutons landed, he has long been consigned to dryasdust records, where his memory lingers, inanimate. When a little of the dust has been banged out of him, he can be made to strut the stage again and lord it once more, like the very full-blooded tyrant he was, zealous in upholding the spiritualities and the temporalities of the Church, and fanatic in the exaction of deference and manorial dues to himself. Did any poor hind or woodsman offend, ever so unconsciously, in failing of that deference, why, let him be seized and flung into some Little Ease or earthly purgatory, damply underground, there to reflect, with stripes, upon the majesty of Archbishops in general, and of Courtenays in particular, and to wonder when it shall please my lord to release him. Meanwhile, his Grace has forgotten all about his victim, and is thundering in his manorial court against the trembling bailiffs and townsfolk of his manor of Hythe, who have not done him, as he imagines, that yeoman service which is his due, and have now come to compound Magnificently-wooded hills stretch from Saltwood inland to Westenhanger, and the delightful road goes full in view of the gorgeous sylvan beauties of Sandling Park, presently to come to a broad WESTENHANGER HOUSE. Westenhanger stands upon the old Stone Street Stone Street, that goes so broad and straight on towards Canterbury, is not the deserted road that many are inclined to think it. Once a week it is populated by a stream of carriers' covered carts going between Canterbury and the obscure villages on either side of the Roman way, not yet within touch of railways; and some very quaint survivals are to be found on those occasions. There are carriers from sleepy hollows who are as russet in complexion and clothing from head to foot as the soil, and as much a product of it as the trees and fruits. These are those true Kentish men in whose mouths the sound of "th" is impossible, and who pronounce the definite article "the" like a Frenchman. To hear a Kentish rustic holding forth upon the iniquities of "de wedder" when he is intent upon abusing the climate is as humorous an interlude as to listen to a Kentish housewife who talks in unaccustomed plurals and asks the hungry tourist at tea if he will have any more "bread and butters." Others there are in a way less rustic, if equally provincial. These are those grand seigneurs in the carrying line who sport ancient silk or beaver hats and wear broadcloth of an antique cut—broadcloth that was once black and hats that of old were glossy. If the clothes can scarcely be suspected of being heirlooms, the hats certainly are. They are extremely rare and genuine stove-pipes, calculated to impress the rural neighbours with the dignity of the wearers and to extinguish the casual stranger at Canterbury with spasms of laughter. "He were giv' me by my feyder," said Carrier Hogben of Postling, who, Having put away that impressive head-covering and resumed his everyday clothes, "Mr. Jeremiah Hogben," as he was respectfully known by his rustic neighbours on carrying days and Sundays, became simple "old Jerry" or "old Hogben" for the rest of the week. It was as though a king had relinquished his robes and regalia and come among the people as one of themselves. Mr. Hogben, in common with the rest of the countryside, had a good deal of inaccurate lore respecting the Stone Street. According to him, it was made by the builders of Canterbury Cathedral, to convey stone quarried at Lympne to the scene of operations. He declined to believe in the Romans. They were "foreigners," and as such, incapable of road-making—"or anything else," as he sweepingly declared. Mr. Hogben had seen a foreigner once: "Do you understand Italian, then?" we asked. "Lor' bless ye, no, sir; whatever put dat in yer 'ed: no Eyetalian for me, so long as I can talk Inglish; and when dey tells me dat such as dem, mid deir monkeys and orgins, made this ere roÄd what we're travelling on, why, I begs to not believe a bit of it." "But the modern Italians and the ancient Romans are not precisely the same people." "So gentlemen like you've told me afore; but what I says is, dey both comes from Italy, don't dey? Well den, it stands to reason dey're the same. No people what goes about the country playing hurdy-gurdies ever made this roÄd, I'll stake me life on't." If Hogben had no respect for foreigners, his manner indicated that he owned an awed kind of deference to the memory of Lord Rokeby of Mount Morris, past which park he had driven on his way to and from Canterbury for many years. Which of the several Barons Rokeby it was whose doings in lifetime and whose post-mortem pranks were the Such are the legends still current at the Back of Beyond, but they are dwindling away. Even old Hogben could find it possible to say that "ghostesses" were already "quite out-o'-doors"—by which he meant that they were out of fashion. But he was bung-full of smuggling lore, and could illustrate his stories with object lessons, as he drove his steady course along the Stone Street. "'See dat tree," he would say, in passing a copse. "Dat's where de Ransleys"—naming a ferocious family of smugglers, men and women, notorious for their cruelties and outrages—"dat's where de Ransleys tied one of deir haases, before dey were taken off to Maidstone Gaol." The horse was starved to death, thus haltered, and the gang, who had been known to beat a Revenue officer to death, were almost heart-broken when they heard of it. Such contradictions are we all. |