SANDWICH TO THE VILLE OF SARRE

Sandwich ends at the Barbican, the foreign-looking watergate that spans the road on the hither side of the Stour. Down to the left, away from the road to Pegwell Bay and Ramsgate, can be seen from this point the dark ruin of Richborough, and directly on that road, to the right, a belt of sparse woodland, a clump of thin, wiry trees, insufficiently nourished on the sandy and pebbly soil. In midst of this, solitary and surrounded with an atmosphere of melancholy, is an absolutely uninteresting modern house. These trees and this house form all that remains of the once important and flourishing port of Stonar, or Lundenwic, an early rival of Sandwich itself. The spot and an adjoining one are now marked on the maps as "Great and Little Stonar." The history of that vanished town is vague and fragmentary, but enthralling, like some half-told tale of faËry. Its very incertitude renders it into the likeness of a city of dream, the product of a magician's wand, blighted by uncanny spell. What, then, do we know of Stonar? Just this: that in the long ago, in A.D. 456, the Britons under Vortimer, after being deserted by the Roman legions, secured one of their few victories over the invading pagan Saxons on this spot, a spot fixed by the Latin annalist in the phrase, "In campo juxta Lapidem Tituli." It was near here, therefore, in these flats, that the battle was fought, and the place seems to derive its name of Stonar from that same Latin "Lapidem." Now it is remarkable that the Kentish coast is rich in place-names including the word "stone." Littlestone near Old Romney, is an example—Folkestone another, and the most prominent—the ancient "Lapis Populi" of Latin records. But from what stones those original names proceeded who shall say?

The British victory was but an interlude in an almost unbroken series of defeats inflicted upon that unhappy people by the ruthless Saxons, who presently bore down all opposition on the Kentish shores, and established themselves here. It was they who founded the original town of Stonar, on a sandspit even then forming at the mouth of the River Stour and the entrance to the channel of the Wantsume, dividing the Isle of Thanet from the mainland of Kent; and the Roman fortress of Rutupium, the vast shell of ruined Richborough that we see to-day, overlooking the surrounding marshes from its rising vantage-ground, was converted by them into a fortress-palace for their kings.

When, in the course of time, the Saxons had possessed themselves of the country and had at last become luxurious and less warlike, they were in turn attacked by the fiercer Danes. Prominent among the many bloody fights waged for the mastery was the second battle of Stonar, fought here between the forces of Torkill the Dane and the Saxon king, Edmund Ironside, in 1009. It was one of those exceptional victories for the Saxons that now and again cheered them in their long series of disasters.

Stonar's alternative name of Lundenwic seems to have derived from the extensive trade with London, but of the vanished town and its records we know next to nothing. Only this, indeed, that its rivalry with Sandwich was fierce, and that Sandwich was gaining the advantage and Stonar decaying when the ill-fated town was entirely destroyed and swept away by the sea in the great storm of 1365, when Sandwich not only took all its trade, but assumed its alias of "Lundenwic" as well. "It is an ill wind that blows no one any good," says the old saw, and this was worth much to Sandwich. If tempests—or "tompuses," as the Kentish folk, in their quaint speech, call them—were of such destructive powers to-day, insurance would cease to be the lucrative business it now is.

Richborough, that frowns so grim down upon the Stour meadows and the flat Sandwich and Ramsgate road, is a favourite haunt of archÆologists. It rises, rugged walls and bulging bastions, from low, earthy cliffs, ivy-clad in places, and shrouded by dense thickets of brushwood, where the earth falls away to the levels. The secretive ivy, incredibly aged, clasps the hoary masonry with a tenacity that will not allow of severance. They will live and die together, those walls and that "rare old plant, the ivy green."

The view from Richborough is comprehensive and varied. Away to the right is Sandwich, a mass of clustered roofs and spars and rigging, dominated, of course, by that Dutch-like cupola of St. Peter's, resembling some gigantic onion of fairy-lore; and away again to the left goes the curving shore, to Pegwell Bay and Ramsgate, with the white cliffs standing out to sea, as bolt upright as though they had been sliced out. The houses and some of the more prominent public buildings of Ramsgate peer over the edge of the down.

The railway that, taking advantage of the levels, runs between Sandwich and Ramsgate under these walls of the aged Roman castle is not an unromantic feature. Its living commercialism serves to contrast eloquently the methods of to-day and those of an Empire dead these fifteen hundred years. He must be a soulless signalman who does not, in his cabin placed under the shadow of that wall, sometimes let his imagination loose and, conjuring up the past, people those ramparts again with the helmeted sentries of old Rome.

More than 140,000 coins, Roman and Saxon, are said to have been, at one time and another, picked up within and around Richborough. That is why the visitor to Sandwich hastens at the earliest opportunity along those two miles that separate the ruins from the town, and is explanatory of his exploring zeal in turning over the clods with his foot and probing the light earth with his walking-stick. Alack! the statement that so great a number of coins have been found means perhaps that the last are gone, rather than that a hundred thousand or so remain. If the ploughman still finds anything, he keeps the fact to himself; but certainly, if any personal efforts of the present historian may count for testimony, there is a plentiful lack of anything but heavy clay in these fields. No precious fibula, no golden coin, nay, not even a humble copper denarius rewarded his anxious efforts, and the ware of Samos was equally to seek.

Here we are well within the Isle of Thanet, whose name, as generally is the case, is of uncertain origin. "Thanatos," the "Isle of Death," suggested some commentator in the bygone years, but he did not bolster up his derivation by telling us in what way it was so deadly. Perhaps in the wrecks of its coast. In other respects, Thanet is the Isle of Good Health, of rude, hungry, boisterous health; and in summer the Isle of Cockneys. Does it not contain Ramsgate—"rollicking Ramsgate",—and Margate the merry, whose name—I am sorry—always reminds me of margarine? It was at Margate, upon Jarvis's Jetty, that "Mr. Simpkinson" met the "little vulgar boy" who did him so very brown, but I am not going to Margate to see the Jetty; which has been greatly altered since Jarvis caused it to rise out of the vasty deep. Margate is mentioned only that once in the Ingoldsby Legends and Ramsgate not at all, and so I shall cut them out of my journey, and make across inland, over the high ridge at Acol, to Reculver.

The road is flat, the surface good, and from Sandwich to Ebbsfleet is an enjoyable run. At Ebbsfleet there has been lately erected a tall granite cross to mark where St. Augustine landed and reintroduced Christianity in A.D. 597. Perhaps not everyone knows that he was sent against his will on this mission by the Pope, and that it was only grumbling he came. Not altogether so saintly as we might, not inquiring closely, suppose—a morose and masterful man.

Through Minster lies our way—Minster-in-Thanet—reached by lanes of the charmingest, with overarching trees; very beautiful, and filled in summer with other things not so lovely: with such eye-sorrows and ear-torments as dusty brake-parties clamant with the latest comic songs and energetically performing upon cornets and concertinas; little vulgar boys, descendants, possibly, of Mr. Simpkinson's young friend, turning cart-wheels in the dust for casual pence. The brake-proprietors of Margate and Ramsgate, conscious that such tree-shaded spots are rare in Thanet, have taken these under their protection, and advertise "Twelve miles drives through the pretty lanes, 1/-." Minster is therefore a paradise of beanfeasters and the inferno of pilgrims, literary or other.

To find the "Smuggler's Leap" one must make as for Acol. "Near this hamlet of Acol," says Ingoldsby, in a fictitious quotation prefixed to the fine legend of Smuggler Bill and Exciseman Gill and their doings, "is a long-disused chalk-pit of formidable depth, known by the name of the 'Smuggler's Leap.' The tradition of the parish runs that a riding-officer from Sandwich, called Anthony Gill, lost his life here in the early part of the eighteenth century, while in pursuit of a smuggler. The smuggler's horse only, it is said, was found crushed beneath its rider. The spot has, of course, been haunted ever since." For the original of this quotation, the reader is referred to a "Supplement to Lewis's History of Thanet, by the Reverend Samuel Pegg, A.M., Vicar of Gomersham," supposed to have been published by a "W. Bristow, Canterbury, 1796"; but Ingoldsby, who composed the legend, invented his quotation as well, and those who seek the Reverend Samuel Pegg's "Supplement" will not find it.

But if so much be imaginative, the smuggling exploits common in the district a hundred and thirty years ago, as recorded in the Kentish newspapers, were in many respects like that celebrated in the Ingoldsby legend. The Kentish Gazette of Saturday, November 22nd, 1777, gives a case in point: "On Monday last Mr. Harris, Officer of Excise, and Mr. Wesbeach, Surveyor of the Customs at Ramsgate, attended by six dragoons, met with a body of smugglers at Birchington, consisting of at least a hundred and fifty, armed with loaded whips and bludgeons. After a sharp skirmish, in which the smugglers had many of their horses shot, they made a very regular retreat, losing 8 gallons of brandy, 96 gallons of Geneva, 162 lb. of Hyson tea, and five horses."

The chalk-pit, too, is sufficiently real. Crossing the open fields, spread starkly to the sky, between Monkton and Cleve Court, it is found on the Ramsgate road, opposite the "Prospect" inn, where it still gapes as deep and wide as ever. Do not, however, if you wish to be impressed with the truth of Ingoldsby's romantic description, view it by the brilliant sunlight of a summer's day, because at such times the great cleft in the dull white of the chalk does not properly proclaim its immensity. It is only when the evening shadows fall obliquely into the old chalk-pit that you applaud the spirit of those lines:

When Ingoldsby wrote there were, according to his testimony, "fifty intelligent fly-drivers" plying upon Margate pier, who would convey the curious to the spot for a guerdon which they term "three bob." Cycles and electric tramways have nowadays so sorely cut up the trade of the intelligent that few of those depressed individuals remain.

Coming into Monkton, a scattered village on the way to Sarre, the church, directly facing the road, makes, with the old stocks on a grassy bank, a pretty picture. The indications of arches, seen in the sketch, show that there was once a north aisle to this church. The parish owes its name to the fact that the manor was anciently the property of Christ Church Monastery, Canterbury.

The whole of this district is covered by the legend of the "Smuggler's Leap." The "smuggling crew" dispersed in all directions before the customs-house officers.

We, too, will ride into Sarre.

Sarre was, and is still technically, a ville of the port of Sandwich, governed by a Deputy whose functions are now merely decorative. He still, however, as of old, swears fealty to King and port. These historical facts explain those notices, "Town of Sarre" and "Ville de Sarre" prominently displayed on the houses at the Canterbury and Thanet ends of the village respectively.

The bridge gained by Smuggler Bill is that which joins Kent and the Isle of Thanet, the successor of that original pont built in 1485, on the site of "the common ferry when Thanet was full iled." It is not a romantic bridge nowadays, and has its many thousands of counterparts. Beneath its commonplace arch the sluggish waters of a branch of the Stour go wandering away, right and left, along the old narrowed channel of the once broad and navigable Wantsume, where the sea once flowed, and the Roman galleys and triremes, the Saxon and Danish prows, and the Norman and early English ships, came and went; and only a shallow stream, no wider than a horse could jump, choked with reeds and snags, divides the former "Isle" and the mainland.

Sarre is picturesque in parts, and in other parts quite distressingly ugly. It is, indeed, a peculiarity of Kent, overrun from the earliest times by Cockneys, that many of its buildings touch the deepest depth of ugliness, vulgarity, and unsuitability. The Cockney has come forth of his Cockaigne, and builded, after his sort, great grey-brick houses in the model of the houses in towns, where of necessity, being in streets and shouldered by neighbours, they run to height and unrelieved squareness. Sarre contains exactly such an example, in one of the two inns—one never can recollect the name of a commonplace inn—that minister not only to the wants of Sarre, but were halting-places for the Margate and Ramsgate coaches in the old days, just as they are "pull-ups" for the brake-parties of the present time.

The artist can dodge the hideous inn out of his sketch and can make a pretty view of Sarre, but unless he adopts the tactics of a Turner, and takes a piece here and another there, and so fits them together in a composition of his own, he cannot get into one view the quaint old barn-yards, with their curious barns standing, for fear of the rats, shouldered off the ground on stone staddles; nor can he include the bridge, the stream, and the long, poplar-lined road into the village. In no case could he bring in the time-worn tower of a village church, that sanctifies a sketch, for Sarre is godless and graceless and owns no church, its inhabitants finding their nearest place of worship at St. Nicholas-at-Wade, nearly two miles distant.