CHAPTER IV ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM--BROMPTON--GILLINGHAM--GRANGE--OTTERHAM QUAY--LOWER HALSTOW--IWADE

Very little change overtakes Rochester High Street, that narrow, rather gloomy, and distinctly dirty-looking thoroughfare. The Corn Exchange clock still projects its “moon face” over the pavement, as Dickens described it, “out of a grave, red building, as if Time carried on business there and hung out his sign”; and the ancient grime still clings to the brickwork houses, and the occasional old weatherboarded tenements still lack the new coats of paint cruelly denied them. One might expend much description upon the High Street of Rochester, from the famous “Bull” hotel of Pickwickian fame, and the tame, characterless front of the “Seven Poor Travellers,” on to the curiously weatherboarded Westgate of the Cathedral Close, familiarly known, through associations with “Edwin Drood,” as “Jasper’s Gateway,” and not forgetting the Early English crypt beneath the “George” inn, nearly opposite the “Bull,” a relic of which very few people know, and little to be suspected from the decidedly commonplace general appearance of that house. There is, indeed, room for a most interesting monograph upon this High Street. I always associate the little weatherboarded house and shop numbered 195, on the left hand as you go towards Chatham, with that where little David Copperfield had his adventure with the half-mad second-hand-clothes shopkeeper who said “Goroo, goroo,” and invoked his lungs and liver. It is a bootshop nowadays; but you go down into it from the street-level just as in the story.

Eastbury House—the “Nuns’ House” of “Edwin Drood”—until recent years a gloomy mansion, mysteriously retired behind a grim brick wall, has lately been restored and the enclosing wall demolished, and has become a museum. It is now a much more worshipful-looking building than before; all the better for its scouring and cleaning, and yet looking none the less antique. Built in 1591, Eastgate House looks every year of its age, and has a very thorough air of historical mystery, although nothing has ever happened there to which one can put a name. Miss Twinkleton’s young ladies, in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” must often have experienced strange thrills and shivers in its darkling rooms and passages.

The allied towns of Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, and New Brompton do not grow any more attractive, from the tourist’s point of view, with the effluxion of time. They had always a taint of Cockney vulgarity which later industrial and military and naval developments, and an extensive system of electric tramways, have intensified. With all these things, the natural beauties of the site have been almost utterly obscured in mean streets and crowded slums. Those beauties were of a very striking nature. From the lofty side of Chatham Hill the eye ranged over the broad Medway and its marshes, beautiful in the distance, and across to the Hundred of Hoo. To-day that view is qualified by a vista of innumerable roofs and domestic chimneys, and by the many giant chimney-stacks of the Portland cement factories that have to-day become almost as striking a feature of the surroundings as the naval and military establishments, and spread a smoky haze over the scene.

It is not easy to realise Chatham as a waterside place, still less as a port and dockyard, because of the closely-packed houses along the High Street which runs parallel with the Medway. Only the narrowest alleys open to the water, and few of them: the Sun Pier being, in fact, the only view-point. But the outlook upon the busy waterside scenes up-river, along Limehouse Reach, is of an inspiring nature. It is composed, indeed, of widely different elements, but is therefore all the more pictorial. There you see Rochester Castle and Cathedral, contrasting strongly with the huge coal-cranes and the wharves, alongside with the fuming chimneys of the cement factories on the Frindsbury shore, and many picturesque, brown-sailed barges and fussy steam-tugs on the water. The strenuous past, and a much more strenuous present, lend imagination, as well as pictorial quality, to the scene.

The name of Limehouse Reach is exactly descriptive, for the cement factories on the Frindsbury shore give it a character. Here, and above Rochester Bridge, the pleasant Medway valley is scarred and seamed with the chalk-quarrying and the mud-dredging that go towards the making of Portland cement, this neighbourhood being one of the chief centres of that industry. The chalk and the river-mud are mixed roughly in the proportion of three parts of chalk to one of mud, and are then burnt in kilns and ground into a flour-like powder. Portland cement, invented about 1826, is an important industry, with an output of over 3,000,000 tons a year in this country. The price per cask was originally 21s., but the output is now so large and the production has so improved that a better article is now sold at about 4s. a cask.

As to Chatham Dockyard, it is a highly historic place full of keenest interest to a patriotic Briton, but to such a good deal more difficult to explore properly than it is made for distinguished foreigners. Why the native tax-payer who contributes to the support of this establishment so much of his hardly-earned gold should be thus discouraged, while possible enemies—much more keenly concerned to worm out official secrets and far better able to do so—should be shown every particular is more than the plain man can comprehend. But it is the same tale in all our places of arms.

Among the interesting things here in the nature of relics none is more keenly absorbing than the figure-head of the American frigate Chesapeake, the vessel captured by Captain Broke, in command of the Shannon, in 1813. This naval duel was the brightest incident in the three years’ war between England and the United States. The figure-head, a fine specimen of this extinct art, represents a woman with headdress of feathers in the North American Indian fashion.

It is past the Dockyard gates and by High Street, Brompton, and thence across “Chatham Great Lines” that the stranger who wants to find again the coast-line had better trace his course. The district is an unalluring one of tramways, mean streets, and the squalid side of military life. But the Brompton Barracks of the Royal Engineers are rather fine. Here is the Gordon statue, a striking work, representing the General seated on a camel; and here, too, are two triumphal arches displaying the achievements of the Royal Engineers, and four huge bronzes, representing seated Boers with rifles and bandoliers. The “Great Lines,” an upland, common-like expanse, is the scene of that incident in “Pickwick” in which, during the grand review, the timid Mr. Snodgrass, after being violently hustled to and fro, was indignantly asked “vere he vos a-shovin’ to,” together with many other shameful experiences. Following the tram-lines, we come at last to the terminus at Gillingham, one of the two places of that name in England. The other is in Dorset. Although their names are spelt alike, they are spoken differently: the Dorsetshire town is “Gillingham,” as might be expected: this is, unexpectedly, always locally “Jillingham.”

The ancient church here has a tall tower, conspicuous far and wide on its hill-top; its corner-turret provided with a cresset, or fire-pot, for a beacon. Here, descending the steep and narrow Church Street, and bearing to the right, a hamlet called Gad’s Hill is passed, giving on to a variety of creeks and inlets looking out across the Medway and the circular forts of Gillingham and Hoo, with the wooded heights of the Hundred of Hoo beyond.

By taking the next turning on the right, up a commonplace new street called “King Edward Road,” and then turning left, a large country residence on the right hand will presently be seen. This is the manor of Grange, or Grench, formerly a member of the Cinque Port of Hastings, and a separate parish. Some ancient, ivy-clad ruins in front of the modern house are those of a chapel and a barn built in 1378 by Sir John Philipot, Mayor of London. Not really “Lord” Mayor, strictly speaking, for that dignified title is not known to have been given before 1486.

The manor comprised 120 acres, and was held by the service of finding one ship and two armed men in time of war. Philipot, however, did better than this. His patriotism impelled him to provide 1,000 men and a squadron of vessels, to aid against the French. This ancient manor enjoyed until modern times the singular extra-territorial right of affording shelter to fugitives from justice who escaped thither; and criminals who succeeded in reaching this Alsatia could not be arrested on the warrant of the local magistrates until a confirming warrant had been obtained from Hastings.

Proceeding and passing a railed-in redoubt, the road rises. Turning then to left and again to right, we come down beside the estuary of the Medway, amid the pear and cherry orchards, into Lower Rainham, past Otterham Creek, and on to Upchurch. Here the church has a steeple of fantastic ugliness, resembling two wooden extinguishers placed one above another. There is a curious crypt, or bonehouse, under the north chancel aisle. This district is famous for the many finds of Roman pottery in the Medway creeks: the well-known black “Upchurch ware,” generally discovered by punting in the shallow waters and prodding the mud with rods. It is supposed that an extensive industry was seated here in ancient times, on land now more or less submerged. It is now pretty generally supposed (why it should be I know not) that all the finds possible have been made. Hasted, writing of these parts early in the eighteenth century, says “the noxious vapours arising from the marshes subject the inhabitants to continued intermittents, and shorten their lives at a very early period.” This, at any rate, seems to be of the past.

Passing Upchurch, the creek of Lower Halstow is soon seen, with the church away on the left, amid scenes of brickmaking activity. The road in the next half-mile turns sharply right at Parksore, rising steeply; that going straight ahead to a place marked “Funton” on the map, rapidly becoming impassable.

Cresting the hill, a wonderful distant view over across to Sheerness, disclosing the battleships there, like uncanny monsters of fairy-lore, is obtained. Bending right and then left, and passing a moated farm, and then a gate across the road, we come in another mile to cross-roads and there turn left for Iwade, and through the village to the bridge across the Swale into Sheppey, at Kingsferry.

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