CHAPTER XXII FOLKESTONE--THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW--DICKENS AND "PAVILIONSTONE"--SANDGATE
We come into Folkestone by way of the mean streets that immediately fringe the Old Town, that survival of the fisher-village which existed many centuries before ever the modern pleasure-resort was thought of.
No one has with any certainty penetrated the mystery of Folkestone’s name. As the Lapis Populi of the Romans, the “Folcanstane” of the Saxons, and the “Fulchestane” of Domesday Book, it remains a puzzle. No one knows who these “folk” were, nor what was their “stone.” The situation of the town is really, when you come to consider it, of the most extraordinary kind; but no one who has not approached it either way along the coast, or from inland, can quite sum up this situation, for the growth of modern Folkestone is so great that, when in it, the natural features of the spot are obscured by many houses. Perhaps the best point of view whence to sum up Folkestone is at the rear, along the road from Canterbury. Up there, on the lofty downs, those bold, grassy chalk-hills, you look down across a mile or so of apparently level land, at whose seaward extremity the clustered houses of the town are massed against the sea. But, coming down into those levels, it is seen that the Old Town lies in a hollow on the shore, while fashionable Folkestone occupies a lofty cliff-top; the famous “Leas,” intermediate between them being the business districts, including Tontine Street and Rendezvous Street.
Not all Old Folkestone survives, nor is even that which remains exactly as it was. The old open stream which dashed down into the harbour has been piped; because, they say, its odour became too strong. That is as may be; but the remark is permissible that the super-smells of Folkestone Harbour at low-water outclass anything possible in streams. Still, enough remains of Old Folkestone to show the inquisitive stranger what the old-time fishermen’s and smugglers’ haunts were like. No one is in the least inquisitive about the new town, because it displays itself most prominently to the view, hiding nothing. Thus viewed, it is seen to be chiefly in that manner of building which prevailed in South Kensington’s early days, before that region became a byword for culture. It is in the greyest of grey stucco, and exceedingly dismal.
THE STADE, AND OLD TACKLE-BOXES, FOLKESTONE.
But down by the Harbour, where Old Folkestone sits and partly squatters in the water and for the rest climbs up and slides down amazing acclivities and declivities, a great deal of interest survives; with shy corners and alleys that seem shun observation. Ingoldsby’s description of the Folkestone of his day, early in the nineteenth century, still in part holds good. To him it was “a collection of houses which its maligners call a fishing-town, and its well-wishers a watering-place. A limb of the Cinque Ports, it has (or lately had) a corporation of its own and has been thought considerable enough to give a second title to a noble family. Rome stood on seven hills—Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy. Its streets, lanes, and alleys—fanciful distinctions without much real difference—are agreeable enough to persons who do not mind running up and down stairs; and the only inconvenience at all felt by such of its inhabitants as are not asthmatic is when some heedless urchin tumbles down a chimney or an impertinent pedestrian peeps into a garret window.”
These remarks about precipitous streets may well be supplemented by the description given by Dickens, who, visiting Folkestone in 1855, wrote to Wilkie Collins and spoke of “a steep, crooked street, like a crippled ladder,” a comparison which well fits the High Street to this day.
The chief picturesque asset of this region is the exceedingly quaint group of old tarred tackle-boxes, or rigging-lofts, fronting the Fish Market, on the Stade. This is the last stronghold of the picturesque here, and very well worth preserving. Elsewhere in the Old Town there are interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century red-brick houses, but they are woefully slummy. High above this lowly region and the harbour is the old parish church of St. Eanswythe, that famous lady, daughter of Eadbald, King of Kent, who founded a convent here on the hill-top and caused water to run miraculously uphill to supply it. It is not surprising that she was made a saint. Rome could scarcely do less. A leaden reliquary containing relics of her was discovered in a wall of the church in 1895.
I have already remarked that modern Folkestone, as distinguished from the old fishing-port, wears in its most prominent residential parts the appearance of an unregenerate South Kensington; of the South Kensington before the cult of the sunflower and of Queen Annean architecture banished white brick and stucco. That it should so closely resemble the South Kensington of the Cromwell Road district, built soon after the Great Exhibition of 1851, is not remarkable, seeing that it was Cubitt, that great conjurer with bricks and mortar (not forgetting the plaster) who was the author of both. He bade arise both Cromwell Road and the intensely respectable and extremely expensive mansions that front upon the Folkestone Leas—or Lees, as I grieve to find them frequently spelt—and Dickens was in 1855, or thereabouts, the prophet of all these things. Dickens, in this setting, is a figure of absolute rightness. You cannot imagine him, even had he lived long enough, in a Morris and Burne-Jones milieu.
He came to Folkestone when the new town was of the newest and still in the making, and when the original Pavilion Hotel, the predecessor of the existing hotel of that name, was fresh-built. He described Folkestone under the name of “Pavilionstone,” and one may still see in Albion Villas the house he rented for a time; a thoroughly typical house.
“I am myself,” he wrote, “of New Pavilionstone. We are a little mortary and limey at present, but we are getting on capitally. Indeed, we were getting on so fast, at one time, that we overdid it, and built a street of shops, the business of which may be expected to arrive in about ten years. We are sensibly laid out in general; and with a little care and pains (by no means wanting, so far), shall become a very pretty place. We ought to be, for our situation is delightful, our air is delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild thyme, and decorated with millions of wild-flowers, are, on the faith of a pedestrian, perfect. In New Pavilionstone we are a little too much addicted to small windows, with more bricks in them than glass, and we are not over-fanciful in the way of decorative architecture, and we get unexpected sea-views through cracks in the street doors; on the whole, however, we are very snug and comfortable, and well accommodated.”
Dickens had, however, not the remotest conception of what the place he was pleased to style “Pavilionstone” would become. He saw only the beginnings of the lordly and exclusive pleasure-resort on the lofty cliff-tops, one hundred and twenty feet above the sea; and the people who made holiday at Folkestone in his time were frankly people who “went to the seaside” and descended to the beach, and sometimes even paddled in the sea, and did the like undignified things. Now the Folkestone that in these times centres upon the Leas does nothing of this sort. It notices sometimes that the sea does, in fact, incidentally stretch away out and down there, and it knows—ah, yes—that there is a harbour. Sometimes you start from it for the Continent, don’t you know! But from the austere and exclusive Leas the tripper element is entirely banished, and those sedate and dignified fashionable visitors who promenade beside the lawns between the old church of St. Eanswythe at the eastern extremity and the huge Hotel Metropole and the Grand at the western end seem to take their pleasure as solemnly as though it were one everlasting Church Parade. There are people, it is true, of a lower social status, and of a more primitive and joyous nature, who come to Folkestone, and patronise the very fine pleasure pier, and do not disdain the beach and the simple old delights of the seashore; and there are still other people who patronise a “switchback” contrivance down below; but these are folk who stay somewhere in back streets, who have no sort of commerce with the refined life which distinguishes the Leas. Sometimes, it is true, some of the Olympians of these heights descend by the lifts that communicate directly with that geographical and social underworld, and occasionally the primitive people of down yonder ascend by the same means from the Lower Road to explore this rarefied region, and both are impressed by what they see and hear. But they mingle no more than oil and water will do. The very bands understand to a nicety the differences of ideals and outlook, and render Grieg, Wagner, and classical music above, while to the Lower Road audiences they discourse strains of a simpler and more popular kind.
It is distinctly strange to observe in midst of the drab, smug, commonplace setting of the Leas the statue of an early seventeenth-century celebrity. It stands at the opening of Castle Hill Avenue, and looks painfully out of place. The effigy represents William Harvey, Folkestone’s one and only celebrity, holding a heart. He was born here in 1578, and for the rest of his life had little connection with Folkestone. It is quite certain that Folkestone’s visitors are incurious about him, and that, while some can identify him as the great physician who discovered the circulation of the blood (which they consider to be a perfectly obvious thing, anyway), others have a dim notion that he was the originator of Harvey’s Worcester Sauce. It is high time that this statue received a thorough cleansing from the oxide which the salt sea-breezes have deposited on its bronze, covering the distinguished man with green, leprous-looking blotches.
The extreme Western end of Folkestone touches a more pleasing note than the rest. There neutral tints and unimaginative Middle Victorian ideals give place to red-brick and terra-cotta houses of tasteful design, and thus point the moral that most of Folkestone was built too early.
INTERIOR, SANDGATE CASTLE.
From this point the cliffs die suddenly down to Sandgate, and from the edge you get wonderful views away across Romney Marsh to Dungeness, whose light is at nightfall a prominent object from the Leas. Sandgate, as its name duly suggests to the reflective mind, is situated on a level shore, and is a mile-long street of mingled shops and residences. A martello tower looks down upon Sandgate from the Leas, and down upon the seashore stands an older defence, Sandgate Castle, a coastwise fortress built by Henry the Eighth for the defence of these low-lying shores against the foreign foe. We know more about the building of Sandgate Castle than about any of its fellow fortresses, for the “Ledger” containing the building-accounts is preserved in the British Museum. By those pages it appears that it was completed in 1540, and cost £5,584 7s. 2d. The time occupied in the work was eighteen months, an astonishingly short space when the massive character of it is seen. The ground-plan is similar to that of Walmer, but much of the building has disappeared; still, what is left of it is massive and forbidding, and although the sea thunders upon the beach and washes its walls, it will be long before the fury of the waves brings them to complete ruin. Although the exterior of the keep is faced with masonry, the substantial core is brick, eight feet in thickness. The central chamber is vaulted in brick, in a plain barrel-vault, from the centre, the roof thus formed having been intended for use as a gun-platform. The vast number of 147,000 bricks went to the building—a work of great technical excellence. The stone came largely from the religious houses of St. Radigund’s, near Dover; Christ Church, Canterbury; and Horton Priory.
Finally, after a long, untroubled history, without ever having encountered an enemy, Sandgate Castle was abandoned. It became at last the property of the South-Eastern Railway, and was then sold into private ownership. To-day it contains a most interesting museum, and may be inspected for the extremely modest fee of one penny.
Sandgate, some years ago, considered itself to be the victim of an earthquake, and the London papers one morning were full of terrifying accounts of the dangers awaiting this part of the south coast. But it was, after all, nothing more than a landslip; and no volcanoes nor craters, nor any other evidences of subterranean disturbance, have since fluttered the dovecotes of Sandgate, Folkestone, or Hythe. The landslip happened on March 4th, 1893, or at any rate culminated on that day; but for some days earlier cracks had been noticed in walls, and after the great subsidences of the 4th some further days passed before the soil resettled itself. Landsprings in the sandy heights at the back of the town were the cause of the trouble.
Although the terror caused by the affair was afterwards seen to have been greater than the happening warranted, still the damage caused was very considerable, and scarcely a house in Sandgate escaped some damage, while some were utterly wrecked. The damage was estimated at £5,000.
Sandgate has greatly changed since then, and has been almost entirely rebuilt.
