Image unavailable: ST MARTIN’S CHURCH, CANTERBURYST MARTIN’S CHURCH, CANTERBURY
disuse and decay, surviving the savage destructiveness of Jutes, the devastation of Danish invaders, the innovating rigour of Norman architects, and the apathy of succeeding centuries.” Setting our backs to the older we turn to later days and to-day, as we walk home to the city. The sun is setting; the sky panoplied in gold; lights shine out here and there from homely windows; workmen tramp to their rest; there is a gentle melancholy reigning over all things, as there ever is in ancient cities; above all broods the Cathedral, its splendid tower, steeped in the rays of the departing day, looking down as though it were no handiwork of mortal man, but some creation of Nature, immutable, inscrutable, full of majesty, of power, of everlasting dignity.
Thereare many delightful places round about Canterbury, beautiful to look on and historically of the greatest interest. We set out of a morning along Northgate, passing the fine half-timbered gateway of St John’s Hospital, which was founded by Lanfranc, in the year 1084, for the comfort of the aged who were poor and infirm. The entrance is a most beautiful piece of fifteenth century timber-work, one of the most delightful “bits” in Canterbury, and the enclosure within is a veritable harbour of refuge from the noise and the turmoil without. The west door of the chapel is Norman, and there are other fragments which will interest the architect. In the hall is preserved a sixteenth century account-book, from which we quote this curious item: “Note that Laurence Wryght was admonished the xxviij daye of Maye the fyrst yereof Kyng Edwarde the vjth for sclanderyng of the prior Christofer Sprott and the pryors syster Margaret Forster for dwellyng yn to tenements under on rofe. Wyttnesses brother Wyllyam Pendleton, brother Wyllyam Kytson”; one more sad proof that brethren do not always dwell together in unity or amity.
On, past the depressing range of barracks and along the straight, level road to Sturry. Esturei, the island in the Stour, is a pleasing, old-fashioned village, with ample accommodation for the refreshment of man and beast. The church of St Nicholas stands guarded by a grove of chestnut-trees, and hard by are the remains, including the gate, of Sturry Court, dating from the reign of James I. Turning to the right just beyond the Welsh Harp Inn—how does such a sign come here?—we reach in a few minutes Fordwich bridge, beneath which flows the narrow waters of the Stour; once on a time the scene of busy traffic, for we are looking on the ancient port of Canterbury. How changed the scene, now so quiet and out-of-the-world, since the days when this was a tidal water, since an arm of the sea covered the valley of the Stour as far up as Chilham, beyond Canterbury. Up to Fordwich—possibly Fiord Wich—inolden days large vessels could be navigated, hence the importance of the place for trading purposes. Domesday Book records that there were seven fisheries and ten mills here—a busy, thriving place, now the home of memories. The Abbey of St Augustine owned the manor here, by gift from Edward the Confessor and others, and the monks and the townspeople do not appear to have lived upon the best of terms. The monks of Christ Church also traded here, and their presence does not appear to have made for peace. Fordwich was a “limb” of the Sandwich Cinque Port, on the same river but fourteen miles farther down the stream, sharing with that ancient and once glorious town the ship service, so valuable to the kings of England. Until 1861 Fordwich possessed a corporation, the first mayor in 1292 being one John Maynard. The government consisted of the mayor, twelve jurats, the freemen, and various officers, whose powers included those of life and death. The works of Nature and of man have combined to destroy the commercial prosperity of the erstwhile port; the Wantsum—which cut off Thanet from the mainland—has ceased to be; the Stour has silted up, to the detriment also of decayed Sandwich; and Canterbury is connected with thesea by railways to Whitstable, Faversham, and Dover.
Therefore as we stand upon this little bridge of stone, though the prospect has many charms it is tinged with the sadness of decay and death. There is the ancient crane of wood, now usually idle; and the river-banks once so busy are now deserted save by occasional merry-makers and water parties. Much water has flowed beneath this bridge since Fordwich was a thriving sea-port, but less and less year by year—the tide of prosperity has ebbed with the tides of the sea; all that is left is but a memory and a few pieces of wreckage on the shore of time.
Passing over the bridge we walk through the deserted village, for such it appears to be at this hour of noon, until we come to the sign of the Fordwich Arms, where we may rest and restore. Opposite the inn is the Town Hall, of which we have heard so much that its diminutive size is somewhat startling. It is a square building with high-pitched, tiled roof; the upper story is half timbered, overhanging the lower of mingled stone and brick. Ascending a steep, short flight of modern wooden stairs, we enter the quaint Council Chamber—quaint in its tininess as compared withthe matters of import once enacted therein; it is little more than thirty feet long by twenty-three broad, and is lighted by three windows of lattice. The wall opposite to the entrance is wainscoted, in the centre being the mayor’s seat, with those of the jurats on either hand; and, above, the royal arms and those of the Cinque Ports, with the legend below—“1660. Love and Honour the Truth”; and we will trust that the mayor and jurats did so, for their powers were great. Across the room runs a heavy black beam, on either end of which stand two gaudy drums, once beaten by the heavy hands of the pressgang; and in the centre the village cucking-stool, the use of which is deemed no longer necessary. It is said—with what want of truth who shall decide?—that a sort of cupboard high up in the wall, was used as a drying loft for the unfortunate ladies after they had been immersed. Women had more wrongs than rights in those forceful days. On the ground floor is the lock-up, a chilly place, now a mere curiosity; once a very stern reality to debtors, poachers and greater malefactors.
Turning back from the river, we proceed to the church, surrounded by a grassy graveyard; there is not much to detain us here, the building beingchiefly interesting for its old-world air. There is the pew once used by the mayor and another for the singers and players, who aforetime sat aloft in the gallery beneath the tower; a Norman font and a fine tomb, which possibly was that of the founder of the church. In the woodwork of the gallery at the west end are two shelves, upon which were placed the loaves of bread to be distributed on a Sunday to the poor, under the bequest of Thomas Bigge.
We can return to Canterbury by another and more pleasant route than that by which we came. Following the road uphill, past the pretty cottage where we obtained the keys of the church, we turn to the right, so gaining a cleanly field path. Before us rise low grassy knolls; behind us, screened by trees, the spire of Fordwich church and the gables of its houses and cottages; on our right hand the broad, flat valley of the Stour, the Sturry Road marked by the straight line of trees. Bobbing up and down goes the path, so that we scarcely note that we are gradually ascending, until suddenly we find ourselves high up, looking down on the outskirts of Canterbury; beneath us the trumpets ring out from the barracks notes of modernity and echoes of old fighting days; before us soars thetower of the Cathedral, shrouded—when we saw it—in mists and wisps of falling rain; on our left the level ground where the cavalry exercise. Along this track for sure, when in old days the valley was a swamp, many a weary traveller has toiled from the coast unto the old city; how their hearts must have leaped within them as they saw rising there the Angel Steeple, perhaps bathed in the rays of the setting sun, perchance veiled in sorrowful clouds. As did we, so must they have passed on down the slope to St Martin’s Church, and so to the city gate, now vanished. It is but a short walk this which we have taken, short in the distance we traverse, but it takes us back to dim, far gone ages; now the train, with its pennant of white, thunders along the valley, where of old coracles have floated, and we return from our visit to a village that may be called a mile-stone on the road of history, to a great cathedral city, where Britons shivered in mud and wicker hovels on the reedy islets of the Stour.
On a fresh and breezy morning, the sky washed clean by the rain and flecked with thin white clouds, we walked out by the West Gate on our way to Harbledown, by many held to be Chaucer’s “little town” which “y-cleped is Bob-up-and-down, Under
Image unavailable: THE CATHEDRAL, ST MARTIN’S CHURCH TOWER, AND HARBLEDOWN From the Priory Garden, CanterburyTHE CATHEDRAL, ST MARTIN’S CHURCH TOWER, AND HARBLEDOWNFrom the Priory Garden, Canterbury
the Blee in Canterbury way.” Turning along the London Road to the left, the road to Whitstable running right ahead, we soon found ourselves leaving the main road by a small lane, the Canterbury end of the famous Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester. How ancient this track may be no man knows; but it was in existence long before pilgrimages were dreamed of, before Christianity had come to the country, being utilised probably for the conveyance of metals and merchandise from the west to the east. Soon we have clambered through the mud to the summit of a little hill, from which we gain a wide view of the surrounding country. Before us stands out Bigberry Wood, with its ancient camp; turning to the left, on either side the mill, whose sails are at rest, we see Canterbury spread out in the broad valley, which to the eyes of the earliest wayfarers by this route presented a desolate scene of marsh and woodland. Turning to our right there are the hop fields, with gaunt bare poles; the red roofs of Sidney Cooper’s home; and, farther round, Harbledown and the Hospital of St Nicholas. We go on down the slippery descent, until we reach a brawling stream, spanned by a small wooden bridge; keeping to our right, through the hop field, we soon find a pathclambering up toward the hospital, and suddenly before us the stone archway covering the well known by the name of the Black Prince. Primroses are peeping forth out of the abundant winter foliage; but for some reason we cannot call up much interest in this well, ancient though it be, perhaps because of the falsity of the story that connects it with the Black Prince. A few yards higher and we find ourselves behind the long, low building of the hospital, and then we stand within what we may call the precincts. This lazar house was founded by the busy Lanfranc, and the west door of the church is Norman work. The interior of this edifice is well worth visiting; there is about it—though restored—a savour of old-world days and a pathos of suffering, as we think of the leprous men and women who have worshipped here long days ago. The Norman carving on some of the pillars is good, and the roof a fine example of the strength of old work. In the chancel are some old seats, and some benches older still in the body of the church. Old—how old! echoes through our mind as we stand here, and again as we lay our hands on the ancient gnarled tree in the churchyard; how old it all is, this church set high upon the hill, overlooking a vast stretch of valleys anduplands. What sights has this old tree looked down upon, what sounds heard—troops marching by to the war, pilgrims marching by to the shrine of St Thomas (for we are looking down on the road to London). How the coaches toiled up these hills a century ago. And even as we listen, we hear the rush and trumpeting of a motor-car.
The other buildings are of modern years; in the centre of the neat dwelling-houses stands the hall, where various relics are preserved and made into a raree-show, the only one that touched home to us being the old collecting box, which was formerly hung up outside the gate so that passers-by might drop in such coins as they cared to spare. Into this box it is possible that Erasmus dropped his “consolation,” of which he tells us in his description of his walk toward London with Colet, a passage oft quoted but worth quoting again. “....those who journey to London, not long after leaving Canterbury, find themselves in a road at once very hollow and narrow, and moreover the banks on either side are so steep and abrupt, that there is no possibility of escape; nor can the journey be made by any other way. On the left hand of this road is a hospital of a few old men, and as soon as they perceive any horsemen approaching,one of them runs out, sprinkles him with holy water, and presently offers the upper part of a shoe, bound with a brazen rim, and set with a piece of glass resembling a jewel. People kiss this relic, and give some small coin in acknowledgment.... As Cratian[7]rode on my left hand, next to the hospital, he had his sprinkling of water; this he put up with; but, when the shoe was held out, he asked the man what he wanted. He said, that it was the shoe of St Thomas. On that my friend was irritated, and turning to me he said, ‘What, do these brutes imagine that we must kiss every good man’s shoe? Why, by the same rule, they might offer his spittle to be kissed, or what else.’ For my part I pitied the old man, and gave him a small piece of money by way of consolation.... From such matters as cannot be at once corrected I am accustomed to gather whatever good can be found in them.”[8]
The foundation consists of a Master, nine Brethren (one of whom is Prior and another sub-Prior), seven Sisters, and various Pensioners.
We turn back as we go out of the picturesque gate and across the road to the high footpath,and see that still the banks on either side are steep and abrupt. We pass the parish church of St Mildred, and then, descending the hill, there bursts upon us another grand view of Canterbury, the Cathedral domineering over the city. “There are two vast towers that seem to salute the visitor from afar, and make the surrounding country far and wide resound with the wonderful booming of their brazen bells,” so says Erasmus. The towers have changed since his day, but to his eyesight as to ours the view must have been wonderfully impressive; the more so in that as he stood there in this roadway, he could realise as we never can what the sight of those towers meant to the pilgrims who passed him by. He had been to that shrine, and his broad mind, while contemplating some folly which he could not praise, understood that beneath all this to which his companion so strongly objected there lay much of good, and that a ruthless destruction of the tares might prove disastrous also to the wheat.
We soon pass by the opening—or rather the close—of the Pilgrims’ Way, and stopping at the sexton’s house in London Road, obtain his guidance to the church of St Dunstan, where there is much to see of interest. Immediately inside the westernporch, a door admits us to the ancient lepers’ chapel, now used as a vestry, where those outcast folk could join in the worship of the congregation by using the squint, now blocked up with a cupboard. Here is an ancient chest, once on a time used for the collection of Peter’s Pence; and the table, a fine piece of cabinet work, is the old sounding-board. At the east end of the church is the Roper Chapel, in the vault beneath lying buried Margaret Roper and the head of Sir Thomas More, her father. To this chapel pilgrims still come, and another form of reverence has been paid to the “martyr” by the offers more than once made to purchase this unpleasant relic. When the vault was opened in 1879, during the restoration of the church, the head was found to be in a state of perfect preservation.
On the opposite side of the roadway, a short distance farther on toward the city, built into a brewery, is the red brick gateway of Roper House—or Rooper, as it is spelled on the monument in the church—where Margaret preserved the sad relic, which had first been exhibited on London Bridge.
And so back again to Canterbury.
Backagain to Canterbury, where it is to be hoped our leisure will permit us to loiter, or which our good fortune may allow us to visit again and yet again.
Canterbury sits between History and Romance, the chief city of one of the most delightful and most interesting of English counties. Her streets are thronged with memories, crowded with historic figures. Romance and History mingle inextricably—Chaucer, Marlowe, Dickens; Augustine, Becket, Cranmer. In these pages an endeavour has been made to depict Canterbury and some of the surrounding country not with the pen of the historian or of the archæologist, but to set forth rather the personal impressions of a lover of old times, old ways and old books. Christ Church Cathedral is to him no mere record in cold stone of a dead past, but a living memorial of a living past. Itis meant to be a book for those who share with the writer his delight in calling up to the mind’s eye ghosts of men and women dead and gone.
At first, as has been said, Canterbury strikes disappointingly on those who go thither thinking to step back straightway from the present into the past. But gradually and surely the past overpowers the present as we linger in its narrow streets and loiter in its ancient buildings. It is no city of the dead. The life of to-day throbs in its veins; but its to-day is dull, dim and uneventful compared with its stirring, many-coloured past.
These pages have touched upon many matters concerning which many volumes have been, and will be, written; but no attempt has been made at completeness. This book is not a guide, but rather aims at being a sign-post—pointing to the past. For many years yet pilgrims will come to Canterbury, and if this little work helps any of them to see and to hear there what has been so vivid and so clear to the writer of it, the object with which it is set forth will have been gained.
The Illustrations are printed in italics.
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,W
Aldhelm, Abbot,100Aldon, Thomas of,29Alford, Dean,19,37Alfroin,11Alphege,9Angel Tower,1Anselm,12Arthur, Catherine,90Arundel,43Arundel, Archbishop,17Athol, Countess of,40Augustine,97Austin Canons’ priory of St Gregory,68Auxerre, Henry of,47Baptistry,45Barton, Elizabeth,80Beale, Henry,94Beaufort, John,38Becket’s Murder,46Bell Harry Tower,1Bertha,97Bigberry Wood,111Bigge, Thomas,109Bocking,86Boehm, Sir Edgar,37Bourchier, Archbishop,32Boys, Sir John,22Bregwin, Archbishop,100Bret,49Broc, Robert de,46Butterfield, Mr,101Canterbury College, Oxford,68Canterbury Pilgrims,54Canterbury, St Thomas of,51Canterbury Weavers, The,92Canute,99Cathedral, The—Baptistry, The,46Chapel of “Our Lady” in the Undercroft, The,18Christ Church Gate,4Edward the Black Prince’s Tomb,38Infirmary, The Ruins of,44Nave, The,22North Side, The,FrontispieceSt Martin’s Church Tower and Harbledown,110Warrior’s Chapel, The,38West Towers and South-West Entrance, The,42Exterior of, 41Interior of,18The Story of,7Catherine,84Chaucer, Geoffrey,54“Chequers of the Hope”,56Chichele, Archbishop,31Chichele Tower,43Chillenden, Prior,17,18,20,38,45Christ Church,8Gateway,4Priory of,57Colet,113Coligny, Odo,34Conrad,12Cooper, Sidney,111Courtenay, Archbishop,34Cranmer,84Dark Entry,44Denys of Burgundy,71Dunster, Lady Mohun of,40Durham, Rites of,72East Bridge Hospital,94Edmer,10Edward III.,30Edward the Black Prince,32,33Elizabeth,90Emperor Charles V.,53Envoi,117Erasmus,19,64,113Ernulf,12,35,36,39Estria, Prior Henry de,25Ethelbert, King,97First View of Canterbury,1Fitzstephen, William,47Fordwich,106Gasquet, Abbot,72Gerard,71Gervase,12,26Gibbons, Orlando,22Goldstone, Prior,39,42Grandison, Bishop of Exeter,36Green Court,45Greyfriars’ House, The,64Grim Edward,46Guest House Hostry, The,72Hadley,86Harbledown,110Hasted,63,78Henry IV.,34Henry V.,31,52Henry VIII.,25,35,44,52Holland, Lady Margaret,38Holy Maid of Kent,80“Hope, Chequers of the”,56Hope, Mr A. J. Beresford,101Hospital, East Bridge,94St John’s,94Howley, William,31“Inglesant, John”,74Ingworth, Richard,93Kemp, Cardinal,31Kent, Holy Maid of,80King’s School,45Lanfranc,10,43,104Langton, Archbishop Stephen,38Lavatory Tower,45Lawrence,99Lindhard,97Louis VII.,51Magdalen College, Oxford,70Marlowe, Christopher,4,90John,90Martyrdom, The,50Doorway from Cloisters into Westgate Towers,70,88Masters,86Maynard, John,106Mepham, Archbishop Simon de,36Molash, Prior,42Montreuil, Madame de,62More, Sir Thomas,116Morton, Cardinal,40Navarre, Joan of,34Norman Staircase, King’s School, Canterbury,48Odo, Archbishop,8Oxford Tower,43Peckham, Archbishop,39Peter II.,32Peter’s Pence,116Pole, Cardinal Archbishop,35Prince Consort,32Priory of Christ Church,57Queen Mary,35Queen Victoria,32Religious, The,66Richard Cœur de Lion,52Roger,99Roper, Margaret,116Roundabout, A Canterbury,104Ruskin,42St Anselm,36,79St Augustine,43St Augustine’s College,96St Augustine’s College, In the Quadrangle,96St Cuthbert,100St Dunstan,27St Ethelbert,35St Gregory, Austin Canons’ priory of,68St John’s Hospital,94,104St Martin,97,102St Martin’s Church,102St Martin at Dover,68St Mildred,99St Pancras,96St Sepulchre,79St Thomas of Canterbury,51St Wilfrid,11Salisbury, John of,47Sens, William of,16Shrines, Other,87Simon, Archbishop of Sudbury,17,28,91Somerset, Earl of,38South-West Transept and St George’s Tower,56Stanley, Dean,22,29,58Stratford, Archbishop,30Sturry,105Sudbury, Archbishop Simon of,17,28,91Summer, Archbishop,22Tait, Archbishop,37Thackeray,90Thomas, Duke of Clarence,38Thwaites,86Tyler, Wat,30Walter, Prior,79Warham, Archbishop,27,39Warrior’s Chapel,38West Gate,87Wiclif,34William, Archbishop,12William of Sens,16,23William, “English”,16,23,32Willis,24Winchelsea, Archbishop,37,80
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