DARTFORD TO ROCHESTER, AYLESFORD, AND BOROUGH GREEN

There is an excellent route from Dartford to Rochester, avoiding the Dover road, known to comparatively few cyclists other than local—a road that, instead of passing through places so busy and populous as Northfleet and Gravesend, is rural through the whole of its course, from Dartford Brent to where it joins the better-known way at the top of Strood Hill. The Dover road between these two points is, as just remarked, the “better-known” route, but it is by no means the oldest. That distinction can be claimed most emphatically by this, for it follows the course of that old Roman military way, the Watling Street, and was a portion of the route along which went the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.

The interior of the Early English church at Stone is a Westminster Abbey in little, designed probably by the same architect, the stones from the same quarries, and carved by the same masons. It stands on a hilltop overlooking the busy estuary of the Thames, near Greenhithe, and its immediate neighbourhood is made sordid with cement works and chalk pits. A huge factory chimney, some six times the height of church and tower, immediately adjoins the churchyard. When in the fulness of time it falls, there will probably be little left of the church, even as a picturesque ruin.

It is not possible to ride round Stone Church to Greenhithe. The lane leading to it must be retraced, and the Dover road followed until turnings right and left appear. To the left lies the little port of Greenhithe, and on the right the road leads up again to our route for Rochester.

Hasting from the scarred, chalky hillsides and the industries of Stone and Greenhithe, one appreciates more fully the quiet of this fine road; and coming in two miles to Springhead, the Saturday or Sunday cyclist will find that there are others equally appreciative, for the watercress beds and the picnic inns and tea-gardens of Springhead have been famous in all Cockaigne during at least the last seventy years, and the watercresses have by no means lost their freshness nor the place its charm in that space of time. This week-end Arcadia, where the succulent prawn, the cooling cress, and the poetic periwinkle are partaken of in vast quantities, is still in great esteem. The manners and customs of its clients are frank, if unrefined, and their appetites robust, even though their methods be not particularly nice. To see ’Arriet extracting periwinkles from their shells with a hairpin is a lesson in resourcefulness not a little trying.

It is a long climb up to the village of Shinglewell, which rejoices in having an alias; for on all maps you will find the incertitude of cartographers as to what it really should be called proved by the legend “Shinglewell, or Ifield.” Still uphill, we come to a turning that will take us off to the right into Cobham village; the retreat of Tracy Tupman and his wounded love, where, in the “clean and commodious alehouse,” he was discovered by Mr. Pickwick, discussing with a great appetite and a mournful air a not very sentimental meal composed of “roast fowl, bacon, ale, and et ceteras.”

The Leather Bottle is the sign of the inn, and it is to-day, perhaps, the best known among Dickens landmarks. It is still the old-fashioned country inn it was when the great novelist knew and described it, but filled now with Dickens’ relics of every kind. A painted sign hangs out from the front proclaiming this to be “Dickens’ Old Pickwick Leather Bottle,” with a picture of that eminent personage in his “shorts” and gaiters in the inevitable attitude of declamation. In the low-ceiled parlour are many prints and portraits having reference to Dickens and his works. An old “grandfather” clock stands in one corner and a stuffed trout in his glass case (an object without which no country inn is completely furnished) occupies a place of honour.

It is worth while leaving the cycle at the inn and to explore the neighbourhood of Cobham village and park. The village church is well known to antiquaries as containing the largest collection of brasses in England. There are no fewer than twenty-four fine examples, principally to members of the ancient and knightly family of the Cobhams, who once were lords of this and many another manor in Kent, and lived at the Cobham Hall which preceded the Elizabethan and Jacobean building now standing, the seat of the Earl of Darnley. The Cobhams have been extinct for centuries, and Lennoxes, Cliftons, and Darnleys have owned the place since, but none of them have left anything like the impress upon it that the old family achieved. Here, in the village, is that now old almshouse, the New College, founded by a Cobham in place of the Old College, the dissolved religious house founded many years before by an ancestor; and there, on the floor of the chancel in the parish church, are their memorials.

Cobham Park is a lovely expanse of lawns and woods and grand avenues, open to the wayfarer freely to come and go. Deer roam about in great herds, and wild life abounds in the tangled glades. The Hall is shown only on Fridays. Tickets are to be purchased at Rochester and Gravesend. To see the Hall and its great collection of pictures is a quite separate undertaking from touring on a cycle, and so we will journey on towards Rochester, regaining the road and making for a landmark known in all this countryside as the “Three Crouches.” When we arrive at the place, we discover it to be an inn called the “Three Crutches,” displaying a shield of arms bearing a chevron between three aces of clubs. The three aces, distinctly resembling crosses, are the so-called “Three Crutches.” Compare with this the name of “Crutched Friars,” who were originally the “crossed friars,” from the cross they wore on their habits; and with that of the “Crouch Oak” at Addlestone in Surrey, an ancient boundary tree standing at the “cross” roads. The motto, Sub umbra alarum Tuarum—“under the shadow of thy wings”—is seen below.

From this point it is chiefly downhill into Strood and Rochester; very steeply downhill at Strood, too. Through its mile-long street and on to Rochester Bridge, the rude ribs of the ancient castle rise boldly up from the other side of the Medway, with the Cathedral beside it, looking quite humble. Very maritime looks Rochester’s High Street, with the great gilded model of a line-of-battle ship, fully rigged and armed, that serves for vane, twirling over its Guildhall. Over all is the bustle, roar, and rattle of the trains, rolling in thunder over the railway bridge that cuts off the view downstream.

Rochester, adjoining as it does the busy dockyard town and seaport of Chatham, is not one of the slumberous examples among cathedral cities, for its narrow and, if truth be told, dirty streets are crowded with the waggons and carts going to and from railways and wharves. The “Bull Inn” still remains very much what it was when Jingle recommended it to the Pickwickians.

The “Bull” itself is exactly hit off in Dickens’ description of it, and in the hall the “illustrious larder with glass door, developing cold fowls and noble joints, and tarts wherein the raspberry jam coyly withdraws itself, as such a precious creature should, behind a lattice-wall of pastry,” still develops good things for a later generation. A latter-day stupidity had changed the name to the “Victoria and Bull,” but this has been remedied recently, and it is the “Bull” once more.

Other things noticed by Dickens in Rochester are much the same. He calls the projecting clock of the Corn Exchange the “moon-faced” clock. It still impends over the pavement, and its white dial does indeed suggest the moon. But exquisitely exact is that other description in the “Seven Poor Travellers,” where he speaks of the High Street “oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red building, as if Time carried on business there and hung out his sign.” Also, although restorations have since taken place in the darkling cathedral, no description of it, even now, matches that concise and breathless commentary the novelist puts into Jingle’s mouth: "Old Cathedral, too—earthy smell—pilgrims’ feet worn away the old steps—little Saxon doors—Confessionals like money-takers’ boxes at theatres—queer customers, those monks—Popes and Lord Treasurers, and all sorts of old fellows with great red faces and broken noses, turning up every day.”

You enter the Close directly from the High Street, beside or through what all readers of Edwin Drood know as “Jasper’s Gatehouse,” although the real name of it is “Chertsey’s.” The old church of St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen and thieves, who (the thieves, not the fishermen) were from that circumstance known as “St Nicholas’ Clerks,” stands side by side with the cathedral, and opposite is the churchyard. It is well known that Dickens’ own wish was to be buried here, but a national desire that he should rest in Westminster Abbey prevailed. This was recalled to the present writer’s recollection by a stranger when recently at Rochester. “He wanted to be buried there,” said the stranger, pointing with his walking-stick. “’Twould have done Rochester a lot of good,” he added regretfully. “You see, he’s wasted where he is; but if he was here, thousands more visitors would come,” and he went away grumbling.

One of the chief Dickens landmarks here is, of course, the place he calls the “Seven Poor Travellers.” This is the charity founded by Richard Watts, in 1579, for the entertaining of “Six Poor Travellers, who, not being Rogues or Proctors, may receive, gratis, for one night, Lodging, Entertainment, and Fourpence each.”

But the old city of Rochester requires, at least, a day for its due exploration, and so we will not linger now by cathedral, castle, or waterside; but, turning sharply to the left, on returning towards Rochester Bridge, steer for Borstal; not by any means because Borstal is beautiful, because that is probably the very last thing anyone would think of saying about this place of mean streets that intercept with their dingy commonplace the beautiful views along the broad valley of the noble Medway. Then, as though this were not sufficient, there is a very grim prison at Borstal—or was, for it has now been converted into a reformatory; and then, again, a number of riverside cement works, to be succeeded at Wouldham by more of the same kind, and, finally, by brick-kilns at Burham. Why, therefore (asks the reader), do we come this way? For reasons of various sorts: because, despite all these disadvantages, the views, as we cycle along with the broad bosom of the Medway spread in front for miles and miles, bearing the rust-red sails of the floundering deliberate barges, are invisible elsewhere, and because the more rural road, by Kit’s Coty House, is an exceedingly hilly one. Notice in the churchyard of Wouldham the tombstone of Burke, the purser of the Victory, for “in his arms,” as the inscription states, “the immortal Nelson died.”

Passing through Burham, take the road to the right leading down into Aylesford, where the Medway narrows and is tamely conducted under the fine old bridge and through a lock, just as though it were a tiny river and unconnected with the imposing estuary just left behind. The grouping of river, bridge, square church tower among the trees, and the long row of gabled houses beneath is particularly charming. When you have taken your fill of this characteristic Kentish scene, proceed along the road leading from the bridge, and, taking the right-hand turning, come to the broad highway that leads to Wrotham Heath and Borough Green, a road that follows in part the valley of one of the Medway’s affluents. Interesting villages lie on either side, only slightly removed from the road, in particular that of Leybourne, half a mile on the right hand. It derives its name from the little stream just named, the Ley Bourne, originally the Lele or Little Bourne. It is curious to observe that your true Kentish man, among such odd enunciations as “d” for “th” (so that the definite article “the” becomes “de”) still says “lil” for “little,” as the tourist may discover. There are interesting remains of Leybourne Castle yet to be seen by turning off the road to the right, and so to the park in which they stand. But the long day closes, and we must not linger on the way; and so, speeding on to Wrotham Heath and turning there to the left, we make for the L. C. & D. R. station of Wrotham and Borough Green.