TAB. XLVII.In the 47th plate we have shown the ground-plot upon which it is formed, and a section of the work; whence we may readily observe that the design is simple, but admirably contrived for its use and purpose: the base is octagonal without, within a square; but the sides of the square and octagon are equal, viz. fifteen Roman feet, which reduces the wall to the thickness of ten feet. In this manner it was carried up to the top, which was much higher than at present; but it retires inward continually from all sides, with much the same proportion as an Egyptian obelus. Upon four of these sides there are windows narrow, handsomely turned with a semi-circular arch of Roman brick six foot high, so that the outside of it appears as in our TAB. XLVI.46th plate. The door to it is on the east side, about six foot wide, very well turned over head, with an arch made of a course of Roman brick and stone alternately, fourteen foot high. All the stones of this work are of a narrow scantling; and the manner of the composure, throughout, is perfectly the same with that lately described at Richborough castle: there are first two courses of this brick, which is level with the bottom of the windows; then seven courses of hewn stone, which mount up to the top of the windows; then two courses of brick, seven of stone alternately, to the top; every window by this means reaching to a stage or story. There are five of these stages left: the windows are visible enough to a discerning eye, though some be stopt up, others covered over, others have modern church-like windows of stone put in. I suppose the inside was intirely filled up with a stair-case: the height of what is left is forty foot; I believe there was twenty foot more originally; and the whole number of windows on a side was eight. This building was made use of as a steeple, and had a pleasant ring of bells in it, which Sir George Rook procured to be carried away to Portsmouth. Since then the office of the ordnance, under pretext of savingness, have taken away the lead that covered it, and left this rare piece of art and masonry to struggle with the sea, air and weather. Mr. Degg gave me a coin of Dioclesian, found here. The Erpinghams arms are patched up against one side of the Pharos, being two bars and a canton; so that I suppose it was repaired in Henry the Fifth’s time, lord Erpingham then warden of Dover castle. In the Roman castle here the Tungrican soldiers had their station. I have heard there is another such Pharos at St. Andrew’s in Scotland.[121]
On the other high cliff opposite to this, beyond the town, has been another Pharos: some part of the bottom part of it is still left, called The Devil’s Drop, from the strength of the mortar: others call it Bredonstone. Here the new constable of the castle is sworn. If we consider the ancient state of Dover, we must imagine that the little river ran directly into the sea, and left a harbour close to the walls of the town; but in process of time, as the sea threw up that vast beach which lies between the town and it, the river was forced by an oblique passage to creep along the shore under the southern cliff, and there vent itself where now is the harbour. This is what Nature practises in the microcosm in innumerable instances, as the passage of the gall and pancreatic juice into the intestines, in the duct of the urine from the ureters into the bladder, of the chyle into the torrent of the blood, insinuating themselves for some space between the membranes. And this caution may be of service in forming harbours; as in that costly work of the French king’s before Dunkirk, where two banks or piers projected for half a mile through the sands directly, which ought rather to have gone downwards a little towards the fall of the tide. The cliffs here are of solid chalk to the very bottom, full of the blackest flints; and those at Calais seem perfectly like them; and no doubt a long vein of chalk is continued from one to the other under the sea, and perhaps through many countries: but that these two places were ever contiguous, or joined by an isthmus, is chimerical.
Though the mariners have much mathematics on board, and in all their tackle and machinery, yet here I had occasion of observing a gross error, that has not been thought on, in the shape of their oars; where the extremity of that fan-like part, which opposes the water in rowing, is broadest. Now this is quite contrary to Nature’s method, who is the best geometrician in like cases: in the shape of a single feather, or in the wings of birds, the extremity is always pointed, and the broadest part is nearest the joint where the power lies, analogous to the fulcrum of leavers; therefore is drawn off to a narrower scantling, as the part recedes from it, and the effect of the moving force: thus it is even in the wings of butterflies, and all other insects, as well as birds; and so in the water-beetles that row with oars. Though the broad part resists the water more as farther distant from the fulcrum, yet it requires more proportionable strength; and in my judgment, therefore, oars ought to be made quite the contrary way, and drawn off into a point, the broadest part nearest the hand; and I doubt not but equal strength will then out-row the other, cæteris paribus.[122]
Beyond Dover southward the cliff is exceedingly high to Folkstone. In the road two great Roman barrows, which will be eaten away in a few years by the sea. Here this larger track of cliff ends, as to the ocean, and slaunts off westward towards Wye in a long ledge very steep all the way to the west. The whole county of Kent consists of three or four of these parcels, lying parallel, and running nearly north and south: they rise gently from the east as a reclining plain, and then end suddenly on the western side with a quick descent: at bottom begins another such plain, and it ends in like manner after it has gone its proper distance, to be alike succeeded, as we said before. Beyond this we are upon, southward is a lesser ledge of high ground sandy and rocky, but good land, especially in the valleys, and full of wood. This is terminated by Romney marsh, such another country as our Lincolnshire Holland. To the right of us is Eleham, seated in a pleasant concavity: there has been a religious house. Upon one end of our upper chalk-hills, near Folkstone, is a camp called Castle hill.
Now descending, Folkstone[123] offers itself, still standing on a cliff, but not so high as the former, and of a rocky composure, the other being chalk: it was anciently called Flostane, a lesser rock, or cliff of stone; so that it probably was the TAB. XCVIII.lapis tituli of the Romans. Here is a copious spring runs through the town. Near the church, upon the sea side, is a square plain, like that I observed at Burgh in Lincolnshire, and was of the same use. I saw two pieces of old wall hanging over the terrible cliff, seemingly of Roman work: here are some old guns, one of iron of a very odd cast, no doubt as old as Henry the Eighth’s time. Many Roman coins have been found here. A nunnery was built by Eanswide, a religious daughter of Eadbald king of Kent.
I passed by Sandgate castle, another of those built by Henry VIII. in a little valley where the shore is plain: then we enter upon the beach. Here are many springs which come down from the higher ground, and sink immediately into this beach, rendering it a little boggy: this I thought very odd. You ride through a wood of sea-poppy, which is a fine variety in nature, casting all the numerous seeds into a long pod, instead of the common globular head: the leaves look hoary, like sea-ragwort, and are finely crisped; the flowers of a most delicate yellow, taken notice of by the poet,
HytheHythe. stands on the edge of this lesser ridge, but the marsh has intercepted it from the sea. They talk much of their charnel-house full of human bones, said to have been the massacred Danes; but I thought it not worth going to see, nor believed their report of it. They say this has been a great city, and reached as far as West Hythe, where is an old ruinous chapel: they mean undoubtedly the city of Lemanis. Here were two hospitals, St. Bartholomew’s, and St. Leonard’s.
I visited Saltwood castle, in hopes to find somewhat Roman, as is reported: it is a very strong seat of the archbishop’s: the outer wall has towers and battlements, and a deep ditch: within, and on one side, stands the main body of the place: two great and high towers at the gate of this, over which are the founder’s arms, archbishop Courtney, in two escutcheons; the first impaled with those of the see; the other plain, a label over three plates. This inner work has a stronger and higher wall, with a broad embattled parapet at top: within is a court, but the lodgings are all demolished: the floor of the ruinous chapel is strongly vaulted: in the middle of the court is a large square well, which is the only thing I saw that looked like Roman. It is said that hereabouts anchors are dug up; which, if true, is not owing to the sea’s coming so high, as the vulgar think, for that is impossible; but to an iron forge of the Romans, conveniently placed, where so much wood grows, so near the sea, and so many ports. They say too that Roman coins are found at Newington, not far off here.
A little way further, at the end of the Stane-street,[124] the Roman road from Canterbury; and at a proper distance from thence is the port of Lemanis.TAB. XCIX. I am surprized that some Kentish antiquaries should, by pretended corrections of the Itinerary, send it farther off to the southern coasts. As soon as I came to Limne church, looking from the brow of the hill to the subjacent marshes, I descried the tattered Roman walls, situate on this southern decline, almost at the bottom. One would imagine the name came from the Stone-street; for such it literally signifies, via lapidea: this is a solid rock of stone laid out in a strait line between here and Canterbury. Thus in Yorkshire another Roman road is called Leming-lane, from its stony composure. Lhe signifies a way in British; maen, a stone. Its present appellation of Studfal castle gives occasion to some uncouth etymologies: without any difficulty I think it derived from stæd-weall, the sea-shore, in Saxon; so that it signifies no more than castrum littoreum. This fine remnant of Roman work, and which was the garrison of the Turnacensian band, hangs as it were upon the side of the hill; for it is pretty steep in descent: the walls include about twelve acres of ground, in form somewhat squarish, without any ditch: a pretty brook, arising from the rock west of the church, runs for some space on the east side of the wall; then passes through it, and so along its lowermost edge by the farm-house at bottom. The composition of the wall is similar to that of Richborough; but instead of hewn stone and regular courses, as there, the interval between the three layers of Roman brick is made of rag-stone: the brick too is of the same whitish kind, but remarkably thin. I suppose the clay shrank much in burning. This interval of stone is four feet of Roman standard: the walls are twelve foot thick, and have some round holes at equal spaces, that run quite through, as we observed at Sorbiodunum and Verolanium perhaps to let the air in for drying the wall, being of so great a thickness. Here are several of the circular, or rather elliptic buttments, as thick as the wall, like those at the castle of Garionenum, near Yarmouth in Norfolk, in TAB. LVIII.plate 58. which my worthy and learned friend Mr. Hare gave me from his own mensuration. It is a piece of masonry, I must own, unaccountable to me: they are like round towers or bastions, but solid; and some scarce join to the wall at the sides, but go quite through to the inside. The circuit of this wall is manifest enough on three sides, but that southward is levelled to the ground: every where else, where not standing, it lies sideways, flat, close by, in prodigious parcels; or where standing, cracked through the whole solid thickness, as if Time was in a merry humour, and ruined it in sport: but I believe it is the effect of design and much labour, as I said of Richborough: probably the Saxons or Danes thus dismantled it, to render it useless against their incursions. Where this wall is standing, it is ten foot high or more, made with excellent cement: on the eastern side is such another gate, formed by the return of the wall, as at the place last mentioned. Geo. Hunt, an old man, living in the farm-house, told me he has found coins here: he says, once the sea-bank broke, and his house with all the adjacent marshes was floated: for the level of the ocean is higher than this place; but it has fenced itself out by raising the ground continually near the shore, as it does in other like marshes. Whether the sea reached this lower wall, even in the time of the Romans, I cannot determine; for I do not believe this was the very port, but the castle belonging to it: that, I rather think, was somewhat more eastward, about West Hithe; and there, the town that belonged to it: for they find old foundations frequently under the side of the hill, laid in strong terrace mortar. The rev. Mr. Bagnal, minister of the place, informs me, that the field, of about sixteen acres of ground, adjoining to the church-yard of Limne, is to this day called the Northern town: nor do they know that it ever had any other name; which intimates that the Roman town was thereabouts, lying upon the slope of the hill, as the castle does, and to the east of it. This port is now called Ship-way, where the limenarcha, or lord warden of the cinque ports, was anciently sworn; where their courts were kept, and all the pleas relating to these ports: since the decay thereof, that ceremony is transferred to Dover. This Ship-way too denominates the lathe, or division of the country. Leland says, the people of Limne had an horn and mace, remaining ensigns of their authority.
Thus have we conducted our journey, for the space of 500 miles, all upon Roman roads, to these three famous ports on the eastern shore, where commonly the great Roman emperors and generals landed from the continent; and in which we have run over such notices as occurred to us in thirty-five Roman stations, many camps, and other things of highest antiquity. The season of the year for expeditions being far spent, it is time to release your lordship’s patience, and retire into harbour, concluding with the great Roman wit, in his poetical voyage,