XII
CRAYFORD
Leaving Bexley Heath, the road becomes suddenly beautiful, where it loses the last of the mean shops—the cats’-meat vendors, the tinkers, the marine stores—that give so distinct and unwholesome a cachet to its long-drawn-out street. The highway goes down a hill overhung with tall trees, with chestnuts and hawthorns, whose blossoms fill the air in spring with sweet and heavy scents; but, in the hollow, gasworks contend with them, and generally, it is sad to say, come off easy victors. Follows then a nondescript bend of the road which brings one presently into Crayford, fifteen miles from London.
Antiquaries are divided in opinion over the ancient history of Crayford. While some incline to the belief that it is the site of the Roman Noviomagus, others are prone to select Keston Common as the locality of that shadowy camp and city. The question will probably never be settled beyond a doubt, but the weight of evidence is strong in favour of Keston Common, eight miles away to the south-west. Here still exist the traces of great earthworks, covering a space of a hundred acres, while numerous finds of Roman coins and pottery have been made from time to time. At Crayford, on the other hand, the only presumptive evidence is to be found in this having been that old Roman military way, Watling Street, and, in the very slender thread of allusion to the name of Noviomagus, supposed, on the authority of Hasted, to be extant in the title of the half-forgotten manor of Newbury.
But, however vague may be the connection between Noviomagus and Crayford, certain it is that here, in 457, was fought that tremendous battle between the Saxons under Hengist, and the Britons commanded by Vortigern, a conflict in which four thousand of the Romanised Britons were slain. It was in 449 that Hengist and Horsa, brother-chiefs[1] of the Jutish-Saxons, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, at the invitation of Vortigern, who sought their aid against the Picts and the Sea-rovers. They came in three ships, and their original force could scarcely have numbered more than five hundred men. But, having warred for the Britons, and fought side by side with them against the Scots, they soon perceived how defenceless was the land. “They sent,” says the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, “to the Angles, and bade them be told of the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land.” In response to this invitation, there came from over sea the men of the Old Saxons, the Jutes, and the Angles; and, six years after the landing of the two brothers, these treacherous allies, strengthened in number, felt strong enough to attempt the seizure of Kent. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found, and, through the mists that hang about the scanty records of that time, we hear first of the Battle of Aylesford, fought in 455, in which the Britons experienced their first great defeat. Here, though, Horsa was slain, and to Hengist, with his son Esc, was left the foundation of the Saxon kingdom of Kent. The Battle of Crayford for a time left all this fertile corner of England to the Saxons. “The Britons,” says the chronicler, “forsook the land of Kent, and in great consternation fled to London.” But, though enervated by long years of luxury, and so greatly demoralised by defeats, the Britons had yet some force left. Vortigern, “the betrayer of Britain,” as he has come down to us in the pages of history, was overthrown by another enemy, a rival British prince, that doughty Romanised chieftain, Aurelius Ambrosianus, who, after defeating that weak king, gathered up the scattered patriots, and fell upon the Saxons with such fury that they were driven back to that Isle of Thanet which had originally been given them for their services against the Scots of Strathclyde. “Falchions drank blood that day; the buzzard buried his horny beak in the carcases of the slain; the eagles feasted royally on the flesh of them that fell; and the whitening bones of the Northmen long afterwards strewed the fair land of Kent.”
Eight years later, the work of Aurelius began to be undone, and in another eight years the veteran Hengist and his son had completed the foundation of their kingdom.
Crayford, it will thus be seen, is a town of considerable historic interest; but, apart from this claim upon one’s attention, it has, I fear, no attraction whatever.
A QUAINT EPITAPH
But here is Crayford church, in whose yard is one of the quaintest epitaphs imaginable:—
“Here lies the body of Peter Isnell, thirty years clerk of this parish. He lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his way to church, to assist at a wedding, on the 31st of March, 1811, aged 70. The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory, and as a token of his long and faithful services.
The life of this Clerk was just three-score and ten,
Nearly half of which time he chaunted Amen.
In his youth he was married, like other young men;
But his wife died one day, so he chaunted Amen.
A second he married—she departed—what then?
He married and buried a third, with Amen.
Thus, his joys and his sorrows were treble; but then
His voice was deep bass as he sung out Amen.
On the horn he could blow, as well as most men
So his horn was exalted in sounding Amen.
But he lost all his wind after three-score and ten
And here, with three wives, he waits, till again
The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen.
The distance between Crayford and Dartford is but two miles, past White Hill; and all the way are fruit gardens, tramps, and odious little terraces of brick cottages with tiny gardens in front, whose brilliant, old-fashioned flowers—sweet-williams, marigolds, and polyanthuses—put to shame these wretched efforts of the builder. There is, half a mile from Crayford, beside the road, an iron post with the City of London arms and the legend, “Act 24 & 25 Vict. cap. 42,” in relief. This wayside pillar marks at once the limits of the London Police District, and the boundary of the area affected by the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Act of 1861. The City of London has been entitled from time immemorial to levy dues on all coal entering the metropolis, and this privilege, regulated from time to time, was abolished only in 1889. Two separate duties of twelve pence and one penny per ton were confirmed by this act and authorised to be levied upon coals, culm, and cinders; while the acts dating from 1694, imposing a tax of four shillings per tun on all kinds of wine were at the same time confirmed and renewed, and the radius made identical with the London police jurisdiction, instead of the former limit of twenty miles. These boundary marks were ordered to be set up on turnpike and public roads, beside canals, inland navigations, and railways, and are frequently encountered by the cyclist and pedestrian, to whom their purpose is not a little mysterious.
The duty on coals entering London amounted in 1885 to no less than £449,343, and on wines to £8,488. By far the greater part of these amounts was, of course, collected on the railways and in the port of London. Originally imposed for the maintenance of London orphans, the wine dues became, like the coal duties, great sources of income, by which many notable London improvements, among them the Victoria Embankment, have been carried out.