Our “Hithes.”
Hithe is the Saxon for haven, or place where ships could lie, and Hythe (Heda in Domesday Book, and Hee in a deed of 1229) was near the edge of the sea when history begins; but West Hythe, which is now three miles from the sea, was the old port used by the Romans and by them called Limene, the harbour. Hence our modern Lympne—Portus Lemanis, in which the p is a modern addition. I find it Limene in 1291, Lymen in 1396, Limne in 1475, and Lymne in 1480.
Then, right in the Weald, is the hamlet of Smallhythe, three miles south of Tenterden. Down to 1509, however, there was a channel from the sea up to here.
Newheth, or New Hythe, is a hamlet of East Malling—and it was a sort of port (or perhaps a wharf) on the Medway for shipping goods from South Kent and the Weald.
On the Thames, below Dartford, is Greenhithe, which has kept both its name and the justification thereof from the times of the Saxons to the present day. There the Danish King had an entrenched camp as a winter station for his soldiers. Here William the Conqueror was stopped by the men of Kent until he confirmed them in their old Saxon laws and privileges. From here Sir John Franklin and Captain Crozier sailed in the Erebus and Terror (in the year and month of my birth) on their last and fatal voyage to the Pole. Here still the hithe discharges its lime and chalk, and has an environment and background of green fields and woods.
Ærrehythe, “the old haven,” known to us as Erith, the landing place for what was from 1178, when it was founded, the important Abbey of Lesnes, which still gives its name to the Hundred.