PLACE-NAMES
The chance wayfarer little thinks how abundant are the vestiges of antiquity here, both in fragments of pottery, and in the time-honoured names of manors, fields, and meadows. Such things are only to be brought to light by the painstaking local historian who has access to Court Rolls and ancient estate maps. It is little known or considered by the dwellers in populous towns that almost every meadow, field, croft, pasture, down, or woodland has its name, as distinct and as well-known locally as that of any London street included in the Directory. More than this, these names are often the survivals of a state of things existing a thousand years ago. They are frequently rendered obscure by the corruption and evolution of languages, and by the physical changes that have come over the face of the country during so long a period; but with research, and linguistic scholarship, and a knowledge both of local history and the ancient history of the country in general, much that seems at first obscure, or even utterly inexplicable, may be finally resolved into meaning. The study of these place-names has all the attraction of original exploration, and leads on inexhaustibly. But while the tracking of apparently meaningless names to their origin has all the fascination of sport, it gives rise to many hazardous conjectures and lame conclusions, and names that do not yield their secrets to patient inquiry are too often thrust into some ill-fitting category from which they are rescued, to the shame and derision of those who placed them there. In fine, “cock-sureness” is nowhere more out of place than in these inquiries, and in nothing else is the mental effort of “jumping to conclusions” met with such ludicrous accidents. It has, for instance, long been a commonplace in these inquiries to refer the names of towns, villages, or hamlets ending in “ing” to the settlements of Saxon patriarchal tribes; and the Hallings, Coolings, Bobbings, Detlings, and Wellings are set down as having been originally the homes of Teutonic clans taking their names from chieftains named Halla, Coela, Bobba, and so forth.
But while this rule may generally hold good, it must not be applied automatically, and the “learning” that has given this origin to the names of Sittingbourne, Newington, and Ospringe must be regarded as a grotesque exercise of imagination, creating previously unheard-of clans, the Sœdingas, the Newingas, and the Osprings, who are not only new to archæology, but probably have never existed. Of course, in the utter absence of all evidence, save that of the places themselves so named, no statement can be proved correct; but these mystic Sœdingas may almost certainly be dismissed to the realm of fairy-tales, and if there ever was a tribe of Newingas, they took their name from the village which they built and where they lived, instead of giving it to the place. Where others have come to grief, it would be rash to seek new derivations; but it seems evident that Ospringe derives its name from the stream flowing through the village, and that the name of Sittingbourne is nothing other than “seething burn,” or “the bubbling brook,” a poetic name which the place no longer merits. Place-names of Roman origin may be sought in the several Vigos that exist, some now the names of fields, marshes, roadsides, and commons where there is not a house to be seen, but which were originally the sites of Roman villages, the name of “Vigo”—the Latin vicus—having been traditionally handed down to the present day many centuries after the last traces of those settlements have disappeared.
Many fields, too, here and in different parts of the country, are named “Whitehall.” How did they get that name? The answer is sought in the Roman word “aula,” the residence of a magistrate or a chief man in authority. When the Saxons came, they found these grand aulas, built of stone, dotted about the country, some ruined, others tolerably perfect; and they must have made a strong impression upon these barbaric Pagans, used at that early period of their history only to wooden dwellings of the rudest construction. They would have demanded the names of these places from the Romano-British, who would tell them they were aulas; and they would have called them “hwit aulas,” from the stone of which they were built. It was thus that the many villages called “Whitchurch” got their name, from the stone (or “white”) churches that were so remarkable as compared with the dark-hued temples and churches of wood to which the Saxons were accustomed.
But if this origin of the “Whitehalls” does not satisfy, there is another which may be even more likely. They were, possibly, at one time the sites of village Witan-halls, where the wise men of the Saxon villages assembled their local Parliaments, the “witans” or “witenagemots,” those remote forerunners of the village- and parish-councils which statesmen of the late nineteenth century have established, as items in a more or less admirable scheme for restoring the Heptarchy. There are “Whitehalls” in the immediate outlying fields of Sittingbourne, and there is one within the Roman encampment overhanging the railway cutting at Harbledown; but at none of these places are there any traces of buildings above ground. Excavation might reveal ancient foundations.
XXVIII
HERMITS
As mediæval travellers approached Sittingbourne from the direction of London, the first objects they perceived were the chapel and hermitage of Schamel, dedicated to Saint Thomas à Becket, and standing on the south side of the road. They are gone now, and a wayside public-house—“The Volunteers”—stands on, or near their site; but the hermitage was, from the time of King John to the impious days of Henry the Eighth, a resting-place for those devout pilgrims who sought the shrine of the “holy blissful martyr” at Canterbury. In the reign, however, of that “Defender of the Faith”—when it suited him—the chapel and the hermitage were scattered to the winds, and the hermit thrust out into a world that had grown tired of making pilgrimages. But, while it lasted, the Hermitage of Schamel did a very thriving business; so thriving, indeed, as to excite the jealousy of the Sittingbourne people, who conceived themselves injured by the intercepting of pilgrims before they could reach and fertilize the town with streams of gold. Rich pilgrims were a source of wealth to many towns and villages on the Dover Road, and hermits, bishops, priors, and abbots contended for them like ’busmen for passengers before the introduction of the bell-punch and the ticket system.
We first hear of Schamel Hermitage in the time of a priest named Samuel, whose duties consisted in saying mass daily, in wearing a hair-shirt, refraining from soap and water, and in attending upon those pilgrims and travellers who did not mind the apostolic dirt in which he wallowed; and by whose alms he supported himself and the chapel. Samuel died and was gathered to his fathers, and the building presently fell into decay, to be rebuilt by an Augustinian monk, during whose lifetime the annals of the Hermitage are too placid for recounting in this place. His successor was one Walter de Hermestone, who was appointed by the Queen about 1271. Imagine his disgust, though, when he came here and found the place a wreck, the work of the Vicar and the townsfolk of Sittingbourne. This estimable clergyman, whose name was Simon de Shordich, and who seems to have brought the manners and customs of his native place with him, had carried off the Hermitage bell and altar as prizes to his own church, and the men of Sittingbourne had left both the Hermitage and the Chapel in the likeness of a Babylonic ruin. History does not record what became of Walter de Hermestone, but it seems likely that he departed for some more peaceful spot. Meanwhile, Simon de Shordich died, perhaps from the effects of the eremitical curses which the disappointed incumbent of the ruinated place doubtless showered on him; and he was followed, both in his Vicarage and his evil courses, by a certain Boniface, who carted away the ruins and sold them.