There is no alderman's house in the neighbourhood, with or without Venetian blinds, but that matters little.
It is by a succession of steeply rising and falling, winding and narrow country lanes that the Preceptory of the Knights Templars of St. John of Jerusalem, near Swingfield Minnis, is reached. Like so many other ancient religious establishments, it is now a farmstead. Not altogether picturesque, and wearing very few outward signs of antiquity, it might readily be passed by those not keenly in quest of it, except for the existence of the three tall Early English windows prominent in one of the gables. An inspection of the farmhouse proves that thrifty use has been made of the old buildings, the hall, the principal ancient feature, with fine old timber roof, being divided for domestic purposes into two floors. Modern walls and fireplaces combine to almost wholly alter the internal arrangements. A long, buttressed, monastic barn of great antiquity is pictured in Knight's Old England, published some sixty years ago, but it has long since disappeared in the insensate rage for "improvement," and there is very little of interest now to be seen outside the farmhouse. But whatever it lacks in picturesque aspect, the glamour of romance thrown over the spot by the legend redeems it from the commonplace.
THE PRECEPTORY, SWINGFIELD MINNIS.
Rival explanations of the singular name of Swingfield Minnis divide opinion as to whether the first word means "Swinefield" or "Sweyn's Field," but a striking confirmation of the theory that it is named after that Danish king, and of the vague records of his having achieved a victory here, was afforded by the discovery of a quantity of human bones in modern times, in the course of which were described by a newspaper as "some agricultural operations," when the ancient surrounding heath or common-land was, for the first time in its history, enclosed and broken into for cultivation. If we, in our commonplace way, translate "agricultural operations" into "ploughing," we shall probably be correct. The remains were at the time pronounced to be the relics of some long-forgotten fight. "Minnis" is a Cantise word for a piece of rough stony common, such as long existed here.
Barham, as freeholder in the district, was interested in this enclosure and was awarded his share of the spoil. "St. John's," the name by which the farm is known, is, as he says, in his note to the "Witches' Frolic," two miles from Tappington, but it certainly cannot be seen, as he would have us believe, over the intervening coppices, nor in any other way, as we presently discover on coming past Tappington into Denton, there joining on to a route described in an earlier chapter.
[CHAPTER XIV]
THE COASTWISE ROAD—FOLKESTONE TO DOVER AND SANDWICH