From this point, two miles distant from Dover, the way goes straight; East Langdon, for which we are making, lying in the hug of the downs, a mile away to the left, lost to view between those swelling contours and in midst of clustered trees.
It was to this parish that "Thomas Marsh of Marston," the hero of that prose legend, "The Leech of Folkestone," really belonged. He resided at Martin, Marten, or Marton Hall, in the neighbouring hamlet of Martin, whose name is thus variously and impartially spelled by post-office, finger-posts, county historians and other authorities, who to this day have not been able to decide which is the true and proper rendering. East Langdon, on closer acquaintance, resolves itself into a remote, huddled-up village of very small dimensions, situated on a narrow lane that does duty for a road, and consisting of a parish church, an inn, two or three farms, a rectory, and some agricultural labourers' cottages—the whole knowing little of the outside world, and apparently content with that knowledge. It centres around the church and Church Farm, pictured here, and by that sketch, much more eloquently than by any mass of verbiage, shall you see how grim and hard-featured a place it is. The church has latterly been restored, and the monument in its chancel to the veritable Thomas Marsh of the legend again made whole. It had fallen, about 1850, from its place on the north wall of the chancel, and was broken in many pieces, the fragments being preserved in a cupboard in the vestry. Under such circumstances, and fully cognisant of the atrocious things that have elsewhere been wrought, all over the country, in the name of "restoration," it is with a shock of surprise that the pilgrim finds it at all. But here it is, a black marble tablet surrounded by an ornamental framing of white stone or marble, and bearing a long Latin inscription to "Thomas Marsh, of Marton." He is stated to have been born in 1583, and to have died in 1634.
EAST LANGDON.
"MARSTON HALL."
The hamlet of Martin, three-quarters of a mile distant, is, possibly from its proximity to the railway station of Martin Mill, larger at this day than the parent village. Why the Chatham and Dover Railway authorities should choose to christen the station after the great wooden windmill that towers up, black and striking, beside the line, instead of simply by the name of the place, is not evident, for there is no other "Martin" on the railway from which it might otherwise be desirable to distinguish this. The hamlet itself overlooks the railway, from its superior ridge. You come steeply uphill into it, through an overarching bower of hedgerow greenery enclosing a hollow road, strikingly like a Devonshire lane, and the more remarkable and pleasing because set in midst of downs so generally treeless. Prominent in the street of Martin is the great farmhouse known as "Martin House," that "Marston Hall" of the story of Master Marsh's bewitchment, and once the manor house. Portions of it may be as old as the early seventeenth century, but it has been remodelled in a particularly hideous manner, and the side of it towards the farmyard smeared over with "compo," or similar abomination.
THE "THREE HORSESHOES," GREAT MONGEHAM.