MONKTON.
Coming into Monkton, a scattered village on the way to Sarre, the church, directly facing the road, makes, with the old stocks on a grassy bank, a pretty picture. The indications of arches, seen in the sketch, show that there was once a north aisle to this church. The parish owes its name to the fact that the manor was anciently the property of Christ Church Monastery, Canterbury.
The whole of this district is covered by the legend of the "Smuggler's Leap." The "smuggling crew" dispersed in all directions before the customs-house officers.
Some gallop this way, and some gallop that,
Through Fordwich Level, o'er Sandwich Flat ...
Those in a hurry Make for Sturry,
With Customs House officers close in their rear,
Down Rushbourne Lane, and so by Westbere.
None of them stopping But shooting and popping,
And many a Customs House bullet goes slap
Through many a three-gallon tub like a tap,
And the gin spurts out, And squirts all about;
And many a heart grew sad that day,
That so much good liquor was so thrown away.
Down Chislett Lane, so free and so fleet,
Rides Smuggler Bill, and away to Up Street;
Sarre Bridge is won—Bill thinks it fun,
Ho! ho! the old tub-gauging son of a gun.
We, too, will ride into Sarre.
Sarre was, and is still technically, a ville of the port of Sandwich, governed by a Deputy whose functions are now merely decorative. He still, however, as of old, swears fealty to King and port. These historical facts explain those notices, "Town of Sarre" and "Ville de Sarre" prominently displayed on the houses at the Canterbury and Thanet ends of the village respectively.
The bridge gained by Smuggler Bill is that which joins Kent and the Isle of Thanet, the successor of that original pont built in 1485, on the site of "the common ferry when Thanet was full iled." It is not a romantic bridge nowadays, and has its many thousands of counterparts. Beneath its commonplace arch the sluggish waters of a branch of the Stour go wandering away, right and left, along the old narrowed channel of the once broad and navigable Wantsume, where the sea once flowed, and the Roman galleys and triremes, the Saxon and Danish prows, and the Norman and early English ships, came and went; and only a shallow stream, no wider than a horse could jump, choked with reeds and snags, divides the former "Isle" and the mainland.