The route from here to Reculver is a five miles long stretch of scrubwoods, through the hamlet of Marsh Row. These rabbity solitudes lead at last to the low, broken, earthy coast presenting a weak and dissolving barrier to an encroaching sea between Herne Bay and Birchington. Midway between those two watering-places stands the gaunt ruin of that ancient church built within the Roman castle of Regulbium, to which its name in mutilated form has descended. Its skeleton towers rise over the hillside, minatory, as we descend toward the sea.
CHISLETT.
Reculver is popularly—and mistakenly—spoken and written of in the plural, "Reculvers." There is no real warranty, in the derivation of the name, for what our grandfathers would have called a "vulgar error." We can clearly trace the place-name from the Roman times, when it was "Regulbium," to the days of the Saxon King, Ethelbert, when it had been changed into "Raculf Ceastre," and thence, by way of half a hundred grotesque spellings in ancient historical documents, to the form it now bears. Never, save by modern writers of guide-books, has it been spoken of in the plural, and the only possible reason for their doing so must be a real ignorance of its history and a belief that the twin towers of the ruined church are themselves the "Reculvers." This is no attempt to right the wrong: that would be a hopeless task, and a thankless. A mistake set afoot so long ago and so popular is not to be discredited, and "Reculvers" this will remain, certainly so long as there are two towers.
In Roman times the fortress of Regulbium stood at some little distance from the sea, on the only available firm ground, a gentle rounded hill rising from the surrounding marshes. Now that the sea has for centuries been advancing upon the spot, this hill has been half washed away, and its remaining section shows as a low cliff, with the gaunt towers of the mediæval church rising from it. This church is the successor of that built within the walls of the Roman castle in Saxon times, as a monument of the downfall of Paganism and the triumph of Christianity.
So long ago as 1780 the sea had begun to threaten it, and the great north wall of the castle fell one night into the advancing tide, leaving the monument to Christianity in a very exposed condition, while the bones of the forgotten inhabitants were washed away out of the churchyard, just as those of Warden, in Sheppey, are at this day. Instead of making any attempt to save the church, the authorities began in 1809 to demolish it, only halting when they reached the twin towers. The surrounding farmers found the building-stones very useful for pig-sties and cow-sheds, and cared not a rap whether they were Norman or Early English. There were, indeed, some Roman columns in the church. They had come from the pagan basilica within the castle, but that did not hinder their being cast aside with the rest. In 1860 one was discovered, one of its stones doing duty as a garden-roller. It was, with another column, rescued from further desecration, and the two have been set up in the Cathedral Close at Canterbury.
RECULVER.
The vicarage was also abandoned in 1809, but not pulled down. It was converted into a public-house, which long stood here under the sign of the "Hoy." The existing inn is the "King Ethelbert."
The twin towers of Reculver church form a portion of the former west front. They are of Norman and Early English date, and, constructed as they were largely of the materials of the ruined Roman buildings, are rich in fragments of tile. The towers were erected to serve as a sea-mark, to warn vessels beating up for the Swale and the Medway of the dangerous Columbine Sand, and their origin has from time immemorial been the subject of the legend of the "Twin Sisters," which tells how the Abbess of the Benedictine Priory of Davington and her sister, voyaging to fulfil a vow made to Our Lady of Broadstairs, were wrecked here for lack of a sea-mark. The Abbess was saved, but her sister was drowned, and, as a combined thank-offering for her own escape and by way of memorial to her sister, that holy woman erected the twin towers, to serve all mariners sailing by. Barham perverted the legend in his "Brothers of Birchington." Perhaps the temptation to alliteration was too strong to be resisted, and then the idea came to him of rejecting the familiar story and using in its stead an old monastic tale of how there were two brothers, the one pious and the other given up to all manner of evil courses, and how the Devil came for the wrong one by mistake and was obliged to restore him. In the Ingoldsby legend the brothers become Robert and Richard de Birchington, and their vow it was, he tells us, which produced the famous sea-mark: