THE ISLE OF SHEPPEY
Sheppey is an outlying district of the Ingoldsby Country, somewhat difficult of access. It is from Newington, a village on the Dover Road, some seven miles from Chatham and eighteen from Canterbury, that we will approach Sheppey, if cycling, for that affords a pleasant and interesting route. The ancient parish church of Newington lifts its grey battlemented tower away from the village prominently to one side of the old coach road, but it is surprisingly long before one reaches it, down the winding lane. Here it is abundantly evident, to right and left, that we are in the very heart of the famous fruit-growing district of Kent; for apple orchards, and more particularly cherry and pear orchards, abound, and where they cease the hop-gardens fill in the intervening space.
Coming sharply round to the church, incongruously neighboured by a modern and matter-of-fact postal letter-box, will be seen a great rough boulder-stone, planted between roadway and footpath—the "Devil's Stone" as it is known locally. A very large and prominent representation of a boot-sole is seen on it, and is the outward and visible sign of a hoary legend current at Newington ever since Newington church existed. It seems that the Devil objected to the church being built, but deferred action until the tower was completed, when, one night, he came along indignantly, and, placing his back against the tower and a foot against the stone, pushed—to no purpose, for the tower was not to be moved by his strongest efforts. The legend asks us to believe that the boot-print on the stone is a relic of this impotent Satanic spite; but it is in relief, instead of being sunk!—and surely the imprint, in any case, should have been that of a hoof. It is a very well-preserved and sharply-defined mark, and a suspicion that it is periodically renewed will not be denied.
THE DEVIL'S FOOTPRINT.
At any rate, it is an appropriate legend for the Ingoldsby Country. Had Barham only known of it, to what excellent use could he not have turned the tale!
Five miles of picturesquely winding sandy lanes lead in a gradual descent past Iwade, through orchards, and now and again across rough patches of open pasture, with two field-gates across the route, proclaiming that wayfarers here are few. At length a view of Sheppey opens out, across that arm of the sea known as the Swale, crossed by a combined railway and road bridge on the site of the old "King's Ferry." The railway is that branch of the Chatham and Dover running from Sittingbourne to Queenborough and Sheerness. Here then, paying the penny toll for self and cycle, one enters the island by road, at the only place where the channel is bridged. The four other places from which it is possible to enter are all ferries.
The railway to Sheerness has never opened up the island, and Sheppey, before the opening of the light railway that has recently been made to traverse its length, remained to Londoners an unknown land. It may be readily supposed that it will largely so remain, in spite of the facilities for travel that the new line provides, and notwithstanding the frantic efforts of the strenuous land companies, whose extravagant advertisements might lead the untravelled to suppose that here was the Garden of Eden, and that in purchasing building-sites in this remote corner of the kingdom speculators or prospective residents would be laying the foundations of rude health or comfortable fortunes. There are, it is true, few places so interesting as Sheppey, but why, apart from its history? Just because its scenery is so weird, its surroundings so outlandish. That scenery is of two sorts—the marshes that border the sea-channel of the Swale, dividing it from the Kentish mainland; and the high ridge or backbone which runs in the direction of the island's greatest length, from Sheerness to Warden Point and Shellness. Trees are few, and grow only in the more sheltered parts, if it can truly be said that there is shelter at all on Sheppey, where the winds—particularly the east winds—blow great guns, and boom, howl, and shriek in successful competition with the cannon of the heavy defences at Sheerness, whose deep, hoarse voices are puny compared with those of the gales that blow on Sheppey. All these historic and physical peculiarities of this right little, tight little island are very well for the explorer, who goes forth to discover the unusual—and certainly finds it here—and who would be grievously disappointed at not finding it, but to live on Sheppey would be another matter. Those marshlands whose delicate tints and general air so appeal to the casual stranger in summer, that muddy sea which sullenly washes away the crumbling, slimy cliffs of dark clay along the coast-line from Sheerness to Warden, lose their interest in the long months of winter, become merely grim and dismal, and obsess the mind with doleful imaginings.
But these things have nothing to do with the literary pilgrim, who does not select the winter for his pilgrimage. He descends upon Sheppey in the summer, and here is the picture he sees, so soon as he has left the King's Ferry bridge behind. The road runs flatly and sandily ahead, in midst of a world of marshes, cloaked and successfully hidden for the most part by a luxuriant growth of grass. From a cloudless sky the song of the larks comes down in changeful trills, and if one dare gaze into the aching blue they can be seen, mounting higher and higher as though they sought to reach the sun itself. Everything else tells of noonday rest. The still heat that bathes the unduly energetic in undesirable perspiration sends one seeking for wayside shelter, but only on the distant hillside, where Minster crowns the ridge, do the trees begin, dotted singly, and looking in the distance like giant umbrellas. The myriad sheep of these flats have long since given up the quest for shade in this district where trees are only objects in the distance and hedgerows are unknown, and huddled together in an endeavour to find a cooling shade behind each other's backs. Even the lambs have ceased their clumsy gambols. The dykes stew in the sun, and a heat-haze makes distant objects in the landscape perform an optical St. Vitus's dance. Only the great brick-barges, beating up and down the creeks from Sittingbourne, go a slow and dignified pace, their rust-red sails, seen across country, looking as though they walked the fields. The colouring of this scene is in a beautiful harmony—the foreground grasses bleached to a more than straw-like pallor, toning off in the distance to a rich apricot yellow, meeting in one direction the irradiated pale blue sky, flecked with white clouds, and in another the green hillsides of Minster. Over all is a sense of vastness, and the pilgrim throws out his arms and draws deep breaths in sympathy. Space, elbow-room, isolation, those are the dominant notes of Sheppey.
Queenborough, two miles off to the left from our entrance at King's Ferry, finds no mention in the Ingoldsby Legends, but now that we are here, a thorough exploration might as well be undertaken, and both it and Sheerness visited. Queenborough is a place with a past, and proclaims the fact in every nook and corner of its old streets, where the footfall of the stranger echoes loudly, and tufts of grass grow between the rough cobble-stones of the pavements. Queenborough owes its name to the chivalric courtesy of Edward III., who in 1366 changed it from Kingborough to its present title in honour of his Queen, Philippa. At that time it was an important point, and was fortified for the defence of the Medway by a castle designed by that master-architect and shrewd ecclesiastic, William of Wykeham. Archæologists tell how its ground-plan was in the shape of an heraldic rose, but nearly all traces of it are gone. Its history never included siege or stirring incident, and the buildings were ruinous even in the time of the Commonwealth, when they were sold and carted off in a commonplace and inglorious way. Now—the last note of humiliation—the railway station of Queenborough is built on the site.