In all these years these stout timbers have served to shelter the present occupant and his father, and if the occasional tarring they receive is not forgotten, they bid fair to last many generations longer. The upper floor is divided into two bedrooms, and you “come aboard” into them from the brick-walled lower story up a very maritime-looking hatchway. The interior is very quaint, showing the ribs, and, in fact, the whole construction of the boat, while the bedroom, which has the additional advantage of a window cut in the stern, quite realises David Copperfield’s view of the bedroom in the Peggotty establishment, as “the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen.”
The melancholy shore-line may be followed as far as Shornemead Battery, a heavy masonry fort designed in modern times for the protection of the Thames, its design discredited by later military engineers. Worse discredit is cast upon the design of Cliffe Creek Battery, a mile and a half lower down, and the fort near Coalhouse Point, on the opposite shore, whose fire, it appears, would enfilade one another and do more damage to friends than enemies. Shornemead is the ultima thule of the riverside explorer here. It is alike unpleasant and unprofitable, if not actually impossible, to proceed farther. The point now to be aimed at is Cliffe, and that village is reached by retracing the shoreward path and crossing the railway and canal and then taking the road on left which leads to Chequers Street, near Higham Station, and on past Cliffe station.
SHORNEMEAD BATTERY.
The village of Cliffe, as might be expected, stands high, on a kind of upland whence the ground breaks rapidly away to Cliffe Creek, remarkable for nothing but cement-works, a coastguard station, and mud. Always mud. At low water, mud thick and slab; at high water, mud in solution. Cliffe is otherwise called “Cliffe-at-Hoo,” and is the “Clofeshoch,” or “Cloves-hoo,” (i.e. “Cliff’s Height”) of early Anglo-Saxon synods, long held here annually. They were established by Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century.
CLIFFE BATTERY.
Beyond Cliffe we come by a winding road into Cooling, or Cowling, whose name means “cow pasture.” In advance of the few and scattered houses forming the village is that romantic old building, Cooling Castle gatehouse, almost all that now remains of the fortress built here towards the close of the fourteenth century by Sir John de Cobham, the third Baron Cobham. The work occupied six years, and was the cause of much excited comment among the peasantry. Those were the times of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw and the peasants’ rebellion—threatening times, when it behoved even great nobles to go warily; and so Lord Cobham sought means to avoid criticism and the muttered threats to pull his castle down about his ears. He did this by letting it be understood that his stronghold was built, not for the purpose of overawing the mob, but in view of foreign invasion, and he put his intent on record by placing on one of the gatehouse towers the curious inscription on enamelled copper plates which still remains in its original position. It is designed to resemble a legal document, or charter, and runs thus:
“Knowyth that beth and schul be
That I am mad in help of the cuntre
In knowyng of whyche thyng
Thys is chartre and wytnessyng.”
