SIGN OF THE ADAM AND EVE, MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE.
It is perhaps worth while to turn aside, on leaving Sittingbourne, to see what manner of place Murston may be. It has already been described in unfavourable terms, but how unutterably wretched a spot this great brickmaking centre is can only be learnt by close inspection. One comes into it by a mile-long road which for the most part stands prominently up above the surrounding country, something in the likeness of a railway embankment; the brick-earth of which the neighbouring fields once consisted having been dug out to great depths on either side. Down below there, in that artificially low level, the valuable brick-earth having been excavated, many of those fields have once again been given over to agriculture. Crops seem to do well in this curious situation, deriving benefit from what a native described to the present writer as the “mysture,” which is apparently Cantise or Cockney for “moisture.”
At the end of this singular interval, close to the shores of Milton Creek, is Murston. Whatever beauty the village once possessed has long been obliterated in its expansion into an industrial slum of long, unlovely, characterless streets of human kennels. Even the parish church has been severely dealt with, only the chancel of the old building being left; and that stands in a mangy little walled and locked enclosure, strewn with old tins and other refuse. Such is Murston; and the “brickies” who live in it match the place completely.
It is pleasant to think and to know that Murston is exceptional. Beautiful country, wholly unspoiled, immediately adjoins it, and one comes pleasantly past Tonge, in search of the coast-line, past Chekes Court Farm and Blacketts, to Conyers Quay. There indeed is again an unpleasant interval, for advantage has been taken of a slimy little creek opening out of the Swale to erect a brick-factory, whence the bricks are barged to Sheerness, and round up the Thames; the barges bringing back from London cargoes of cinders and the contents of London dustbins, which (under the name of “breeze”) is useful in the making of bricks. The immediate and intimate part of Conyers Quay is therefore, it will be readily understood, undesirable alike to sight and smell.
LUDDENHAM.
The roads of these parts carefully avoid the shore; the one leaving this spot running directly inland, to Teynham, where orchards and hop-gardens and old cottages neighbour the church, in a pretty, diversified landscape. From Teynham, through the hamlet of Deerton Street, one comes to Buckland, where the scanty ruins of an old church stand in front of a farm, on the other side of Buckland crossing. Near by is a humble old timber-framed cottage on the edge of hop-gardens. This was originally the parsonage. Beyond it, over Stone level-crossing, a road leads away on the left to Luddenham, a solitary parish on rising ground overlooking the marshes. There is no village, only scattered farms and cottages; but the picture formed by the church on its height, neighboured by the Court Lodge, now the largest of the neighbouring farms, devoted partly to hops and in part to fruit, is an unusual and striking one. There you see the church, partly Early English, with an eighteenth-century red-brick tower, displayed against the skyline in company with some hop-oasts, the hollow in the foreground on the left, evidently once a creek, planted with bush-fruit; while on the right the hop-gardens are screened by a weird hedge of polled poplars, looking very knobbly and knuckly with their annual trimming.
From Luddenham we come steeply uphill and then down, through Davington, again into Faversham.