There is no grand architecture, of the wonder-compelling kind, in Sandwich. It is all very quiet and modest and domestic, but at the same time old-world and reverend. Of the three parish churches, St. Clement’s, which stands hard by the place where the ancient sea-front of Sandwich once opened out, is the most notable, and has a fine Norman tower. The restoration it has experienced was paid for by the sale of its bells—a quaint touch—and a modern set of tube-chimes now replaces them. St. Peter’s is perhaps better known, because its tower is taller and is capped with a curious Dutch-like turret, and rising to a considerable height, viewed from a distance, across the flats, it is the most prominent feature of the town. The tower is frankly and unashamedly unarchitectural, and replaces the one that fell without warning on October 13th, 1661. It fell disastrously into the church and demolished the south aisle, making a mighty heap of wreckage. “The rubidge,” says the contemporary account, “was three fathoms deep in the middle of the church.” The roofless walls of that destroyed aisle remain in part to this day. The tower that replaces the fallen building is of a local grey brick made from the harbour mud, and would appear from its style to have been designed and built by a local journeyman bricklayer. But it is to be hoped that the modern passion for remodelling plain buildings and putting them into a conventional dress will pass this tower of St. Peter’s by; for Sandwich would scarce seem the same Sandwich without it, and people who write about the town would lose the cherished chance of being mildly funny at its expense.
I do not think any stranger has ever been known to find his way through Sandwich without making one or two false turns, for its streets are winding and deceptive. The houses of the middle ages are not represented in them at all, and it is a sixteenth and seventeenth-century Sandwich you see, not the mediæval port. It is, in general, a Dutch effect, as if those settlers under Elizabeth had imported their views upon domestic architecture and had successfully imposed them upon the town.
The native of Sandwich who has left his mark most visibly upon the place is Sir Roger Manwood, who founded the Grammar School in 1563. Manwood was born 1525, son of a local draper, and, entering the law, became eventually Chief Baron of the Exchequer. An elaborate new school-building, built 1895, stands in a solitary position outside the town, at the very opposite end from the original school, now occupied as a private residence and named Manwood Court. It stands at the very extremity of Sandwich, as you go towards Canterbury, and is a very striking building, with five gables and a high-pitched roof, and the date, 1564, in great figures, sprawling in genuine sixteenth-century ironwork along the frontage. Queen Elizabeth, on her visit to Sandwich in 1572, when she was elaborately entertained by the town, honoured Sir Roger by staying at his house.
For the rest, there are dim, odd corners, where queer old timber angle-posts, carved with grinning and demoniacal figures, start out of the houses. Such an one is that which forms the chief adornment of the “King’s Arms” inn and is dated 1592.
THE TOWN HALL, SANDWICH.
The Town Hall is a curious old building within, although refaced and rendered commonplace without. In it are held the Quarter Sessions for Sandwich and the Liberties of Ramsgate, Walmer, and Sarre. Brightlingsea’s law-cases were also formerly held here; and the Mayor of that Essex seaport still has his chain of office placed on him here by his overlord, the Mayor of Sandwich. Another mayoral peculiarity is the black wand, instead of the usual white one, presented by the clerk to his Worship on his assuming office. The town traditionally thus went into mourning after the battle of Bloody Point. As this took place in the year 851, it is quite evident that the men of Sandwich are people with long memories, whom it would be an ill business to offend. The Sessions Hall and police-court is a fine old room, the court being entered past two weird old sculptured heraldic figures, a lion and a dragon sitting up on their rumps and holding shields. These are survivals of the town’s decorations when Queen Elizabeth visited it, the dragon being, of course, the ancient Dragon of Wales. A number of pictures of curious interest seen in the Mayor’s Parlour were found in 1839, during some alterations to a house in Harnet Street. They represent the battle of Sole (Southwold) Bay, the reception of Queen Elizabeth, etc. The jury-box in the Sessions Court is worth notice. It is one which used formerly to be set up at the opening of the Court, and taken down at the conclusion of business, when its parts were fitted into the panelling which lines the walls. Thus arose the expression of “empanelling” a jury.
There is now a stir in the old streets of Sandwich. Somewhere about 1887 some enthusiastic golfers discovered in the wide-spreading sands an ideal site for links on which to play that “royal and ancient” game, at that time scarce known, even by name, to the generality of Englishmen; and speedily the St. George’s Golf Club, since granted the prefix of “Royal,” was established, on land—or rather sand—leased and eventually purchased, from the Earl of Guilford, to whom the sea, in closing the career of Sandwich as a port, has gracefully presented this truly “unearned increment.” The present club-house was formerly Great Downs Farm. Recently the trustees of the Earl of Guilford have constructed a “private” road from Sandwich, across the sandy wastes, to the sea, where they have erected a smart hotel, chiefly for golfers, on what was the solitary shore. Sometimes, when the golfers have bored each other almost to extinction with bragging of their remarkable feats on the course, they lounge into Sandwich and patronise it. To those who do not play golf all these developments are hateful and infuriating, and the players seem to be persons who pretend at exercise, rather than putting themselves to any real exertion; and on that score very inferior to cricketers. Meanwhile the boys and growing lads of Sandwich employed as “caddies” are being bred up to be idle, vicious, and unemployable men.