CHAPTER XXIV
NEW ROMNEY—SMUGGLING DAYS—BROOKLAND—FAIRFIELD—SMALLHYTHE
The town of New Romney, new nine hundred years ago, is located afar off, not by its houses, which are few indeed, but by the trees that encircle it, and give a very direct denial to its urban claims. Founded to replace Old Romney, deserted by the sea, as a seaport, the sea began again to retreat so long ago as Queen Elizabeth’s time, and is now a mile and a half to two miles distant, at the melancholy and hopeless-looking cluster of houses known as Littlestone-on-Sea, where there are golf-links on which Parliamentary matches are played. There the opposing champions in the House of Commons contend amicably, much to the surprise of the general public, who imagine—poor fools—that all the fury and tub-thumping at Westminster is honest emotion, and do not realise that it is all part of the great Game of Make-Believe for which, whether amused or not, we have all to pay.
There were once no fewer than five churches at New Romney. Now there is but one. “Here,” wrote Cobbett, in 1825, “there is a church (two miles only from the last, mind!) fit to contain one thousand five hundred people, and there are, for the people of this parish to live in, twenty-two or twenty-three houses! And yet the vagabonds have the impudence to tell us that the population of England has vastly increased.”
NEW ROMNEY CHURCH.
The “vagabonds” pilloried in this wrong-headed outburst were quite correct; the population had indeed greatly increased, but that of New Romney and Old Romney alike had, for the best of reasons, declined. Moreover, Cobbett did not know—nor do people generally stop to consider—that the numerous and roomy old churches throughout the country do not necessarily give the measure of the ancient population. As even now, the size or frequency of churches depended to a great extent upon the comparative piety and wealth of the neighbourhood.
The great church of St. Nicholas, the surviving one of New Romney, is a fine specimen of the late Norman style, with tombs of the old Mayors and jurats. The floor-level is so much below the level of the ground outside that one descends several steps into the building. The town itself is scarce less quiet and undisturbed than the interior of the church itself. It is still technically a Cinque Port, and a Mayor is annually elected. Also there is something in the nature of a town gaol; but it is a curiosity rather than a necessity.
I cull this interesting item from a newspaper of October 1913, to show something of the quiet that has now descended upon the place.
“Sinless Cinque Port.—During the last six months the fines and fees at the police court of New Romney, the ancient borough and Cinque Port, have amounted to 2s. In this time only one minor case was heard, although the borough, which includes Littlestone-on-Sea, has a Mayor and eight magistrates, as well as three policemen.”