From the North Foreland to Penzance

by Clive Holland

On one’s way round to Ramsgate one passes Broadstairs—now a favourite summer resort—which in the middle of the sixteenth century was a place of some importance, having ninety-eight houses, eight boats and other vessels from two to eighteen tons, with forty men employed in the seafaring industries; and its famous church of Our Lady, on passing which in ancient times we are told vessels “lowered their topsails and wafted their ‘ancients’ in salute.”

Ramsgate Harbour, however, is not an ideal place in which to make any prolonged stay. It is not commodious; nor is it distinguished by what is termed “every modern convenience.” The outer basin is little more than mud at low water, and the inner—well, most people avoid docks if there is a chance of having fresh and sufficient water under a yacht’s keel. But Ramsgate itself is an interesting and historic town, and is situated on the Isle of Thanet, which literally teems with romantic memories of the past. Those of the sea rovers of the Cinque Ports, the sturdy seamen of the Elizabethan age, the bold and daring smugglers of the Georgian and early Victorian eras.

Ramsgate is undoubtedly of very ancient origin. Even in pre-Roman times it was probably a place of some importance and consequence. Indeed, the numerous remains which have from time to time been found in the neighbourhood, more especially on the East Cliff, go far to prove the contention that in the days of the Roman occupation it served as a kind of outer port or station to Rutupiae. Its position was such as to enable it to defy the silting up, as well as those other changes which were destined as the ages went by to stultify and destroy some of its immediate neighbours and sometime rivals. Though the haven afforded was too small and not well protected enough to attract to it any great measure of the trade that flowed up Channel to London from even early times, Ramsgate has for many centuries been a fishing port, and a place of some considerable moment to the Isle of Thanet itself. Even in the early years of the fourteenth century it was a town of some size, and it had one great possession in the fine old church of St Lawrence which dates from the reign of King John.

There are indeed so many romantic and historical memories connected with Ramsgate that the story of them is difficult to condense within reasonable limits. Just across the bay, in the meadows of a farm, more than thirteen centuries ago, landed St Augustine, a peaceful conqueror. Near this spot, six and a half centuries before, the world-conqueror Julius Cæsar had grounded his galleys, and his soldiers—fired by the example of a standard bearer—had leaped into the water, forcing a landing in the face of the menacing and oncoming Britons.

There in the year 597 amid the water meadows stood the Saint, with the River Stour flowing between him and the Saxon King who had come down to see what manner of man Augustine might be, but had “entreated the Saint to approach no closer lest he should be a magician and work the King ill” until he had satisfied himself that he (Augustine) was no wizard. The running water between in those times was held to be a sure bar to the exercise of magical arts. When the King had satisfied himself that the Saint and his followers were not to be feared he crossed over the river, and sat and listened to what they had to say. Every one knows the story. How St Augustine “came to stay.” How in the end the King who had received him with friendliness and hospitality was driven out of his own. And then, to come further down the ages, the ease-loving descendants of St Augustine and his monks were themselves told to depart by another King, less mild mannered and hospitably inclined than the Saxon Monarch of a thousand years before. “Bluff King Hal” would have none of them, though, perhaps, it was neither their morals (or want of them) nor their pride that chiefly induced him to make the clean sweep of them that he did.

Westward from the harbour and in the valley lies Minster, concerning the founding of which there is a monkish legend of some interest. After King Egbert had murdered his cousins and “buried them under his throne” he, doubtless fearing they might prove troublesome, was seized with remorse. As so often happened in those remote days his remorse, and desire that his lady cousin, whose brothers he had thus foully murdered, should forgive him, was turned to good account by Mother Church, who from history appears to have made a pretty constant practice of profiting by rich sinners and bleeding those who others bled. The lady in question agreed to consider the matter settled if the King would but give her (this was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s solution) as much land as a hind could run over, so that she might found a monastery to her murdered brothers’ memory. Egbert, who, tradition asserts, had been much disturbed meanwhile by ghostly visitants, agreed; and the religious house was duly founded.

The daughter of the foundress, named Mildred, ruled over the community, and afterwards was canonized. But the monastery was not destined to remain long undisturbed. A band of Danish pirates landed, attacked, and burned the institution to the ground, and carried off to a more secular life the prettiest of the virgin nuns they found incarcerated. Possibly some of them found their new circumstances less dull than their old life of seclusion. A little later Canute gave the land on which the monastery had stood to the Priory of St Augustine at Canterbury. Then arose a difficulty. St Mildred being long dead had been left by the Danish marauders where she lay buried. They had, indeed, no use for the bones of saints or dead womenfolk. And now the Abbot of Canterbury wished to remove the body to his church. The people of Thanet naturally opposed the idea. St Mildred was their most valued and cherished possession. Pilgrims came to visit her grave, and when pilgrims came there were material advantages accruing. The Saint herself appears to have refused this “translation” to Canterbury. But in the end she was not proof against the gentle and logical wooing of the Abbot of St Augustine’s, and she went away with him or he carried her off, whichever way one may read a story that is not quite clear in this regard. The men of Thanet followed to Canterbury with a view to recovering their property; but were unsuccessful, and St Mildred “did many wonderfull workes and miracles at that place.”

Richborough Castle hard by is a fine ruin, and has great interest for those to whom the dim and obscure ages of national history appeal. The remains of this old fortress of the time when Romans held sway in Britain are amongst the most interesting in the South of England. It has been frequently referred to by writers of that period, under its Roman designation of Rutupiae, and was the castle of an important town or settlement until the recession of the sea did away with its usefulness as a place of habitation for seafaring people.

One can well imagine the effect of its massive towering and threatening walls upon the Saxon pirates of the days when Rutupiae was in its prime, and formed, with the castle of Regulbium or Reculver, the defences and wards to the entrance of the then wide and navigable Wantsum. But like so many of the outposts of civilization of those latter days of Imperial Rome’s world-wide sway, it was destined to be abandoned. And when the last legion marched in A.D. 436 to the coast to depart over seas never to return, it was not long ere the invading Anglo-Saxon pirates took and sacked the great stronghold of Rutupiae, and practically destroyed its very fabric.

Ramsgate of late years has in a measure come to the front as a holiday resort, but to most seafarers along the coast it will always be the past of the town rather than the present that will possess abiding interest. Until comparatively recent years it continued to bear its share of the burdens attaching to the Cinque Ports; and even nowadays is in a measure under the control of Sandwich, its ancient head, and as a “vill” of the latter submits to the jurisdiction of its recorder. It is one of the ancient non-corporate members of the Cinque Ports.