From the parish church one descends south-east to the Ypres Tower. This watch tower and stronghold was built in the time of King Stephen by William of Ypres, Earl of Kent, and is in many ways the most impressive building left to us in Rye. It is undoubtedly best seen from the river, but it and the garden below it afford a great view over the marshes on a clear day, eastward to the cliffs of Folkestone and westward to Fairlight. In itself it is a plain rectangular building with round towers at the angles, but with nothing of interest within. Yet what would Rye be without it. For many years it was the sole defence of the town.
Most of those who come to Rye enter the town, and with a sudden surprise not to be found elsewhere, by the Landgate upon the north. There were, it is said of old, five gates about the town, but this is the only one left to us. Nothing, or almost nothing, of the walls remain. Doubtless the French destroyed anything in the nature of fortification so far as they could, only the Ypres Tower they failed to pull down or to burn, and this great round towered gateway upon the north—why we do not know?
It is the Landgate which gives to Rye its power of surprise, so that a man coming up from the railway, at sight of it, is suddenly transported into the Middle Age, and in that dream enters and enjoys Rye town, which has never disappointed those who have come in the right spirit. For besides the monuments of which I have spoken there are others of lesser interest, it is true, but that altogether go to make up the charm and delight of this unique place. Among these I will name Mermaid Street where the grass grows among the cobbles and where stands the Mermaid Inn and the half timber house called the Hospital, Pocock's School and Queen Elizabeth's Well. Better still, for me at least, is the life of the river and the shipyards, where, though Rye is now two miles from the sea, ships are still built and the life of the place and its heart are adventured and set upon the great waters.
So alluring indeed is this little town that one is always loath to leave it, one continually excuses oneself from departure. One day I delayed in order to see the famous poem in the old book in the town archives which I already knew from Mr Lucas's book. It is certainly of Henry VIII.'s time, and who could have written it but that unhappy Sir Thomas Wyatt who loved Anne Boleyn—
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What greater gryffe may hape Trew lovers to anoye Then absente for to sepratte them From ther desiered joye? What comforte reste them then To ease them of ther smarte But for to thincke and myndful bee Of them they love in harte? And sicke that they assured bee Ehche toe another in harte That nothinge shall them seperate Untylle deathe doe them parte? And thoughe the dystance of the place Doe severe us in twayne, Yet shall my harte thy harte imbrace Tyll we doe meete agayne. |
Then one sunny afternoon I went out by the road past Camber Castle across Rye Foreign for Winchelsea on its hill some two miles from Rye to the west.
There is surely nothing in the world quite like Winchelsea. Lovelier by far than Rye, not only in itself, but because of what it offers you, those views of hill and marsh and sea with Rye itself, like I know not what little masterpiece of Flemish art, in the middle distance eastward, Winchelsea is a place never to be left or at worst never to be forgotten. One comes to it from Rye on a still afternoon of spring when the faint shadows are beginning to lengthen, expecting little. In fact, if the traveller be acceptable, capable of appreciating anything so still and exquisite, Winchelsea will appear to him to be, as it is one of the loveliest things left to us in England, place, as Coventry Patmore so well said, in a trance, La Belle an Bois dormant. Nowhere else in England certainly have I found just that exquisite stillness, that air of enchantment, as of something not real, something in a picture or a poem, inexplicable and inexpressible. How spacious it is, and how quiet, full of the sweetness and the beauty of some motet by Byrd. History is little to us in such a place, which is to be enjoyed for its own sake, for its own unique beauty and delight. And yet the history of Winchelsea is almost as unique as is the place itself.
Winchelsea when we first hear of it as given by King Edward Confessor to the monks of Fécamp, was not set upon this hill-top as we see it to-day, but upon an island, low and flat, now submerged some three miles south and east of the present town. Here William the Conqueror landed upon his return from Normandy when he set out to take Exeter and subdue the West; here again two of those knights who murdered St Thomas landed in their pride, hot from the court of Henry their master. Like Rye, its sister, to whom it looked across the sea, Winchelsea was added to the Cinque Ports and was presently taken from the monks of Fécamp by Henry III. It was now its disasters began. In 1236 it was inundated by the sea as again in 1250, when it was half destroyed. Eagerly upon the side of Montfort it was taken after Evesham by Prince Edward, and its inhabitants slain, so that when in 1288 it was again drowned by the sea it was decided to refound the town upon the hill above, then in the possession of Battle Abbey, which the King purchased for this purpose. At that time the hill upon which Winchelsea was built, and still stands, was washed by the sea, and the harbour soon became of very great importance, indeed until the sixteenth century, when the sea began to retire, Winchelsea was of much greater importance than Rye. The retreat of the sea, however, completely ruined it, for it was served by no river as Rye was by the Rother.
The town of Edward I., as we may see to-day, by what time has left us of it, was built in squares, a truly Latin arrangement, the streets all remaining at right angles the one to the other. It had three gates and was defended upon the west, where it was not naturally strong, by a great ditch. It was attacked and sacked by the French as often as Rye, though not always at the same time. Thus in 1377, when Rye was half destroyed, Winchelsea was saved by the Abbot of Battle, only to be taken three years later by John de Vienne, when the town was burnt. No doubt these constant and mostly successful attacks deeply injured the place which, after the sea had begun to retreat in the sixteenth century, at the time of Elizabeth's visit in 1573, only mustered some sixty families. From that time Winchelsea slowly declined till there remains only the exquisite ghost we see to-day.
One comes up out of the Marsh into Winchelsea to-day through the Strand Gate of the time of Edward I., and presently finds oneself in the beautiful and spacious square in which stands the lovely fragment of the church of St Thomas of Canterbury.