The Cold Harbours in Kent are thirty in number, while ten are found in each of the contiguous counties of Surrey and Sussex. They are found at Addington, Aldington, Aylesford, Barham Downs, Bishopsbourne, Bridge, Chislehurst, Deptford, Ditton, Eltham, Higham, Hildenborough, Eltham, Lamberhurst, Lymne, Maidstone, Newington, Northfleet, Penshurst, Sellinge, Sittingbourne, Stoke-in-Hoo, Sutton-at-Hone, Tenterden, Trench, Tunbridge, Woodnesborough, Woolwich, Wrotham, and Wye. The majority of these are upon or near Roman sites, or on the Roman main roads, a fact to be borne in mind when we come to consider their origin. For Isaac Taylor says of early travelling: “Where no religious house existed to receive the traveller he would usually be compelled to content himself with the shelter of bare walls. The ruins of deserted Roman villas were no doubt so used, and such places seem commonly to have borne the name of Cold Harbour. In the neighbourhood of ancient roads we find no less than seventy, and about a dozen more bearing the analogous name of Caldecot or ‘cold cot.’” His figures have now been shown to be very much under the mark. So Forbes and Burmester, in their Our Roman Highways, say: “The appearance of such names is believed to be a sure indication of the use in comparatively modern times of Roman buildings for purposes of temporary shelters; and the occasional discovery of tessellated pavements injured by fires lighted in the corners of rooms suggests their utilization by wayfarers.”
Not that all would have been villas or private residences. The orderly and practical Romans on their great military roads had a colonia at each 15 or 20 miles with a mansio or government posting station, and between each, at about five miles distance, was a mutatio with less accommodation, and used by a humbler class. The manager of each was called a Strator—like our Way Warden. In many cases we find that the Cold Harbours come exactly where we should look for the regularly set mutatio. The same kind of arrangement is found in the Hans or Khans of the East, which provide shelter for traveller and stabling for his horse or other beast of burden; but no bed or food. Analogous also are the dak-bungalows familiar to us in India.
The name, however, is pure Saxon, like the German Kalt Herberg, and the surviving French Auberge for a small place of rest and refreshment. Mr. Unthank, a friend and church-worker of mine in Walworth, enlisted my interest in the name a dozen years ago, and since he has written learnedly on the subject in Notes and Queries (1914) and the Home Counties Magazine (1912). He calls them “the leanest shadows of our cheerful inns,” and though bare walls and a bit of a roof would be better than nothing to a traveller over Barham Downs, yet, compared with the “warmest welcome in an inn” experienced elsewhere, he would no doubt call it a cold harbour. Later, and in Middle English, the Heribeorg, shelter for a host, became as Herberg a synonym for any inn, and later still Harbourers or harbingers were the caterers or victuallers, who at last gained the right to sell ale in competition with the more normal hostelries. Then the trade-name became a surname, and John le Herberger appears, and perhaps the Harpers of to-day indicate an innkeeper rather than a musician as their ancestor.
Of course, the perverse ingenuity of some has invented strange derivations for the name. Stow suggests that they were coal-stations! Another writer (who apparently only knew of one Cold Harbour near London Bridge) that it was where the Köln or Cologne merchants had their headquarters! Another derives from Col (ubris) arbor—the tree or staff round which a serpent twines. This is the emblem of Mercury the messenger of Jupiter, and may have been therefore the sign of the Roman posting-stations!
Anderida.
As I have already said, Kent was once mainly either dense primæval forest, or marshland, which fringed nearly all its coastal border from Sussex to London. The greater part of the forest was that which extended along the northern border of the South Saxons with a breadth of thirty and a length of one hundred and twenty miles. But the royal forest of Blean (in which I was born) is continuous with Anderida, although it bears a separate name in a charter of King Offa in 791. This would make the forestal land extend from Whitstable through East and Mid Kent, Northern Sussex, Southern Surrey, and Eastern Hampshire, right down to Petersfield. Distinct, but contiguous, was the Cestmwarowalth or Cestersetta Wald, of which part remains in the woods between Rochester and Maidstone, although some would place it near Lyminge.
This primæval forest is still marked by a great survival of woodland and parks, as a coloured map of Kent would show, and also by the abundance of the characteristic terminations of burst, den, ley, holt, and feld. It names the Weald (Teutonic Wad—wood), although therein more cleared than anywhere else, and the less known Roman road, Well Street, which ran through it from Maidstone, should be probably the Wald road.
Generally called Anderida from the name the Romans gave to their fort and garrisoned place near Pevensey, this is only a change from the earlier Andred. Coed-Andred was its Celtic name, from Coed, a wood, which word appears also in Ked Coed (the hollow dolman in the wood), which was corrupted into Kits Coty House; while the Cotswolds give the Saxon addition to the Celtic name, so that the meaning is Wood-wood, just as Durbeck or the Ravensbourne mean Water-water by the Saxon surnaming of a Celtic name. In early Saxon charters, which are written in Latin, it appears as Saltus-Andred, Silva-Andred, Saltus communis, or Silva regalis, while in Saxon it is Andred, Andredsleage, or Andredsweald.
As to the meaning of the name, Edwards thinks it a proper name, which is very improbable considering its extent. Lambarde says Andred in the Celtic means great, which is simplest and best, provided that such a word is proved to exist. Dr. Guest refers it, less probably, to a Celtic negative an and dred, a dwelling, and Lewin to “an” for the “deni,” for oak-forest, and by a “dhu” for black.
It may be here interesting to give a list of the names borne nearly a thousand years ago by some towns and villages in Kent, especially those in the Weald. In a map in Furley’s Weald, he gives the manors and places mentioned in the Domesday Book (A.D. 1086), and by this it appears that settlements and cultivation were nearly all on the north and east edges of the great forest of Anderida. The only exceptions are Tivedale (now Tudely), Benindene (Benenden), Tepindene (Tiffenden), and Belicedene, which are deeper in the forest.