CHAPTER 14: CANTERBURY, ROCHESTER & TRURO WITH A GROUP OF CINQUE PORTS

All good things come to an end and so it was in 2004 with the Telegraph Weekends. Our final destination was Whitstable where we had a seafront hotel with rooms overlooking the sea. This always gets me excited because of the frustrations of my childhood family holidays. I remember them as being wonderful times with my parents, my sister and my grandparents: days spent building sandcastles on the beach, eating ice creams, high teas in the hotel, the sound of seagulls screeching. The day would begin with a stroll to the pier with my grandad where he'd buy a paper and I'd put a coin into a slot machine to get a toy: a tiny yellow digger sticks unexplainable in my mind. The only downside, however, was the hotel accommodation - my grandparents always had a room at the front overlooking the sea whilst our family room was at the back, usually overlooking the car park, rooftops or the kitchens. I can remember feeling really excited spending time gazing out at the sea from my grandparents's room and a little resentful. One particular holiday I recall being allowed to spend quite some time in their room but this was only as a sop to my irritation at having to spend half my holiday doing General Progress Papers in readiness for the eleven plus exam that loomed large at the time. 

Our base in Whitstable allowed us to visit two more cathedrals at Canterbury and Rochester. Canterbury was our first stop, the scene of a previous visit when Sue and I had been to a wedding there. Her brother in law's sister was marrying an ex-choirboy who was entitled to marry in the cathedral, albeit in the crypt. It was a strange occasion as it took us a complete circuit of the outside of the cathedral before we could find how to get in. During the ceremony, there were members of the public milling round at the back of the crypt and then I somehow managed to take a number of photographs of the occasion but none that featured either bride or groom. As I'd only been down in the crypt on the previous visit, the cathedral's interior was a completely new environment and my first impression was its size and the way the floor rises in steps as you move from west to east. There has been a cathedral on this site since 597 when St Augustine arrived, sent by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo Saxons. I vividly remember the story, no doubt a myth, about how Pope Gregory saw some captured Angle slaves being sold in a market in Rome. On observing their fair hair, he is said to have exclaimed, "Not Angles but Angels!" It's possible, I suppose" I can still see the picture of this scene as portrayed in a favourite pictorial history book of my younger years. 

Little is known about Augustine before he arrived in Kent which, at the time, was a powerful kingdom in its own right. Two factors probably influenced the decision to choose Kent other than its close proximity to mainland Europe - it's King, Æthelbert, was married to a Frankish queen, Queen Bertha, who was already a Christian and worshipped, according to Bede writing 140 years later, in the church of St Martin's, a church that has been used for Christian worship since around 400AD. This makes it the oldest church in England that has been in continuous use. It is a place that I have yet to visit but one I feel calling me, as it is the burial place of a number of Anglo Saxon kings. The second reason for choosing Kent was the likely response from Æthelbert to the mission's arrival. As his wife was allowed to practise her faith, they may have believed they'd get a sympathetic hearing from the king, and they were correct. Although Æthelbert wouldn't meet Augustine indoors, fearing some kind of sorcery might occur, he did allow them to settle in Canterbury, the capital of Kent, to establish a monastery there, another place on my 'to do' list, and to preach across the kingdom. Eventually, Æthelbert converted to Christianity but subsequent rulers did not always follow suit and Christianity took some time to fully establish itself. Charters were drawn up to protect the church and Augustine, already a bishop, was raised to become an archbishop by the pope. His first cathedral was replaced by a Saxon building and then one built by the Normans which forms the basis for the much extended building that stands in the centre of Canterbury today.

There have been 105 Archbishops of Canterbury to date, Augustine being the first. As the head of the English church, the position was an immensely powerful one, both from a religious and a political point of view. The ten who followed St Augustine, from St Lawrence to St Norhhelm were all canonised with the exception of Wighard who may have become St Wighard had he not died of plague before they consecrated him archbishop. Byrhthelm was the first to be deposed and sent back to Wells, falling foul of the new king who accused him of being too gentle. The last Saxon archbishop, Sigand, was excommunicated by successive popes for holding both the sees of Canterbury and Winchester. Because of this he was unable to crown William the Conqueror and could only assist the Archbishop of York. Holding political power could be a precarious position as Archbishop Simon Sudbury discovered in 1381 when he was beheaded during the Peasants' Revolt. Thomas Cranmer, instrumental in the establishment of the Church of England during Henry VIII's reign, was burnt as a heretic by the Catholic Mary I whilst William Laud was convicted by Parliament during the English Civil War and beheaded. Probably the best known archbishop, Thomas Beckett, also met a violent end, turning Canterbury into the principle place of pilgrimage over the centuries that followed. A simple stone on the cathedral floor marks the spot where he was murdered by four of King Henry II's knights  in 1170. 

Beckett was the son of a merchant but, despite the difference in their status, he and the young Henry became inseparable friends. When Henry became king, he appointed Beckett as his Chancellor, creating him archbishop when the opportunity arose as a way to bring the church more under his control. Henry and Beckett had done a lot to reform the justice system in England but the church remained outside of this, having their own courts and pleading their first allegiance, not to the King, but to God and his representative on earth, the pope. If Henry had thought his friend would be instrumental in reforming the church then he was to be disappointed. Beckett adopted a pious lifestyle, wearing a hair shirt crawling with lice and defended the church. As the relationship became strained, Beckett sought refuge for a while in France, but it appears that his Christmas Day sermon where he excommunicated and damned several bishops prompted Henry to utter the words, "Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest," or words to that effect. Believing his utterance had been instrumental in rousing Beckett's murderers to action, Henry did penance, fasting for three days and walking barefoot into the abbey where he allowed monks to whip him. Beckett's tomb was another victim of a later Henry's battle with the Catholic Church, being destroyed with his bones burnt as, "... a traitor to his king," during the Reformation. The story was dramatised in the film Beckett which I watched on a school trip to the cinema, the only school trip we had in seven years of secondary education.

There were two royal tombs to visit, one belonging to a king and one to a man who should have become king. Edward of Woodstock, known as the Black Prince, was the eldest son of Edward III. He earned a reputation as a military leader, commanding at the Battle of Crécy, one of the key English successes during the Hundred Years War with France. His death a year before his father's meant that his son Richard II became the next king at the age of ten. 22 years later, his reign was ended by his cousin who then was crowned Henry IV. It is Henry who occupies the other royal tomb and allowed me to tick off another Royal burial. In 1832, his tomb was opened to check its contents and his body was found to be remarkably well preserved including his beard of matted red hair. Another burial commemorated in the cathedral was that of Reginald Pole, a key figure in Henry VIII's battle with the pope over the divorce of Katherine of Aragon. He was the grandson of George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV and Richard III. He was made a cardinal and nearly became pope. His mother, later being made a saint, along with several members of his extended family, were executed by Henry VIII and he was the focus of an assassination attempt by the state. During the reign of Mary I, Cardinal Pole became the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. I also discovered a memorial to the Jacobean composer Orlando Gibbons, the foremost musician of his day and creator of many anthems and madrigals that have become part of the church repertoire. 

In addition to examining the tombs and memorials, we marvelled at the glorious stained glass which have been relating biblical stories to pilgrims and other visitors for centuries: a visual guide to Christianity from a time when most of the congregation would have been illiterate. One set of windows illustrate the many miracles that occurred after Beckett's murder which gained him sainthood. Some of the glass in the nave is actually older than the building that surrounds it, having been moved from the choir which was the first gothic architecture constructed in England. Spare a thought for its architect William of Sens who died during construction after falling off some scaffolding when he was inspecting the roof. We revisited the crypt - no wedding in progress on that day - and enjoyed seeing the oldest church wall murals in the country, images that would once have adorned most religious buildings but which were whitewashed with religious fervour by the Protestant reformers during the brief reign of Henry VIII's son, Edward VI. I remember we climbed up some spiral stairs that led off the north isle, and as we did an orchestra, located in the choir and practising for a concert that evening, began the opening to a lively piece of classical music. The magical memory of brass fanfares echoing off the narrow walls of the staircase is far more vivid than the reasons for climbing the steps which have quite escaped me.

I passed through Canterbury a few years ago on another of my quests to collect historical locations in one or two days. This time, with an overnight stopover in Folkestone, I was on the trail of the Cinque Ports, the medieval towns that were obliged to provide the king with ships and men at times of war. England had no standing army or navy until they were introduced by the Tudors. There were originally five ports, hence the use of the Norman French word 'cinque' although it is pronounced in this case as 'sink'. To these were added the 'ancient towns' of Winchelsea and Rye, all  of them receiving special privileges as reward for the service they provided. Some thirty additional towns in Kent and Sussex became associated  'limbs' over the years but I'd decided to focus on the original five plus two for the purposes of my collection. From Canterbury I drove on to Sandwich where, with immaculate planning, I managed to arrive on the only day of the week when its museum, dedicated to the history of the ports, was closed. I went and stood on the quiet quayside, the narrow waters clogged with all manner of boats and tried to imagine it as a busy bustling port with vessels setting off into the waters of the English Channel. Not for the last time over the two days, I failed, not least because the sea now lies three miles away. Sandwich was once Kent's principle port, located close to Richborough Castle which was the Roman entry point to Britain. Known as Rutupiae,  it was where the legions gathered when they first set foot on English soil in AD43 and from it runs the Roman Road Watling Street, heading off to Canterbury, London and Wroxeter. On another visit to the area, we walked around what remains of the Roman fort and pretty impressive it was too. Sandwich has many fine medieval buildings to admire and was the site, off shore of the Wars of the Roses Battle of Sandwich, so I could kind of mark that down as having been visited. 

From Sandwich it was a short drive down the coast to Deal, one of the limbs, and nearby Walmer Castle, the home of the Warden of the Cinque Ports, once a key position in medieval England, now a ceremonial one. Originally called 'Keepers of the Coast', the role was combined with that of Constable of Dover Castle in 1267 when one Sir Stephen de Pencester was appointed. Many noted individuals have held the post over the last 750 years including Prince Henry before he became Henry VIII, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother. The current incumbent is the Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Boyce. Dover was my next destination, its waterfront dominated by cross channel ferries and other shipping. The site of the original harbour has long since gone but was located close to the town, in the western port. I drove onto the approach roads of what is now the cruise liner terminal and, as there were no ships in that day, the area was deserted. I took a closer look at the Old Customs House and the 300 year old Cinque Port Arms, a solitary building in a fairly desolate landscape. I tried to see the chaotic scenes as Richard the Lionheart set sail from here on the third crusade, the somber ceremony as Henry V's body was brought back from France and the pomp of Henry VIII's departure to meet the French king at the Field of the Cloth of Gold: it was all but impossible. My stay in Folkestone, another limb, was pleasant enough but it lacked the charm of my first stop of the next day, Rye. Perched high above the river that gained it ancient town status, every approach is uphill and on foot if you've been smart enough to leave your car at the bottom. The streets are narrow, the buildings distinct, with many individual shops and a plethora of art galleries. Neighbouring New Winchelsea, the other ancient town, is actually over 700 years old and was built on a grid system to replace Old Winchelsea which lived a precarious life on a shingle bank that stretched out into the ancient bay that now forms Romney Marsh. In 1287, it was destroyed by the great storm that also had a major effect on my next destination, New Romney. 

New Romney was another thriving port before the storm hit. So much silt was deposited that the level of the town rose by several inches. I was able to see this for myself when I visited the church. It now lies below the level of the surrounding roads. The River Rother that had entered the sea at New Romney was diverted by the storm's deposits, changing its course to run by Rye where I'd crossed it earlier that day. I didn't attempt to try to be empathetic in New Romney as no sign of the port remains, the town being several miles inland. At least Hythe, my next port, was on the coast, although it's harbour was long gone. It isn't surprising that this stretch of coastline bears the history of countless conflicts over the years. From Richborough Castle the site of the Roman invasion to the Battle of Britain monument on the cliff tops west of Dover, the countryside here has been the first line of defence against foreign foes. Hythe had two examples that were constructed during the Napoleonic Wars, Martello Towers and the Royal Military Canal. Martello Towers, taking their name from a round tower at Martello Point in Corsica that held off an attack by two British warships for two days. 103 were constructed mainly along the coasts of Sussex, Kent, Essex and Suffolk in preparation for an expected invasion attempt by Napoleon. With a gun emplacement on the roof and accommodation for an officer and 24 men inside, they were never actually used. Many still remain, some housing museums, others being converted into private dwellings, some abandoned and left to crumble away. 

The Royal Military Canal still runs nearly thirty miles from the outskirts of Folkestone to the coast not far from Hastings and it fits the maxim: it seemed like a good idea at the time. With Napoleon amassing 130,000 troops and 200 ships near to Boulogne in Northern France, the threat of invasion was a reality and the prime location for any landing was Romney Marsh. For many years the plan had been to flood the marsh to scupper enemy troops but the presence of the French across the channel focussed the military strategists minds. Realising that they would need several days to carry out flooding and the devastation a false alarm would bring, it was decided to build the canal, the spoil being used to construct banks behind which soldiers could be stationed. The canal was built following a zigzag route so that any stretch could be defended from the side as well as head on. It was pointed out that as Napoleon's armies had crossed the Rhine and the Danube they were unlikely to have been deterred by a canal which at its widest was only thirty feet across. The whole project was a fiasco. Poor weather, lack of manpower and frequent flooding pushed it well over budget and way behind schedule. By the time it was completed, the threat of invasion had long since passed. Although pill boxes were installed when Hitler was also considering crossing the Channel, the canal has never really served much purpose. It was a pleasant place to walk alongside which is what I did before making a short detour inland to yet another limb, the town of Lydd. 

Sue and I had flown from Lydd airport to honeymoon in Paris but that was not what drew me there. I was seeing if anything remained of the Royal Artillery base that my grandfather was stationed at as an instructor during the final year of World War I. I was delighted to the camp not only there but still in operation. I was keen to capture this part of our family history and it only struck after taking a number of photos that perhaps snapping away at military establishments wasn't the cleverest thing to do. I left quickly, completing the final leg of the journey to Hastings, Cinque Port numero cinq. My final attempt to locate the medieval harbour followed a familiar pattern as all traces had been swept away by the sea, as had subsequent attempts to rebuild it. As I meandered along the promenade and climbed up into the town, I felt a little sorry for Hastings. Famous for the battle of 1066, it was neither the place where William the Conqueror landed, that being along the coast at Pevensey, or the place where the battle was fought.