It was not till comparatively recent years that this old house was
pulled down, and the connecting passage, “tub hole,” under the back
kitchen floor, and the hiding-place in the chimney stack, about 7 ft.
by 2 ft. by 3ft., were disclosed.
Many more like yarns were current years ago, but we must up anchor and
set our faces once more westward.
The coastline from Folkestone onwards decreases in height, but
Dungeness lies ahead, known as the most dangerous of all headlands
between the North Foreland and Spithead. As we drop Folkestone astern
and cruise along the pleasant shore, with the high range of the Downs
behind it inland, one passes Hythe of historic memory, now a clean,
modern town, though no longer a port; and behind it Saltwood, with the
ancient tower breaking through the encompassing woods. Here it was
that the murder of the great Archbishop Thomas A’Becket was planned,
and hence the murderers, headed by one Ranulf de Broc, owner of the
stronghold, set forth on their dastardly mission. It was to the castle
also they afterwards returned to find (so tradition tells us) that the
table set in the great hall for their entertainment and refreshment
declined to bear the viands, whilst the torches kindled to give them
light turned sickly and flickered out.
Soon Dungeness looms ahead with the wide stretching Romney Marsh,
beloved in ancient times by outlaws, and in later ones the rendezvous
of the most desperate and successful of the Kentish smugglers, on our
starboard quarter. Reminiscent of Holland, and having its saving dyke
in Dymchurch Wall three miles long, it was in the early years of the
last century a wild desolate expanse so given over to the smugglers
that they were powerful enough to make one parson at least give
them the freedom of one of the aisles of his church as a store for
contraband. But the parsons of those days were not above receiving a
“tub” which had never paid duty for themselves, and a bale of silk or
lace for their wives and daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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