On the Thames, below Dartford, is Greenhithe, which has kept both its
name and the justification thereof from the times of the Saxons to the
present day. There the Danish King had an entrenched camp as a winter
station for his soldiers. Here William the Conqueror was stopped by the
men of Kent until he confirmed them in their old Saxon laws and
privileges. From here Sir John Franklin and Captain Crozier sailed in
the Erebus and Terror (in the year and month of my birth) on their last
and fatal voyage to the Pole. Here still the hithe discharges its lime
and chalk, and has an environment and background of green fields and
woods.
Ærrehythe, “the old haven,” known to us as Erith, the landing place for
what was from 1178, when it was founded, the important Abbey of Lesnes,
which still gives its name to the Hundred.
Our “Cold Harbours.”
Perhaps the most common place-name in England is that of Cold Harbour;
though Sutton and Norton may run it close. Over one hundred and seventy
have been enumerated in England, a number which would be brought up to
over two hundred if we added the Caldecots and the Calcotts (we have a
Calcott in Sturry parish) which are names with the same meaning. And yet
in a sense Cold Harbour is not a place-name, for the only parish of that
name was not formed and named until 1842. It is near Dorking. However,
as a name of a manor or a farm it is common. Thus in London (where we
should hardly expect Cold Harbours of the kind found in country places)
there was the Manor of Coldherberghe, of which we know much since 1327.
Situated on the bank of the Thames near London Bridge, its mansion was
tenanted by royal dukes, a bishop, a Lord Mayor, and afterwards became
the Hall of the Watermen’s Company, and at last the City of London
Brewery. The other is in Camberwell, which was one great manor at the
time of the Conquest, but later divided into minor lordships, to two of
which the name of Cold Harbour was given, of which one was Cold
Herbergh, Hachesham (Hatcham now), while the other survives in the well
known Cold Harbour Lane, in Camberwell. In early 19th century maps Cold
Blow Farm was the representative of the old manor (Kent has a Cold Blow
in Bexley). A curious 15th century corruption was Coldabbeye, though
there was never an abbey there. The farm succumbed to suburban expansion
in the 19th century; but Harbour Road, Cold Harbour Lane, and Cold
Harbour Place, tell us of its site.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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