The older portions of the town of Erith, with the background of hills stretching away to the Abbey Woods, retain a certain rural character, and at the annual fair held on Whit-Monday it resumes for a time something of its ancient appearance when it was the seat of a corporation and had its own weekly market. Another strong element of interest of a different kind is the fact that in its neighbourhood the whole life-story of the valley of the Thames can be read backwards, the excavations made for various purposes having laid bare the strata and revealed the remains of many animals, such as the elephant and the great cave tiger, that were extinct in Great Britain long before the historic era. Moreover, the draining of the marshes has brought to light the remains of what was at first supposed to be a submerged forest, but is proved to be the relics of early historic or prehistoric embankments, trunks and roots of a great variety of trees bearing unmistakable traces of human manipulation having been found in a bed of peat below the alluvial clay. Within easy reach of Erith is the riverside village of Belvedere, destined probably soon to become a town, that takes its name from a mansion on high ground that was built in 1764 by Sir Samuel Gideon, {96} later Lord Eardley, but was converted, in 1869, into a home for aged seamen, and is now a noted school for boys. [Sidenote: North Cray] Further away from the Thames, though still to a certain extent in touch with it, is the romantic district collectively known as the Crays, watered by the river from which it takes its name, and in which are situated the town of Crayford and the villages of North Cray, Foot's Cray, Bexley, St. Paul's Cray, Mary Cray, and Orpington. The site of the first, the Crecgenford of the Saxon chronicle, was the scene, in 457, of a battle in which Hengist and his son Æsc fought against the Britons, slaying four thousand men, and here and there in the neighbourhood are many artificial caves with vaulted roofs, locally known as Dane holes, and popularly supposed to have been used as hiding-places for treasure in times of war, but which are possibly really parts of the great system of underground galleries and chambers that was recently opened at Chislehurst. At the time of the Doomsday Survey, Crayford manor was the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sub-manors of Newbury and Marshal Court were bought, in 1694, by Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel, whose descendants sold the mansion belonging to them to the owner of a linen factory, who quickly converted it into a workshop, thus inaugurating the transformation of a mere hamlet into a thriving manufacturing centre, for it now owns many factories and mills employing a large number of work-people.