A CHALLENGE TO THE CONTINENT
OF ALL THE 38 counties in England, Kent is the best. I say that because it is my county. If it were not, I would put it about fourth — after Dorset, Hereford and Cumbria — for looks only, because Kent does have its blots. Let me therefore change my tune, and call it the most inter- esting county in England.
It is the most interesting because its geography has decided its history, and that of a large part of England too. It is our frontier county. It confronts the nearest shore of continental Europe with a snub nose and a challenge. If the kingdom is invaded, Kent suffers first. If we invade, it is from here that we take off. In peacetime it has the enormous commercial advantage of the Channel ports, and a north shore which marks the estuary of the Thames that by geographical good fortune opens opposite the greatest estuary of northern Europe. Trade has therefore always been as important to Kent as its defences. It has royal connections and, with Canterbury as its only city of national significance, it is the focus of the Anglican Church for no other reason than that St Augustine land- ed nearby, and was welcomed by a Chris- tianised queen whose ancient chapel, St Martin's, still stands.
So it is not surprising that Kent has always been affluent. 'It is the only place for happiness,' Jane Austen wrote to her sister from Godmersham. 'Everybody is rich there.' While that was not, and is not, true (Wat Tyler and Jack Cade were Ken- tish men), there is no doubt that it wears an air of prosperity if not of grandeur, for its social aspirations were at baronet level, not ducal. There are no great estates in Kent, and only three houses in the Chatsworth category, Cobham, Knole and Otford, the latter mostly in ruin. But it has more listed buildings than any other comi- ty, and two monuments that could rank as national symbols of ecclesiastical and secu- lar power, the cathedral at Canterbury and Dover Castle.
The architectural wealth of Kent rests not in its parish churches, which are poor compared with those of Sussex or East Anglia, but in manor houses which can expand in size and dignity to what Amefi- cans call mansions, like Ightham Mote, Goodnestone, Mereworth, Finchcocks and Bourne Park, and castles like Hever, Salt- wood and Penshurst. Below this level are innumerable small houses of brick and timber which were built in the 15th to 18th centuries from the profits of the wool and iron industries, and in our own times have been rescued from perdition by com- muters and the retired. The survival rate of Kentish houses is remarkable. Professor A.M. Everitt has calculated that 'there are probably about ten thousand farms and hamlets whose sites have been continuous- ly occupied for the best part of eight hun- dred years', and he estimates that some 8,000 mediaeval buildings still stand.
Most of them are to be found in the Weald, the rural centre of Kent that seems unaffected by the coastal and estuarial towns that surround it. This is the ide- alised Kent of oast-houses, hop-gardens and orchards, the undulating vale that lies between the North and South Downs which has given to the whole county the soubriquet of the Garden of England. There are small towns in it —Tenterden, Cranbrook, Edenbridge — and many villages which originated in clearings in the great forest of Andredsweald, which until the early Middle Ages covered this `I'm pregnant.' part of southern England from Ashford to Winchester.
The Weald is little spoiled. No industry except agriculture has penetrated it since the wool and iron trades abandoned it three centuries ago, just in time to save it from pollution. Its very road system is still mediaeval. The farms are spaced so close together that it is difficult to find any emi- nence from which at least two are not visi- ble. By a law called Gavelkind, peculiar to Kent, Jutish in origin and not repealed until this century, a property must be equally divided between a man's sons if he died intestate, and not left entire to the eldest. Hence the multiplication of hold- ings and the jigsaw of small fields and spin- neys that characterise the Weald; although many farms have been amalgamated and are worked not by labourers but by con- tractors with huge machines, and hops and fruit-trees, when not grubbed out, have been miniaturised in the interests of easier harvesting.
Nobody who lives and works in the Weald sentimentalises it, for its clay can be stubborn and its winters bleak, but it is the picture of England that most men dreamt of in first world war trenches or today's oil- men in Dubai dream of, for it is beautiful and calm. No wonder that the inhabitants of Bromley, Orpington and Bexley insisted on retaining Kent as their postal address when wrenched from it in 1974 to become London boroughs. They were not thinking of Gravesend or Folkestone; they were thinking of the Weald.
Kent, too, is a fortress. The white cliffs do not extend very far each side of Dover, but they symbolise its historical role as a bastion. Dover Castle itself is ringed by Iron Age dykes, and there the Romans built a lighthouse to wink at its neighbour in Boulogne. The whole coast is a palimpsest of defensive works: the Roman forts at Reculver, Richborough and LyrnP- ne; the Cinque Ports (of which one, Sand- wich, is the loveliest town in Kent); Henry VIH's castles at Deal and Walmer; succes- sive fortifications on the Thames and Med- way estuaries; the military canal that sealed off Romney Marsh against the threat of Napoleonic invasion; the pill-boxes con- structed in the turmoil of 1940 — all these survive in ruin or adaptations, like the Martello towers that were designed as gun platforms and now dry fishing-nets. So much for defence. Offence leaves less of a mark, but Kent's role in counter-attack was equally significant, from Henry V to the Dover Patrol of the first world war, to the airfields, like Biggin Hill and Manston, of the second.
Paradoxically, this most vulnerable part of the English coastline was developed as its first chain of holiday resorts. It was a Margate man, Benjamin Beale, who in 1753 invented the bathing-machine which made it possible for ladies to take to the waves without loss of decorum; and for the next two centuries the villages round the knob of the North Foreland, from Whit- stable to Ramsgate, expanded along the coast until they touched, providing Lon- doners, by sea at first, then by rail, with crowded beaches and donkey rides. There are still some attractive features there specially at Broadstairs, as Dickens found — and the Paragon at Ramsgate is one of the prettiest Regency terraces in England. But it must be said that the blemish of Vic- torian building in these resorts has con- tributed to their decline. Brighton, Bournemouth and latterly Spain proved tempting competitors for holidaymakers. The Kentish resorts, are now less for the tired than the retired, but even for this purpose it will take more than a face-lift to rival Tunbridge Wells for its comforts or Sevenoaks for its vitality. We are still apt to think of Kent as mainly rural. The oast-house image (though most of them are now converted into houses) is tenacious. But for 150 years the county's population has been mainly urban. Already in the 18th century, paper was manufactured on the lower Medway, and Chatham with its dockyards employed thousands of men and women in the con- struction of men-of-war that were the most elaborate artefacts of which technology Was then capable. With railways and steamships came an explosion of urban development along Kent's northern shore that to this day is indelible. Cross Rochester's famous bridge westwards, leaving behind you a Norman castle and cathedral with lovely Georgian terraces branching from them, and you will find yourself in something that looks like Slough. It is Strood — as horrid as its name is blunt. There is scarcely any open country left between Gravesend and Sit- tmgbourne. The industrial towns, still skewered by the great Roman road, are Composed of mean streets of standardised housing, more loved by those who live in them than by strangers. Pretty Faversham comes as a relief.
Do not let me induce too much pity and despair for north Kent. However unattrac- tive these towns may seem, they are resilient. Their new housing estates Promise a revival of good design. Chatham's dockyard, surrendered by the Navy to tourists in 1984, has become a bril- liant exhibition of our naval history, while among all Strood's factories I did not see one that was derelict.
The supermarkets bear witness to the People's well-being, their aisles as crowded as their shelves. On one side they have the sea; on the other, less than a mile south of Watling Street, a vermicelli tangle of lanes that traverse the North Downs, so quiet, so thinly populated, so unaltered since the first Ordinance Survey map of this district Was published in 1801, despite the M2 which sweeps through it with imperi- ous disdain, that one wonders how two dif- ferent faces of Kent can co-exist in such Proximity.
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