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Odds n' Ends..! |
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Kent is called "The Garden of England" and is very beautiful with its fields and rolling hills of wheat and barley, hop fields, apple orchards, strawberry fields and fruit and vegetables. It is also known for its lovely old world villages and its coastal villages, town and ports. It is also home to
Canterbury Cathedral, the famous White Cliffs of Dover and the Dover Ferry terminal for a quick 90 minute ferry transfer to Calais in France. Summer in Kent is a most wonderful and special time, as the climate is generally much balmier with more sunshine than other parts of England.
Click on the headings to find out more:
Treasures and stories abound in magnificent Canterbury Cathedral (building commenced in 1070). In medieval times,
pilgrims from all over Europe would travel each year to pray at the shrine of the murdered Archbishop of
Canterbury, Thomas a'Becket. A plaque marks the spot where four knights did him in (1170)
and the worn steps are evidence of the number of people to visit the shrine. The most famous pilgrims of
course are the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Henry VIII plundered the shrine in 1538 and
nobody knows what he did with the saint's remains.
You should allow a good half-day to explore the cathedral - look for the alabaster shrine of Henry IV who is
buried with his wife Queen Joan of Navarre and the tomb of The Black Prince with its effigy and the prince's
shield and sword. Also, the tomb of Archbishop Sudbury. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he introduced the highly
unpopular poll tax and was beheaded in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381. His body is buried with a ball of lead and
his head is in a church in Suffolk.
Canterbury itself is an old city of narrow winding streets, still partly encircled by the medieval wall that was
built on Roman foundations. There are a number of good museums.
Four miles south-west (a pleasant walk or a ten-minute drive) is the charming medieval village of Chilham where
16th and 17th Century houses sit around the village square. Part of the movie Moll Flanders was filmed here.
There are also ruins of a Norman castle and a fine church.
Margate was one of England's first resort towns with Londoners travelling there by boat. It's still a resort
town with stereotypical entertainment attractions and fun parks.
Broadstairs is a less tacky resort and has links with Charles Dickens. Dickens owned holiday homes
there and wrote parts of Bleak House and David Copperfield in the house on top of the cliff above the pier.
It's now a privately run Dickens museum called Bleak House. There's a Dickens festival each June, which
runs for a week and culminates in a grand ball with everyone in Victorian dress. Dickens himself is buried
in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, London.
There's not a lot to see in Dover apart from people passing through.
It's the world's busiest passenger harbour.
The two places of interest are the famous White Cliffs and the magnificent medieval castle overlooking the
harbour. Over the centuries the English progressively strengthened the castle as the first line of defence
against an invasion by the French. This happened as recently as the Napoleonic War and the Second World War.
On a tour you'll see wall carvings by French prisoners and 13th century tunnels dug beneath the castle. The
walls of the keep (built 1181 - 1187 are seven metres thick in places. Tours are conducted of the Victorian
courthouse and cells of the Old Town Gaol.
There's also the remains of a Roman lighthouse called the Pharos, which could be the oldest standing building in
England, dating back to 50AD. The Pharos almost has a modern rival - but mercifully that was avoided.
Shortly after World War II, an American cigar manufacturing company is said to have offered to build a giant
lighthouse atop the White Cliffs, in the shape of a bust of Sir Winston Churchill. The light would have
shone from the great man's cigar. The offer was politely but firmly refused.
Walmer Castle is 20 miles east of Canterbury and overlooks the coast where Julius Caesar is believed to have landed
in 55BC. Inside you'll find relics relating to the Duke of Wellington including the armchair he died in and
the original 'Wellington boots'.
Folkestone is another place where people pass through, on and off the ferries. Romney Marsh is a flat,
fertile plain and the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway is the world's smallest public railway. Hythe is an
attractive old seaside town and visitors with a taste for the macabre will enjoy the crypt of St Leonard's
Church. There are 8000 thighbones and 2000 skulls sitting about on shelves. Rudimentary maths makes one
ponder where the other 2000 skulls went.
There's a strange contrast at Dungeness where a nuclear power station sits beside the largest seabird colony
in the southeast. Moated Hever Castle, near Edenbridge, was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, one of
Henry VIII's unfortunate wives.
Chartwell is a large country home nearby (5 miles west of Sevenoaks) that was Winston Churchill's family home
from 1922 until his death in 1965. On display are Churchill's books, furniture, personal mementoes, his own
paintings and a brick wall he built himself.
Knole House, south of Sevenoaks, is also well worth a visit. It's a graceful old Elizabethan mansion. Virginia
Woolf based her novel Orlando on the history of the house and family. For a basic definition of mansion, this one
has 7 courtyards, 52 staircases and 365 rooms.
Leeds castle (just east of Maidstone) is one of the world's most beautiful castles, standing on two
islands in a lake surrounded by rolling, wooded hills. Built in the 9th Century, Henry VIII transformed it
from a fortress into a palace - as opposed to the many palaces he transformed into rubble. There's also a golf
course, aviaries and possible the world's only museum devoted entirely to dog collars.
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