The Kentish Coast

The seaboard of Kent, and indeed the south coast of England in general, is no little-known margin of our shores. It is not in the least unspotted from the world, or solitary. It...

To fully appreciate the majestic appearance of Greenwich, you must view it from the river. Indeed, none of these waterside places from Deptford all the way to Gravesend, show to...

Rising steeply out of Dartford, we come by the Dover Road, the ancient Watling Street, up to the lofty plateau of Dartford Brent; here taking the left-hand fork where the road b...

Very little change overtakes Rochester High Street, that narrow, rather gloomy, and distinctly dirty-looking thoroughfare. The Corn Exchange clock still projects its “moon face”...

It was in the Swale that Augustine baptized King Ethelbert on Whit Sunday, June 2nd, A.D. 596, and thus made him a child of God. On Christmas Day the following year he similarly...

It is two miles from this side of Harty Ferry to Faversham, through Oare and Davington. Hard by the landing-place the sinuous and muddy Faversham Creek joins the Swale, and ugly...

A curious and but-little-visited part of the Kentish littoral is that which stretches, some eight miles or so, between Iwade, Milton, Sittingbourne, Tonge, and Faversham. It is...

The road from Faversham to Whitstable winds level for long distances, passing at first through a charming district of cherry-orchards, interspersed with emerald pastures, with s...

Herne Bay is a place of entirely modern creation, and does not stand upon a bay. The coastline, in fact, runs remarkably straight between Whitstable and Margate, and anything in...

The enormous size of the cornfields of Thanet is immediately apparent, and is one of the most striking features of the Isle. The soil, too, is remarkably fertile; owing, accordi...

Margate the Merry, to which we enter by electric tramway, is the oldest and most popular of English seaside resorts: and also, in some opinions, the most vulgar. However that ma...

The walk past Cliftonville the select, along the grassy cliffs, leads round by Foreness Point and discloses a succession of chalky nooks, “gaps,” and “gates,” where little ravin...

The old seaport and holiday-resort of Ramsgate may be reached quickly along the desolate Dumpton Park Drive already spoken of; but the pedestrian’s better way from Broadstairs i...

But to have done with Ramsgate. We may perhaps explore to the very end of the West Cliff, where rows of great ugly houses look out seaward from that height, and where the bastio...

Approaching Sandwich, whose towers and roof-tops rise picturesquely ahead from the level marshes, mingled with the masts and spars of a few vessels lying at the town quays, a be...

The old road from Sandwich to Deal ran across the sandy wastes through which the railway goes, but the sand-dunes that line the shore all the way between the towns, and stretch...

It has been shown that the Goodwins have from the earliest times greatly exercised the imaginations of all kinds of people, and that the bones of countless dead have found sepul...

The low, beachy shore of Deal continues westward through Lower Walmer, the chief part of Walmer lying inland where the road begins to take its rise towards the high rolling down...

The great and growing town of Dover looks forward to a greater fame than even the historic past has conferred upon it. The measure of Dover’s greatness is not the usual measurem...

Dover has ever been a favourite port with travellers. The advantage of lying near to the opposite coast determined its fortunes from the earliest times, for sea-sickness has nat...

“... Stand still. How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down Hangs one t...

We come into Folkestone by way of the mean streets that immediately fringe the Old Town, that survival of the fisher-village which existed many centuries before ever the modern...

From Sandgate the seashore goes level for many miles, through Seabrook and Hythe, and across Romney Marsh to Dungeness. Not until Sussex is reached and Winchelsea passed do the...

The town of New Romney, new nine hundred years ago, is located afar off, not by its houses, which are few indeed, but by the trees that encircle it, and give a very direct denia...

Three miles from New Romney, across the levels, is the remote little town of Lydd, in the midst of Dunge Marsh. Its remoteness rendered Lydd a suitable place for artillery-camps...