Part 2

It seems unjust to pass, with no more than a mention, that lovely little isolated relic at Tilbury. Here was for centuries the natural gate, the military defence of the port. When the range of ordnance was not much more than hailing distance, no defences could be thought of upon the broadening water of the Hope, still less in the funnel of the Sea-reach. But Tilbury, standing over against Gravesend, defended the first point at which the river had narrowed sufficiently to be commanded by batteries from the shore.

In the earliest map of this point (which is preserved in the Admiralty) one may trace the way in which the river was closed. There ran out from the northern bank, pointing somewhat downstream, a sort of barrier. We have no indication of its structure. A few piles would have been sufficient to prevent a passage and to canalise traffic into the open space that was left in the midst of the stream; for this space was not left free, as we might have supposed, just under the guns of the fort, but at a range which seems upon the drawing to be about 250 yards. Whether a corresponding permanent work existed upon the Gravesend shore I am ignorant, but it was obviously easy to emplace guns there when they might be needed. Meanwhile Tilbury, with its continual preparation for arms and as continual innocence of them, with its one chief historic memory of the Armada, remains the most perfect relic of the past upon all the stretch of the river. The swamped land round about has defended it and isolated it, and that great regard for the old things of the nation which is a virtue to be proud of has saved it from decay.

For the rest, as I say, and with the exception of those rare survivals of which Tilbury is the most striking, modern industrialism, down to its last manifestations, has captured the Lower Thames and stands in a bleak contrast against the windy emptiness of the flats. Nowhere is one more oddly struck by this than opposite the great tanks which have been put up for the storage of petrol--the last of our necessities. From Tilbury upwards, wherever there is available space or good ground, it is the haste, the necessity, and the carelessness of modern exchange directed for the immediate profit of men who perpetually change their methods of acquirement (and even their homes) that marks the river. It is a new sort of desolation, the obverse (and not a pleasant one) of that more natural desolation which Nature made by stretching out her marshes and lagoons upon either side of the tideway.

And I say “exchange,” not production. Thames-side used to do many things, but in particular to tan leather and to build ships. The tanneries have nearly gone; the shipyards are in process of death. In the last journey which I made up the tide some months ago to see London once more from the river I passed what may be the last of the men-of-war built upon Thames-side. It lay completing upon the northern shore. It was the ship round which had turned the discussion whether or no the Thames could still successfully build against the north, and if the official answer is to be that it cannot, then this decision will mark the end of the oldest trade of the river and that most native to its life. But we live in a time when most things are dying.

For all this lamentable cloak of purposeless industrialism, chaotic and already murmuring with the sounds of its own dissolution, the gradual envelopment of a man who comes up river, his reception by the hugeness of modern London is a thing which no one who has experienced it can forget.

Indeed, the utter ruin of order and of plan, which is but the outward manifestation of the ruin of religion, has destroyed the sense of approach everywhere around that great helpless, apathetic nation which we call London, save where it could not be wholly destroyed, and that is along the water which was its most ancient highway.

Come in from what direction you will, save by the Thames, and the approach to London is a waste of eyesight. No one has imagined for two hundred years such a thing as a gate or a limit. There is no kind of salutation offered or of barrier presented or of definition laid down. Draggle-tail financial experiments of no interest or purpose to those responsible for them, save abstract wealth, stand isolated in fields as often as not given up to weeds and rubbish, and new roads half made end everywhere in dust-heaps or in mud. Then for one mile after another you pass the thousands of little houses all shamelessly similar, for in none does a man intend to make his being, to possess his soul, or to live and die there. There is not even a city wall remaining from the past, nor so much as a broad outer street, delimiting what may still be noble and permanent from these hopeless suburbs. Little scraps of what were once happy and united villages still stand like islands in this flood of mean brick. For the most part they are to be distinguished no longer save by the narrowness and crookedness of their streets, and when at last one comes to the inner part, where there is something of history and of meaning and of an inherited culture, one comes upon it without introduction and without grace. Of all cities that ever were, modern London least deserves a wall, gates, and a senate.

But the entry by the river cannot be wholly destroyed. The river is too strong. And therefore a man does here receive a physical impression almost worthy of the magnitude of the things he seeks. He does get some idea of London and some introduction to it. The houses and the places of change, and the great stores and the abrupt street-ends with their water steps, cluster in groups with narrower and narrower gaps between them, until at last they come up all together in rank and enclose one avenue of flood, banked everywhere by brick and crowded with the interlacing of vessels. It is a thing which, if a man could draw it properly, would make the best record of our time for the curiosity of those who are to come after us. Accustomed as we are to an eternal noise drowning thought and human life wherever the haphazard and violent activity of our time is at work, there is an odd broken silence in this waterway of sails and chains and alarms, guarded and hemmed in by the leagues of houses. The mainspring of the moving road is silent, the power of that one thing in the view which is not made by man, the rushing upward of the water; between all these new and artificial things the strength of the Thames survives with no more sound in its going than when it went through other silences before men found it.

III

LONDON THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE THAMES

It is a commonplace which must be repeated whenever the connection of the Thames with London is referred to, that the capital matter in that connection is London’s position as _the lowest crossing point upon the Thames_. That affirmation, standing alone, is of no use to history unless one also explains why it was so important to find a crossing place as low as possible down the river, and the many causes which combine to make that lowest crossing place the neighbourhood of London Bridge. These last especially require a full explanation because, of the many converging reasons for selecting that site, the chief were, until quite recently, imperfectly studied.

Why was it of such great importance for man, from the beginnings of a settled occupation in this island, to discover a convenient crossing place as low down as possible upon the course of the Thames? And why, when once this crossing place had been established, would it become the principal meeting-place in the country?

The answer to these questions is to be found, not only in the shape of the island, but in the position of its best soil and in its relation to the Continent.

It is obvious that the main connection between Great Britain and the Continent must be by the Straits of Dover. It is not only the shortness of the trajectory from the mainland to the island which makes the Straits of Dover the necessary and permanent entry into this country, it is a number of other things as well: as, that communication is very easy from the opposing shore inland; that that opposing shore was provided for ages with a harbour peculiarly suitable to early traffic--the Portus Itius (now the silted-up plain between the hills behind Boulogne); the conformation of the high land upon either side at Grinez and at Dover Cliffs which, in the centuries when the thing was important, gave an uninterrupted sight of land during the crossing; and the choice of entry which the various inlets (now filled up) afford from the Portus Lemanis behind Folkstone, the old inlet at Dover, and the old Mouth of the Stour to what was once the sheltered channel between Thanet and the mainland behind the island of Richborough. So powerful has been the topographical effect of the Straits that no revolution in travel has dispossessed them of their original importance. The great expansion in our means of communication has only emphasised the bond which is established by the Straits between this island and the Continent of Europe, and so throughout the whole of the old world. When, a few years hence, a man sets out to travel by land to India or to China, he will cross from Dover and will take his train at Calais. Were communication inland as uninterrupted throughout this island as it is throughout the opposing portion of the Continent, a system of roads would naturally have established itself, radiating from some depôt common to the various ports of Kent, just as a system of roads grew up upon the Continent, radiating from Calais and from Boulogne, and forming a network inland with such central points as Bavai, Amiens, Cassel, etc., to form pivots for the whole.

But communication within the island of Britain was not thus uninterrupted in all directions. One great obstacle lay across it from east to west, and that obstacle was the Thames. How complete an interruption the Thames formed, especially in its lower course, I will describe in a moment; it must suffice to notice here that for one who would reach all the fertile land of East Anglia and of what is now Hertfordshire, for one who would reach from the landing-place in Kent the wheat lands of what is now Essex, and the centres of population in what is now Norfolk (both of them originally capital sites of population before the growth of modern industry), the profound wedge driven into the land by the estuary of the Thames and its continuation in the tidal river formed an almost insurmountable obstacle. There was no straight line from say Canterbury to the Midlands and to the central east of the island with its great mass of arable soil. More than this: if one looks at a map of England on which moorland and waste country is distinguished from the arable soil, it will be apparent that north of the Wash the latter takes the form of a long and somewhat narrow strip corresponding at first to the lower valley of the Trent and farther north again to the Vale of York. A direct line to this arable northern strip from any principal Kentish centre (and Canterbury was such) would take one across the Thames estuary and was therefore impossible. The farther up river a practicable crossing was found the longer the detour it involved. The only considerable population in Britain that was early accessible to a road-system proceeding directly from Kent was the population of what later came to be called Wessex, that is, the central southern districts of which Winchester was the capital. As a matter of fact we find a road of immemorial antiquity proceeding directly east and west from Canterbury to Winchester along the ridge of the Chalk, but a similar road northward was blocked by the obstacle of the Thames. We shall see in a moment that the discovery of a good crossing place fairly low down in the course of the river not only saved a long detour by the upper valley for travel proceeding from the Straits of Dover to the eastern Midlands, and ultimately to the plain of York, but also afforded a fairly direct line in another direction which was essential to travel, namely, the direction of the north-west and the main ports which establish communication with Ireland.

We may take it, then, as established, that there existed from the earliest times a necessity, or a necessary tendency, to found and keep up a permanent crossing place at the lowest practicable point in the Thames valley.

Once that crossing was founded and continuously maintained it was equally necessary that it should grow into the chief meeting place of the island; that is, the chief market and therefore the chief town. Indeed the various advantages such a crossing would have form so rare a combination that we should be perfectly justified, even if we had not the evidence we have, in making certain of the existence of a great and important London early in history.

All the causes which we have seen to feed the commercial growth of the site from the sea were reinforced by the inland communications which met at this crossing place. The bridge (as I have shown elsewhere) made a terminal not only to sea-borne traffic, but to all the inland traffic from down the upper valley. It became the place of transhipment. It was further the terminal, and the necessary terminal, of the three great roads from north-west, from the north, and from the east, which combined at this point to seek the Straits of Dover to the south; and once this nexus was woven, once the market and place of meeting was fixed, it must further become the goal of other roads against which the Thames did not originally provide an obstacle. Thus it was that a road would necessarily be established from this crossing place to the west and to the south-west. Though the main traffic from the fertile Lower Severn valley would more naturally make for the Straits by way of the Chalk ridges, yet, when once London with its market supplies and depôts was established, a main road would necessarily aim at the Straits _through_ London rather than south of the Thames. And though the secondary entries into the island from the Continent by Southampton Water, and by the ports to the west of it, would naturally send out arteries of communication northward and westward, yet their communication north-eastward through London would soon acquire the chief place. That London would have become what it did through no more than these domestic causes may well be denied. The main factor in its growth was throughout the centuries what it remains to-day--the commerce of the tidal Thames. But standing at the head of that commerce London also gathered to itself, as the main crossing point of the Thames, the communications of the whole island.

The peculiar and determining effect this had upon the military history of England I have mentioned in another study,[1] and shall expand in this. Parallel effects could be found in every other department of activity, not only in commerce but in the political machinery of England, of English feudalism, and of the English monarchy, and later of English aristocratic government. London once so formed upon its river was the centre or support of each in turn supreme in the island.

Having established this, let us consider why the crossing place came just here upon the line of the river, and to solve that problem we must recollect what it is that acts as a barrier to communication, especially in early times. This barrier is certainly not to be found in hills of such a gentle sort as diversify south England. The breadth of a stream, up to half a mile or so, and apart from broken water, though of considerable importance in the problem, is again not the chief difficulty, for man has always been able to cross water if his approach to it was unimpeded. The true obstacle was marsh--bad going. It is still the chief impediment to modern engineering, and the difficulty which men found during earlier centuries in negotiating any considerable breadth of marsh translates itself to-day into the expense which a similar undertaking now involves. Belts of marsh impeding or actually forbidding travel across them have been formed upon one, the other, or both banks in so unbroken a chain down the Lower Thames valley as to make that valley the obstacle it was and is to transverse travel. The first factor in the formation of such marsh is the tide. If you have a considerable difference between high and low water, and if that difference is further complicated by great variations between the neap and the spring tides, the difficulty of the barrier of marsh affected by such a tide will be correspondingly increased.

This consideration is often missed, and it will therefore be worth while to explain it. A fairly regular height of tide covering daily the same expanse lends itself to the establishment of a regular crossing place, and though that crossing place may not be in continuous use from the difficulty of using it at low tide, it can be regularly counted upon to serve twice in the twenty-four hours. But if there is any very considerable difference in the state of the tides throughout each fortnight, then the opportunities for using the crossing are very much reduced, unless, indeed, one has a steep shore to deal with. Under such conditions one might find a spot where crossing was easy enough at the springs, and yet impossible at the neaps; and instead of a ferry regularly in use twice in the twenty-four hours, you would have one which could only be depended upon a few times in a month.

Now the Thames is a river in which this difference is considerable, and it has greatly strengthened the power of the waterway to act as an obstacle to travel from north to south.

This, then, is the first of the factors which have combined to make the Lower Thames the obstacle it was and is to travel. If we compare the Thames in this respect with the other great rivers which we have seen to be its parallels upon the Continent, we shall be struck by the greater effect of the tide in its waters.

The second factor in the establishment of such an obstacle is the type of soil over which the water works. It is evident that a tidal river and estuary in which sand and gravel or even chalk form the riparian soils will less produce marsh than clays will. A river which washes the silt of clays up and down with its tides will be defended by worse belts of bad land than one which runs through the other types of rock. Now in this respect also the Thames has a bad pre-eminence over its rivals. Chalk only comes near the stream once or twice, and for a very short distance, in its lower course, and though gravel and sand, as we shall see, approach the banks in more than one place (and ultimately determine the site of London), this kind of soil is nowhere that which the mass of the stream churns up or carries down in its course. The Thames deals for many miles of its upper tidal waters with clays, bringing them down towards the mouth, and has settled them for centuries upon either side of its channel in the shape of deep alluvial marshes.

But there is more than this.

The third factor in the problem depends upon the contours of the land upon either side of the river. A river with steep banks, fairly narrow, bounded by hills, even though it be a highly varying tidal stream, and even though it scour through a great part of its tidal course a soil of clays, cannot form wide belts of marsh upon either bank.

It so happens that the Lower Thames--until the site of London is reached--nowhere enjoys even a short stretch of steep-on shore upon both banks at once. The few spots where higher land comes down to the water’s edge upon the southern or right bank are faced in every case by great level stretches opposite which, until modern works were undertaken, were regularly flooded with every return of the tide and were impassable; while the lower and smaller patches of land on the north bank (as at Purfleet or Grays) have marsh opposite them also to the south.

In this respect the Scheldt appears under primitive conditions even worse off than the Thames; but the Seine continually enjoys steep banks after the first twenty miles or so up from its estuary, and in at least half a dozen places from Caudebec (which roughly corresponds to Gravesend) and Rouen, the first bridge (which we have seen to correspond to London), there are opportunities for crossing the tidal Seine, even under primitive conditions, with no considerable obstacle of marsh upon either bank.

Now if we combine all this and consider the total effect of all three factors in the Lower Thames valley we shall understand why no great road ever attempted to cross it, and why no line of travel runs transverse to it to-day. A mere examination of the contours would be almost sufficient, presenting, as they do, great flats in most places, stretching for miles from the main stream of the river. But beyond this you have the great variation of the tide and the type of _surface_ soil with which the stream deals.

Civilisation has so considerably changed the aspect of all our streams, it has so embanked them and drained their neighbourhood, that in order to appreciate the original conditions which made it impossible to find a crossing place below London one must consult the new sheets of the Ordnance Geological Survey. They give us the drift or top-soil--which alone of course concerns travel. In this new survey the area covered by alluvium and the line where that alluvium impinges upon the older and harder soils to the north and the south are very clearly marked. That area with its boundary line gives one the original area and the original boundary line of the Thames’ marshes, and it is very instructive.

The problem is one of approach from the south. From the north there is no firm soil at all within the neighbourhood of the riverbed from the sea upwards until one reaches the slight eminence of the City, unless one counts the isolated patches at Purfleet and Grays, the approach to which from the north was not only originally difficult but connected with no reasonable line of travel. One has but to look at the map to see that Purfleet could have been approached from the north by no considerable road. It might have formed some sort of terminal for an eastern road but only that at the expense of a long detour such as is made by the main road to-day through Ockendon or by the railway, for immediately behind lies a belt of what was originally marsh. Moreover, even if primitive travel had drifted by this somewhat circuitous route to the hard patch at Purfleet, it would have found no crossing there; immediately opposite lay the very wide belt of marshy land which flanks either side of the Darent. That river comes in almost exactly opposite the small belt of natural hard on which Purfleet stands.

Primitive travel, then (and for that matter modern travel too, unless it is at a great expense of engineering), could not approach the northern bank of the Thames between the sea reaches and the City of London save, and that with difficulty, by the very small exceptional patches of Purfleet and Grays, and at Purfleet would have discovered no opportunities for a crossing: the bank opposite being a particularly wide and impossible stretch of marsh at this point.

Now as to Grays: That very pleasant place does give some approach both in soil and contour to the water from the north. It is just on the edge of the chalk, just above the old limit of high water, and its original nucleus, though not actually on the stream, would require but a short causeway to reach it.