Legends of Kent (abridged)

40 Pages·2016·0.26 MB·English

by  Hanagan Mike

Legends
Of
Kent
By
Mike Hanagan
Pat Cox
www.legendsofkent.co.uk
[email protected]
Introduction
Just like anyone else born in Kent, we grew up being told stories of the villages where we lived. Many were local legends, like the ghostly highwayman of Oxney Bottom, which spooked
generations of children from the village.
As well the ghost stories there were fascinating legends like Grey Dolphin. Did Robert de Shurland really kill his horse on the word of a local witch? Was that church in Gravesend really
visited by aliens? If you ask the locals you will get ten different versions of the story.
With Kent being the eldest county in England it’s reasonable to expect a few famous names and events to have links here, yet Kent has an abundance of them.
Names and events that when you hear them for the first time leaves you thinking “wow I didn’t know that”
Did you know about Kent’s own “Bermuda Triangle”, what about the Kentish folk who saw battle at Trafalgar or at Rorkes Drift, or even the Titanic passenger from Sittingbourne?
Throughout the generations these stories have been told and re-told thousands of times and with each telling the story grows and adapts a little bit more.
The stories we have written in this book are the versions, which we have come to know and love. How historically accurate they are could be debated forever, although the basic facts of
many of the stories are 100% accurate as our research has found. We leave you to decide, fact or fiction, myth or legend or a mixture of all four.
So join us on a journey across history and through the towns and villages immortalised in Kentish folklore and see how many times you say...

“Wow I didn’t know that”
Goodwin Sands
Of course the Goodwins have their fair share of legends, starting from their origins. It is said that this sand bank was once a small island, called Lumea.
It was swept away by a fearful storm in 1099, legend has it that its last owner, an abbot in Canterbury, failed to properly maintain the sea walls resulting in the island's destruction. Saxon
sailors surely knew the area well as the name demonstrates: gode wine, good friend.
Local legends hold that there are a number of ghost ships in the area: the first is an unnamed Spanish galleon from the Armada, which is said to have become shipwrecked during an
attempted mutiny.
The second one is the HMS Northumberland, a frigate lost with all hands in the Goodwin Sands during the Great Storm of 1703 together with four other warships.
The most recent one is the steamer Violet, shipwrecked with the loss of the entire crew in 1857.
The most famous ghost of the Goodwin Sands is the schooner Lady Luvibond, lost at sea in 1748. Local legends link it with a tragic love story but since the ship was lost at sea with the
entire crew and all the passengers nobody came back to tell what really happened.
It is believed that the Lady Luvibond appears every fifty years on the 13th of February and that it will regularly require a "sacrifice" in the form of another ship lost to the Goodwins during
the first two months of year.
The last time the Lady Luvibond appeared was in 1948 and its last "victim" was a small Italian merchant in that year whose whole crew luckily escaped unharmed.
Unfortunate Princes
The ancient village of Eastry has been resident in the south eastern part of Kent since the Roman times, at the time of Ceaser's rule and probably before then. Through Eastry ran the Roman
road from Woodnesborough to Dover which can still be traced.
Eastry has a place in history for Egbert, King of Kent, had a palace there (The site now occupied by Eastry Court). Egbert came to the throne in A.D. 664 upon the death of his father King
Erconbert. The line was supposed to be handed to Erconbert's eldest sibling Ermenred, but he died before the King. Ermenred had two sons who were young Princes, Ethelbert and Ethelred who were
cousins of the King. The line had intended to fall to them but was handed to Egbert instead.
From the start Egbert was not comfortable in his new position and looked with paranoia upon his two young cousins. Anxieties led him to seek council from his trusted adviser, or so he
thought, Thunnor. Thunnor was an evil and callous man, whose evil suggestions eventually persuaded Egbert to believe that his throne was not safe all the time the Princes were alive. As his opposition
to Thunnor grew weaker, Thunnor took it upon himself to murder the two Princes around AD 670 - but Egbert's never gave his explicit consent to the destruction of his cousins.
Ethlebert & Ethelred were treacherously slain and buried quietly, without prayers or honours, under the hall of the King's Palace. As the legend goes a supernatural light then shone over the
concealed tomb to reveal the crime. Egbert was so filled with horror and remorse that he confessed to being half-guilty of the murder of the two Princes. He immediately ordered the removal of the
bodies and buried them with full Royal honours behind the high alter of Wakering Church in Essex. Miracles were then reported in testimony of their innocence. They were later transported to Ramsey
Abbey, Cambridgeshire.
Under Saxon law, it is said that King Egbert was required to pay 'Weregild', or pay 'The price of blood' in exchange for his crimes.
Kent was consolidated into one monarchy, in A.D. 827. Eastry gradually ceased to be a royal residence, and in A.D. 979 the reigning sovereign bestowed the palace and manor upon the
monks of Christ Church, Canterbury.
The Old Grey Lady of Oxney Bottom
The dark, forbidding woodland with its ivy-covered trees and thick undergrowth seems to hold many secrets: a ruined church, an ancient stately home, strange trenches and rumour that it was
once the site of a village. The Dover Road that winds its way through these woods with treacherous bends has been the site of many incidents.
St Nicholas’ Church at Oxney was known for being a ‘chapel of ease’ served by the abbey of West Langdon. This meant that the tiny church served the needs of the owners and workers of
the estate. These places straddle the Dover to Deal road - this later became the A258.
In the late 1300s around the time of King Richard II's reign, tradition has it, the legend of the Old Grey Lady of Oxney. It is thought to be that of a servant girl, Isabella Helene who worked
as a maid at the nearby Oxney Manor, a short distance from St Nicholas.
On this particular day she was sent to fetch some water from the local stream by Oxney Bridge. Dressed in a long grey cloak with a hood, Isabella is to have said to have twisted her ankle on
the road leading down to the main road. She was in much pain and with her face etched with sadness, she carried on nevertheless. As she hobbled down the junction with the main road, Isabella was hit
by a horse and cart travelling towards Deal and killed instantly.
Whether or not the driver of the cart saw her is unknown because some of bends in the road are severe and blind.
In 1967 a local paper reported a story from a reader, describing how the Grey Lady had apparently boarded a double-decker bus and was seen climbing the stairs to the upper deck. When the
bus conductress went upstairs to collect the fare there was nobody there. The bus did not stop again until it reached its arrival in Deal so no-one could explain where she had gone.
This account could be the retelling of an earlier story from Christmas 1958, when the conductor of a double decker bus heading for Deal had a similar experience. Tom Relf recalled
‘I was inside the lower deck, when the bus stopped at Oxney Bottom. A lady dressed in dark clothes boarded the bus and went upstairs. I went up to collect the fare from this person; there
was no new passenger to be seen. I commented to one of the passengers that I was sure I had seen a woman board the bus and come upstairs'. The male passenger said he had seen her and that she was
sitting behind him. However there was nobody there at all!
On arrival in Deal, his bus driver confirmed that he had indeed made a stop to pick up a woman dressed in dark clothes at Oxney. Again, no other stop had been made in that area so there
was no possible explanation for the disappearance.
Conquest House - Canterbury
Conquest House in Palace Street, Canterbury, is reputed to be the place where four knights of King Henry II waited before going out and giving Thomas Becket that fatal seeing-to. At this
time the house was owned by Gilbert the Citizen.
The four knights - 28 year olds Sir Reginald Fitz Urse, Sir Hugh de Morville, 26 year old Sir William de Tracey, and Sir Richard le Breton, 29, arrived here on 29th December, 1170 and left
their arms and servants.
Two of the knights broke into the Archbishop's Palace where there was a heated argument with Becket. They failed to get him to revoke the excommunication on many of the King Henry’s
supporters.
The knights returned to Conquest House to get their weapons, while the monks persuaded Becket to seek sanctuary in the Cathedral. Then on the evening of the 29th, and the knights came
barging into Canterbury Cathedral. They stuck three swords into Becket, and with the forth they cut off the top of his head. Le Breton, according to legend is to have broken his sword on the Archbishop's
crown in the process. And, as gruesome as it is, they scattered his brains around the cathedral.
After killing him, one of the knights shouted "Let us away. He will rise no more."
After Becket's murder, Hugh and his associates at first took refuge in Knaresborough Castle; then afterwards the king sent them to obtain absolution from Pope Alexander III. It is said that all
four were enjoined to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but it is not known whether they made it there.
It is however to this day, unknown as to which Knight was to deliver the fatal blow.