If indeed Chaucer and his pilgrims slept in Sittingbourne, as one may well believe, it is probable that they slept either at this chapel at Schamel or at the Lion Inn in the town. This Inn was certainly in existence in his time, and there in 1415 King Henry V. was entertained on his return from Agincourt by the Squire of Milton. There, too, in all likelihood, Cardinal Wolsey rested in the autumn of 1514, and there Henry VIII., who spoiled the face of England and changed her heart, "paied the wife of the Lyon in Sittingbourne by way of rewarde iiiis. viiid." for the accommodation given. This famous Inn stands in the centre of the town, the road passing to the south of it. Unhappily the church is less interesting, having been almost entirely rebuilt in 1762; but close by it were some old houses which apparently once formed part of another old Inn called the White Hart. Certainly much of the town must have been devoted to the entertainment of travellers.
From Sittingbourne I wandered out to Borden, lovely in itself and in its situation upon the rising ground under the North Downs. It possesses a very fine church with a low Norman tower and western door of the same date. Within is a very nobly carved Norman arch under the belfry.
If Schamel was, as it were, the western part of Sittingbourne with its chapel and hermitage, Swanstree was the eastern part, and it, too, had its chapel of St Cross and its hospital of St Leonard. There is, however, this difference, that, whereas the priest and people of Sittingbourne did all they could to suppress the chapel and hermitage of Schamel, they on the contrary did all they could to encourage the chapel and hospital of Swanstree. Why? Because pilgrims coming from London or the north with full pockets towards Canterbury, would reach Schamel _before_ passing through Sittingbourne, but Swanstree only _after_ passing through the town!
Following the Pilgrim's Road out of Sittingbourne one soon comes to Bapchild, where at the exit from the village on the north side of the road of old stood an oratory, and a Leper's Hospital, of which nothing seems really to be known save that it was founded about the year 1200. According to Canon Scott-Robertson, it was dedicated in honour of St James, which is a curious dedication for a Leper House, but common enough in a Hospital for pilgrims. Oratory and Hospital have alike disappeared, but close by the place where they stood there still remains St Thomas's Well, now known as Spring Head or Spring.