“In Greenland I Whales, Sea horse and Beares did slay, Though now my bodie is in tombe, in Clay.”
Nor is Sheerness precisely a joyous holiday resort. It is a place of strength, guarding the entrance to the Thames and Medway, and will have to stand in the forefront of any attack; but exactly wherein its strength resides is not at all apparent to the layman. No doubt booms and floating mines, although not spectacular defences, would play a foremost part. The history of this congeries of four towns--Blue Town, Marine Town, Banks Town, and Mile Town--that constitute Sheerness is not a glorious one. The site was a swamp until reclamation was begun under James the First. Continued in the next reign, and through the Commonwealth, the Admiralty in the time of Charles the Second selected this as the site for a dockyard and fortifications to protect Sheppey from invasion. Pepys tells us, under date of August 18th, 1665, how “we,” the King and others, “walked up and down, laying out the ground to be taken in for a yard to lay provisions for cleaning and repairing of ships, and a most proper place it is for the purpose.”
On February 27th, 1667, the King and the Duke of York were at Sheerness to lay out the design for the fortifications, which, four months later, were destroyed by the Dutch.
An odd survival, found where least expected, remains here. Few who walk the planks of the Cornwallis Jetty realise that they are laid over the forgotten hull of the old man-o’-war _Cornwallis_, seventy-four guns, which figured in the Navy a hundred years ago. Down beneath remains the dim interior of that wooden line-of-battle ship, with the original portholes.
For the rest, Sheerness to-day is sheerly and frankly ugly, and Cockney, and quite unashamed. The look of it is as though long lengths of the Old Kent Road and the dullest, dreariest purlieus of Camberwell had come down to the sea and forgotten to return. Let us, then, leaving it behind, hasten along the shore, past the obsolete Barton’s Fort and the hideous brick-and-iron railed Admiralty range-finders that form abominable eyesores on the beach, and make for Minster. To reach that hill-top village, the woebegone attempted developments of a building-estate styled “Minster-on-Sea,” a place without shape or form, are passed; but, these things left behind, the unspoiled country of Sheppey is entered. The “monasterium,” whence Minster derives its name, was the ancient Priory of St. Saxburga, founded in early Saxon times. The square gatehouse of the nunnery, standing by the church, is all that remains of that religious house, and even this building, fashioned of the most amazing admixture of brick, stone, and flint has been wholly secularised and converted into a dwelling-house.