There is no grand architecture, of the wonder-compelling kind, in Sandwich. It is all very quiet and modest and domestic, but at the same time old-world and reverend. Of the three parish churches, St. Clement’s, which stands hard by the place where the ancient sea-front of Sandwich once opened out, is the most notable, and has a fine Norman tower. The restoration it has experienced was paid for by the sale of its bells--a quaint touch--and a modern set of tube-chimes now replaces them. St. Peter’s is perhaps better known, because its tower is taller and is capped with a curious Dutch-like turret, and rising to a considerable height, viewed from a distance, across the flats, it is the most prominent feature of the town. The tower is frankly and unashamedly unarchitectural, and replaces the one that fell without warning on October 13th, 1661. It fell disastrously into the church and demolished the south aisle, making a mighty heap of wreckage. “The rubidge,” says the contemporary account, “was three fathoms deep in the middle of the church.” The roofless walls of that destroyed aisle remain in part to this day. The tower that replaces the fallen building is of a local grey brick made from the harbour mud, and would appear from its style to have been designed and built by a local journeyman bricklayer. But it is to be hoped that the modern passion for remodelling plain buildings and putting them into a conventional dress will pass this tower of St. Peter’s by; for Sandwich would scarce seem the same Sandwich without it, and people who write about the town would lose the cherished chance of being mildly funny at its expense.
I do not think any stranger has ever been known to find his way through Sandwich without making one or two false turns, for its streets are winding and deceptive. The houses of the middle ages are not represented in them at all, and it is a sixteenth and seventeenth-century Sandwich you see, not the mediæval port. It is, in general, a Dutch effect, as if those settlers under Elizabeth had imported their views upon domestic architecture and had successfully imposed them upon the town.
The native of Sandwich who has left his mark most visibly upon the place is Sir Roger Manwood, who founded the Grammar School in 1563. Manwood was born 1525, son of a local draper, and, entering the law, became eventually Chief Baron of the Exchequer. An elaborate new school-building, built 1895, stands in a solitary position outside the town, at the very opposite end from the original school, now occupied as a private residence and named Manwood Court. It stands at the very extremity of Sandwich, as you go towards Canterbury, and is a very striking building, with five gables and a high-pitched roof, and the date, 1564, in great figures, sprawling in genuine sixteenth-century ironwork along the frontage. Queen Elizabeth, on her visit to Sandwich in 1572, when she was elaborately entertained by the town, honoured Sir Roger by staying at his house.