PEGWELL BAY--EBBSFLEET--THE LANDINGS OF HENGIST AND OF ST. AUGUSTINE--RICHBOROUGH
But to have done with Ramsgate. We may perhaps explore to the very end of the West Cliff, where rows of great ugly houses look out seaward from that height, and where the bastioned cliffs crumble and are cobbled horribly with brick and plaster. But one gets no joy of those grim grey buttresses that front the waves.
Passing, instead, up the main street, to the surviving Norman church of St. Lawrence, we note there the brasses to Nicholas Manston, wearing the Collar of SS.; and his daughter and wife. Then, down the lengthy Nethercourt Hill, we come to Pegwell Bay.
When the Tuggs family made holiday at Ramsgate they went, of course, to Pegwell Bay: famous then, as now, for its shrimps and for the various places where shrimp-teas, chiefly in little earwiggy arbours, might be obtained: “Mr. and Mrs. Tuggs and the Captain ordered lunch in the little garden--small saucers of large shrimps, dabs of butter, crusty loaves, and bottled ale.” That is the ritual to be observed by all who, coming to Pegwell Bay, want to do their duty by the place.
“I know a shore where white cliffs face the sea, Along the margin of a noble bay; Whose air resounds with nigger minstrelsy-- And motor-cars are tuppence all the way.
“Ah! there the sky is of an azure hue, And aureate glow the yellow sands; The ocean darkens to a deeper blue-- And everywhere are German bands.
“I know an arbour where the jasmines twine, Where creepers hang in folds and tresses limp, Where gay convolvuli and eglantine Dispute the odour of the fragrant shrimp.
“There, where the spider weaves his silken net, And earwigs crawl, and caterpillars creep, Will you and I together hie, my pet, For there they furnish teas extremely cheap.”
Pegwell Bay, as you will clearly perceive on maps, is a very considerable inlet. It marks, indeed, that nook in the coast-line where the old Wantsum Channel and the river Stour flowed along past Minster and Sarre, and emerged at Reculver, thus forming the Isle of Thanet. Tracking round from Pegwell and its shrimpy arbours, along the low shores, we come at Cliff’s End to the “Sportsman” inn and Ebbsfleet, and, turning to the right, will presently find St. Augustine’s Cross.