Tour through the Eastern Counties of England(英格兰东部游记)

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Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

Tour through the Eastern

Counties of England

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

Tour through the Eastern Counties

of England

I began my travels where I purpose to end them, viz., at the City of

London, and therefore my account of the city itself will come last, that is

to say, at the latter end of my southern progress; and as in the course of

this journey I shall have many occasions to call it a circuit, if not a circle,

so I chose to give it the title of circuits in the plural, because I do not

pretend to have travelled it all in one journey, but in many, and some of

them many times over; the better to inform myself of everything I could

find worth taking notice of.

I hope it will appear that I am not the less, but the more capable of

giving a full account of things, by how much the more deliberation I have

taken in the view of them, and by how much the oftener I have had

opportunity to see them.

I set out the 3rd of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took what I

think I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter of it; for I went

down by the coast of the Thames through the Marshes or Hundreds on the

south side of the county of Essex, till I came to Malden, Colchester, and

Harwich, thence continuing on the coast of Suffolk to Yarmouth; thence

round by the edge of the sea, on the north and west side of Norfolk, to

Lynn, Wisbech, and the Wash; thence back again, on the north side of

Suffolk and Essex, to the west, ending it in Middlesex, near the place

where I began it, reserving the middle or centre of the several counties to

some little excursions, which I made by themselves.

Passing Bow Bridge, where the county of Essex begins, the first

observation I made was, that all the villages which may be called the

neighbourhood of the city of London on this, as well as on the other sides

thereof, which I shall speak to in their order; I say, all those villages are

increased in buildings to a strange degree, within the compass of about

twenty or thirty years past at the most.

The village of Stratford, the first in this county from London, is not

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

only increased, but, I believe, more than doubled in that time; every

vacancy filled up with new houses, and two little towns or hamlets, as they

may be called, on the forest side of the town entirely new, namely

Maryland Point and the Gravel Pits, one facing the road to Woodford and

Epping, and the other facing the road to Ilford; and as for the hither part, it

is almost joined to Bow, in spite of rivers, canals, marshy grounds, &c.

Nor is this increase of building the case only in this and all the other

villages round London; but the increase of the value and rent of the houses

formerly standing has, in that compass of years above-mentioned,

advanced to a very great degree, and I may venture to say at least the fifth

part; some think a third part, above what they were before.

This is indeed most visible, speaking of Stratford in Essex; but it is the

same thing in proportion in other villages adjacent, especially on the forest

side; as at Low Leyton, Leytonstone, Walthamstow, Woodford, Wanstead,

and the towns of West Ham, Plaistow, Upton, etc. In all which places, or

near them (as the inhabitants say), above a thousand new foundations have

been erected, besides old houses repaired, all since the Revolution; and

this is not to be forgotten too, that this increase is, generally speaking, of

handsome, large houses, from 20 pounds a year to 60 pounds, very few

under 20 pounds a year; being chiefly for the habitations of the richest

citizens, such as either are able to keep two houses, one in the country and

one in the city; or for such citizens as being rich, and having left off trade,

live altogether in these neighbouring villages, for the pleasure and health

of the latter part of their days.

The truth of this may at least appear, in that they tell me there are no

less than two hundred coaches kept by the inhabitants within the

circumference of these few villages named above, besides such as are kept

by accidental lodgers.

This increase of the inhabitants, and the cause of it, I shall enlarge

upon when I come to speak of the like in the counties of Middlesex,

Surrey, &c, where it is the same, only in a much greater degree. But this

I must take notice of here, that this increase causes those villages to be

much pleasanter and more sociable than formerly, for now people go to

them, not for retirement into the country, but for good company; of which,

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

that I may speak to the ladies as well as other authors do, there are in these

villages, nay, in all, three or four excepted, excellent conversation, and a

great deal of it, and that without the mixture of assemblies, gaming-houses,

and public foundations of vice and debauchery; and particularly I find

none of those incentives kept up on this side the country.

Mr. Camden, and his learned continuator, Bishop Gibson, have

ransacked this country for its antiquities, and have left little unsearched;

and as it is not my present design to say much of what has been said

already, I shall touch very lightly where two such excellent antiquaries

have gone before me; except it be to add what may have been since

discovered, which as to these parts is only this: That there seems to be

lately found out in the bottom of the Marshes (generally called Hackney

Marsh, and beginning near about the place now called the Wick, between

Old Ford and the said Wick), the remains of a great stone causeway, which,

as it is supposed, was the highway, or great road from London into Essex,

and the same which goes now over the great bridge between Bow and

Stratford.

That the great road lay this way, and that the great causeway landed

again just over the river, where now the Temple Mills stand, and passed by

Sir Thomas Hickes's house at Ruckolls, all this is not doubted; and that it

was one of those famous highways made by the Romans there is

undoubted proof, by the several marks of Roman work, and by Roman

coins and other antiquities found there, some of which are said to be

deposited in the hands of the Rev. Mr. Strype, vicar of the parish of Low

Leyton.

From hence the great road passed up to Leytonstone, a place by some

known now as much by the sign of the "Green Man," formerly a lodge

upon the edge of the forest; and crossing by Wanstead House, formerly the

dwelling of Sir Josiah Child, now of his son the Lord Castlemain (of

which hereafter), went over the same river which we now pass at Ilford;

and passing that part of the great forest which we now call Hainault Forest,

came into that which is now the great road, a little on this side the

Whalebone, a place on the road so called because the rib-bone of a great

whale, which was taken in the River Thames the same year that Oliver

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

Cromwell died, 1658, was fixed there for a monument of that monstrous

creature, it being at first about eight-and-twenty feet long.

According to my first intention of effectually viewing the sea- coast of

these three counties, I went from Stratford to Barking, a large market-town,

but chiefly inhabited by fishermen, whose smacks ride in the Thames, at

the mouth of their river, from whence their fish is sent up to London to the

market at Billingsgate by small boats, of which I shall speak by itself in

my description of London.

One thing I cannot omit in the mention of these Barking fisher- smacks,

viz., that one of those fishermen, a very substantial and experienced man,

convinced me that all the pretences to bringing fish alive to London

market from the North Seas, and other remote places on the coast of Great

Britain, by the new-built sloops called fish-pools, have not been able to do

anything but what their fishing-smacks are able on the same occasion to

perform. These fishing-smacks are very useful vessels to the public upon

many occasions; as particularly, in time of war they are used as press-

smacks, running to all the northern and western coasts to pick up seamen

to man the navy, when any expedition is at hand that requires a sudden

equipment; at other times, being excellent sailors, they are tenders to

particular men of war; and on an expedition they have been made use of as

machines for the blowing up of fortified ports and havens; as at Calais, St.

Malo, and other places.

This parish of Barking is very large, and by the improvement of lands

taken in out of the Thames, and out of the river which runs by the town,

the tithes, as the townsmen assured me, are worth above 600 pounds per

annum, including, small tithes. NOTE. - This parish has two or three

chapels of ease, viz., one at Ilford, and one on the side of Hainault Forest,

called New Chapel.

Sir Thomas Fanshaw, of an ancient Roman Catholic family, has a very

good estate in this parish. A little beyond the town, on the road to

Dagenham, stood a great house, ancient, and now almost fallen down,

where tradition says the Gunpowder Treason Plot was at first contrived,

and that all the first consultations about it were held there.

This side of the county is rather rich in land than in inhabitants,

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

occasioned chiefly by the unhealthiness of the air; for these low marsh

grounds, which, with all the south side of the county, have been saved out

of the River Thames, and out of the sea, where the river is wide enough to

be called so, begin here, or rather begin at West Ham, by Stratford, and

continue to extend themselves, from hence eastward, growing wider and

wider till we come beyond Tilbury, when the flat country lies six, seven, or

eight miles broad, and is justly said to be both unhealthy and unpleasant.

However, the lands are rich, and, as is observable, it is very good

farming in the marshes, because the landlords let good pennyworths, for it

being a place where everybody cannot live, those that venture it will have

encouragement and indeed it is but reasonable they should.

Several little observations I made in this part of the county of Essex.

1. We saw, passing from Barking to Dagenham, the famous breach,

made by an inundation of the Thames, which was so great as that it laid

near 5,000 acres of land under water, but which after near ten years lying

under water, and being several times blown up, has been at last effectually

stopped by the application of Captain Perry, the gentleman who, for

several years, had been employed in the Czar of Muscovy's works, at

Veronitza, on the River Don. This breach appeared now effectually made

up, and they assured us that the new work, where the breach was, is by

much esteemed the strongest of all the sea walls in that level.

2. It was observable that great part of the lands in these levels,

especially those on this side East Tilbury, are held by the farmers, cow-

keepers, and grazing butchers who live in and near London, and that they

are generally stocked (all the winter half year) with large fat sheep, viz.,

Lincolnshire and Leicestershire wethers, which they buy in Smithfield in

September and October, when the Lincolnshire and Leicestershire graziers

sell off their stock, and are kept here till Christmas, or Candlemas, or

thereabouts; and though they are not made at all fatter here than they were

when bought in, yet the farmer or butcher finds very good advantage in it,

by the difference of the price of mutton between Michaelmas, when it is

cheapest, and Candlemas, when it is dearest; this is what the butchers

value themselves upon, when they tell us at the market that it is right

marsh-mutton.

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

3. In the bottom of these Marshes, and close to the edge of the river,

stands the strong fortress of Tilbury, called Tilbury Fort, which may justly

be looked upon as the key of the River Thames, and consequently the key

of the City of London. It is a regular fortification. The design of it was

a pentagon, but the water bastion, as it would have been called, was never

built. The plan was laid out by Sir Martin Beckman, chief engineer to

King Charles II., who also designed the works at Sheerness. The

esplanade of the fort is very large, and the bastions the largest of any in

England, the foundation is laid so deep, and piles under that, driven down

two an end of one another, so far, till they were assured they were below

the channel of the river, and that the piles, which were shed with iron,

entered into the solid chalk rock adjoining to, or reaching from, the chalk

hills on the other side. These bastions settled considerably at first, as did

also part of the curtain, the great quantity of earth that was brought to fill

them up, necessarily, requiring to be made solid by time; but they are now

firm as the rocks of chalk which they came from, and the filling up one of

these bastions, as I have been told by good hands, cost the Government

6,000 pounds, being filled with chalk rubbish fetched from the chalk pits

at Northfleet, just above Gravesend.

The work to the land side is complete; the bastions are faced with

brick. There is a double ditch, or moat, the innermost part of which is

180 feet broad; there is a good counterscarp, and a covered way marked

out with ravelins and tenailles, but they are not raised a second time after

their first settling.

On the land side there are also two small redoubts of brick, but of very

little strength, for the chief strength of this fort on the land side consists in

this, that they are able to lay the whole level under water, and so to make it

impossible for an enemy to make any approaches to the fort that way.

On the side next the river there is a very strong curtain, with a noble

gate called the Water Gate in the middle, and the ditch is palisadoed. At

the place where the water bastion was designed to be built, and which by

the plan should run wholly out into the river, so to flank the two curtains

of each side; I say, in the place where it should have been, stands a high

tower, which they tell us was built in Queen Elizabeth's time, and was

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

called the Block House; the side next the water is vacant.

Before this curtain, above and below the said vacancy, is a platform in

the place of a counterscarp, on which are planted 106 pieces of cannon,

generally all of them carrying from twenty-four to forty-six pound ball; a

battery so terrible as well imports the consequence of that place; besides

which, there are smaller pieces planted between, and the bastions and

curtain also are planted with guns; so that they must be bold fellows who

will venture in the biggest ships the world has heard of to pass such a

battery, if the men appointed to serve the guns do their duty like stout

fellows, as becomes them.

The present government of this important place is under the prudent

administration of the Right Honourable the Lord Newbrugh.

From hence there is nothing for many miles together remarkable but a

continued level of unhealthy marshes, called the Three Hundreds, till we

come before Leigh, and to the mouth of the River Chelmer, and

Blackwater. These rivers united make a large firth, or inlet of the sea,

which by Mr. Camden is called IDUMANUM FLUVIUM; but by our

fishermen and seamen, who use it as a port, it is called Malden Water.

In this inlet of the sea is Osey, or Osyth Island, commonly called Oosy

Island, so well known by our London men of pleasure for the infinite

number of wild fowl, that is to say, duck, mallard, teal, and widgeon, of

which there are such vast flights, that they tell us the island, namely the

creek, seems covered with them at certain times of the year, and they go

from London on purpose for the pleasure of shooting; and, indeed, often

come home very well laden with game. But it must be remembered too

that those gentlemen who are such lovers of the sport, and go so far for it,

often return with an Essex ague on their backs, which they find a heavier

load than the fowls they have shot.

It is on this shore, and near this creek, that the greatest quantity of

fresh fish is caught which supplies not this country only, but London

markets also. On the shore, beginning a little below Candy Island, or

rather below Leigh Road, there lies a great shoal or sand called the Black

Tail, which runs out near three leagues into the sea due east; at the end of

it stands a pole or mast, set up by the Trinity House men of London,

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

whose business is to lay buoys and set up sea marks for the direction of

the sailors; this is called Shoe Beacon, from the point of land where this

sand begins, which is called Shoeburyness, and that from the town of

Shoebury, which stands by it. From this sand, and on the edge of

Shoebury, before it, or south west of it, all along, to the mouth of

Colchester water, the shore is full of shoals and sands, with some deep

channels between; all which are so full of fish, that not only the Barking

fishing-smacks come hither to fish, but the whole shore is full of small

fisher-boats in very great numbers, belonging to the villages and towns on

the coast, who come in every tide with what they take; and selling the

smaller fish in the country, send the best and largest away upon horses,

which go night and day to London market.

N.B. - I am the more particular in my remarks on this place, because in

the course of my travels the reader will meet with the like in almost every

place of note through the whole island, where it will be seen how this

whole kingdom, as well the people as the land, and even the sea, in every

part of it, are employed to furnish something, and I may add, the best of

everything, to supply the City of London with provisions; I mean by

provisions, corn, flesh, fish, butter, cheese, salt, fuel, timber, etc., and

clothes also; with everything necessary for building, and furniture for their

own use or for trade; of all which in their order.

On this shore also are taken the best and nicest, though not the largest,

oysters in England; the spot from whence they have their common

appellation is a little bank called Woelfleet, scarce to be called an island,

in the mouth of the River Crouch, now called Crooksea Water; but the

chief place where the said oysters are now had is from Wyvenhoe and the

shores adjacent, whither they are brought by the fishermen, who take them

at the mouth of that they call Colchester water and about the sand they call

the Spits, and carry them up to Wyvenhoe, where they are laid in beds or

pits on the shore to feed, as they call it; and then being barrelled up and

carried to Colchester, which is but three miles off, they are sent to London

by land, and are from thence called Colchester oysters.

The chief sort of other fish which they carry from this part of the shore

to London are soles, which they take sometimes exceeding large, and yield

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England

a very good price at London market. Also sometimes middling turbot,

with whiting, codling and large flounders; the small fish, as above, they

sell in the country.

In the several creeks and openings, as above, on this shore there are

also other islands, but of no particular note, except Mersey, which lies in

the middle of the two openings between Malden Water and Colchester

Water; being of the most difficult access, so that it is thought a thousand

men well provided might keep possession of it against a great force,

whether by land or sea. On this account, and because if possessed by an

enemy it would shut up all the navigation and fishery on that side, the

Government formerly built a fort on the south-east point of it; and

generally in case of Dutch war, there is a strong body of troops kept there

to defend it.

At this place may be said to end what we call the Hundreds of Essex -

that is to say, the three Hundreds or divisions which include the marshy

country, viz., Barnstable Hundred, Rochford Hundred, and Dengy

Hundred.

I have one remark more before I leave this damp part of the world, and

which I cannot omit on the women's account, namely, that I took notice of

a strange decay of the sex here; insomuch that all along this country it was

very frequent to meet with men that had had from five or six to fourteen or

fifteen wives; nay, and some more. And I was informed that in the marshes

on the other side of the river over against Candy Island there was a farmer

who was then living with the five-and-twentieth wife, and that his son,

who was but about thirty-five years old, had already had about fourteen.

Indeed, this part of the story I only had by report, though from good hands

too; but the other is well known and easy to be inquired into about

Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersly, Benfleet, Prittlewell, Wakering, Great

Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham, Dengy, and other towns of the like

situation. The reason, as a merry fellow told me, who said he had had

about a dozen and a half of wives (though I found afterwards he fibbed a

little) was this: That they being bred in the marshes themselves and

seasoned to the place, did pretty well with it; but that they always went up

into the hilly country, or, to speak their own language, into the uplands for

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TourthroughtheEasternCountiesofEngland1TourthroughtheEasternCountiesofEnglandTourthroughtheEasternCountiesofEngland2TourthroughtheEasternCountiesofEnglandIbeganmytravelswhereIpurposetoendthem,viz.,attheCityofLondon,andthereforemyaccountofthecityitselfwillcomelast,thatistosay,atthelatterendofmysouthe...

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