from Crab & Winkle - April
At the rear of West Street an old estate wall. The buildings impinge upon each other, a stairwell into the neighbour room, a cellar under a different space. What’s now the garage used to be a bakery (the house was a fishmongery).
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From the Ham Marshes you can navigate by the church spire: Faversham’s open frame, visible from Hollowshore, the Shipwright pub.
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In the stationers I view maps on the first floor, viewed myself by the security camera. The shop’s proprietor comes upstairs and pretends to do odd tasks but is really just making extra sure I don’t steal anything.
Sometimes it seems this whole small world belongs to the National Trust and you will be able to buy preserves and tea-towels at the kiosk afterwards.
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back lanes to the Chart Gunpowder Mill
following the creek through Davington
then uphill to the cricket ground
overlooking the Almshouses.
Davington Pond, the allotments,
the back of a supermarket
clear nettles and dead leaves from the path
(these leftovers from last year)
detach of their own accord when opened)
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at Knole, the weight of history,
the rotting canopy of a four-poster
those fearsome kings and clerics
– enough to bury [Vita Sackville-West](/20c/20c-sackville-west-biography)
were she given the chance
(how could Knole
be regretted?
adjourn
for lunch, Shoreham,
a fold in the North Downs,
the Darent
– no trace
of Samuel Palmer, the most excellent
Mr B.
a footpath, signed
under ten feet of water
further up the road,
Lullingstone,
its mosaics and hot baths out of place
in this landscape
then, nowhere,
the approach to Dartford,
chapels lost with infill
it’s Easter
day of the exploding coffee-pot
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At Winchelsea, the site of a windmill destroyed in the storms of 1987, as the fallen trees of Knole, only a grindstone and some foundation slabs next to a trig point up above the marshes.
[Ford Madox Ford’s](/20c/20c-fordmadoxford-biography) house,
in a back street (the town
strangely without shops; a pub
that pretends to have lunch reservations)
Rye, choked with traffic,
a haze across the marsh
Bank Holiday: a motorcyclists’ convention
from Rye Harbour, Camber Sands
dotted with bathers, the nuclear plant
at Dungeness
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cuttings, dead leaves
from two seasons back
bagged
tulips
now open, yellow,
streaked with red
a fragment of glass
under the end ridge tile
take the sun, before
it disappears behind
a neighbour chimney
signs of life: clematis
honeysuckle
the chimney shade angles
across the terrace, light
full on the wall
with the hanging rose
heavy scent of malt
from Shepherd Neame
a fine evening
and a very quiet night ahead
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A duck on the garage roof, and one below in the yard (yesterday morning a group of mallards asleep in the middle of Thomas Rd).
The last light
in the upstairs bedroom
smeared windows
equilibrium
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in the Anchor, end of Abbey St
reading maps of Brighton/Hove
and Gravesend/Rochester
positioning roads and villages
observed from the train,
the way their relationship alters
between view and diagram
black ink appears grey
on yellow paper
(smudge)
the darkness is absorbed
leaving a penumbra on the page
a long gallery between bars
appears as a mirror image
but the space is actual (the chairs
are different, a lampshade
not reflected elsewhere.
one clear window amid the frosted
views the street towards the town centre,
past the house of Arden
[(Arden of Faversham)](/16c/16c-arden-faversham)
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Walk through the dull backblocks of Faversham parallel to the Whitstable Road. Cross the railway and through fields, rape, hops and corn, to the church at Goodnestone. The path loses itself on a modern farm. Ford a small stream, then up a hill alongside cherry trees and across the motorway to Fostal and Hernhill, its village square. Through the Mount Ephraim Gardens to Boughton and a bad pub (The Queens’s Head).
No matter how accurate the map there’s always a point where you get lost.
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Upstairs at 8.15 am, the Kent earthquake. 4.5 on the Richter scale, epicentre: Folkestone. Then a walk from Selling station up through orchards to Perry Wood. Along a ridge, views out to Lees Court (W) and (S) over Shottenden, the rape fields.
birch, holly, rowan
Down a steep slope then up another to view an earthwork, then down into Selling itself, through Gushmere, and across the railway to Boughton Church. Then through a golf course to the village.
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how diffuse the light, a bright blue day
with cold northerly gusts
move to the south side of the house
from which to watch, but not feel the briskness
the sway of a fruit tree two doors up
a small dog, nails
slipping on floorboards
the light hangs around
as I check maps, locations for tomorrow’s walk
the minimum of drear infill
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Our house was once one half of next door which is now half of the door after, if that makes sense. The original wide doors no longer open, due to subsidence. This is the origin of ‘flying freehold’ (their cupboard opens onto the wall of our stairs; the internal entry to the cellar is theirs, the external ours – a new internal built subsequently). The old beams mostly salvaged from ships, hence the curved shapes and the slots for cross timbers. The ships predating the building a century or more (deforestation already a problem?).