The Origins of Whitstable

( 51 ) THE ORIGINS OF WHITSTABLE. BY GORDON WARD, M.D., F.S.A. THE modern town of Whitstable is composed of parts of three ancient centres of occupation. Its name is derived from a white post which probably marked the point at which the boundaries of the ancient settlements met together, and which was certainly the site of open-air Courts at the time of the Norman conquest. These three places were caUed Seasalter, Harwich and Dodeham alias Northwood. SEASALTER.—This is first mentioned in two charters of 785 (B.C.S. 247, 248), both being original charters. Firstly it is described as " sUvam afundantur ad coquendam sal "—wood sufficient for evaporating salt. The name of Sealsalter and the site of the salt pans is not specified. The wood, of course, would be in the Blean adjacent to Seasalter. The second description is rather more precise— " sealterna steaUas thaer bi uban et in Blean uuidiung thaer to ", i.e. the salt place stahs there to the north (lit. above) and in the Blean wooding for them. In those far-off days salt was a very important commodity. It was the only available preservative for meat. The Saxons killed off much of their stock on the approach of winter because they had no winter feed for it, and the preservation of this winter meat supply was essential. Seasalter was a borough and a place of no smaU importance. The original church and the salt pans have long since vanished beneath the sea but the borough extended as far east as the High Street through Whitstaple, which must then have been a road over waste ground on which the white staple or post stood out as a landmark. The existing Salts to the west of this road are the last reminder of what was once a famous industry ; their site was probably far inland when Seasalter was flourishing in the days of King Offa. HARWICH.—In the year 858 (B.C.S. 496) King Aethelberht gave to a thane a place caUed WasyngweUe together with marshes and other possessions attached to it. These included " et Febresham i sealtem et U wena gang mid cyninges wenum to Blean them wiada ", i.e. at Faversham one salt works and two wain-goings with the King's wains to Blean wood. In 863 (B.C.S. 507) the same king gave to another thane an important estate at Mersham and " unam sahs coquinariam hoc est i sealternsteaU et ther cota to in Ula loco ubi nominatur Herewic et iiii carris transductionem in sUba regis sex ebdomades a die pentecosten hubi alteri homines sUbam cedunt hoc est in regis communione ", i.e. one salt evaporator, i.e. a salt works, and its cottage, in the place caUed Herewic (Harwich), and the leading of four carts in the king's 52 THE ORIGINS OF WHITSTABLE. wood, for six weeks after Pentecost, where other men go into the wood, i.e. in the king's commoning. I t is likely that the grant of Lenham in 946 (B.C.S. 459, 854) also included salt works at Harwich although this name is not actuaUy mentioned. The phrase is " locus in quo sal adipisci potest et cum gressu trium carrorum in sUva qui dicitur Blean ", i.e. a place at which it is possible to obtain salt, with entry for three carts in the wood caUed the Blean. The last mention of Harwich, before the conquest, is in 946 (B.C.S. 874b, 1345), but we have only a very indifferent copy of the original charter. Harwich appears as " Here pit", involving two usual mistakes, namely " p " for " w " and " t " for " c ", both of which are very common in early documents when these letters were written in a very simUar shape. This charter is a grant by King Eadred to a man caUed Heresige of some land at Swalecliffe " et seo wudu reden the ther mid rihte to gebirede . . . et the sealttaern steal aet here pit", i.e. and the wood clearing that therewith rightly belongs . . . and the salt works at Herewic (Harwich). That this Herewic was in fact the borough of Harwich, now roughly represented by Tankerton, cannot be doubted, but difficulty has arisen because in one case the saltworks are said to be " at Faversham " although the wood rights are, as usual, in the Blean. This needs explaining and is a difficulty which we shall meet again when we consider the place of Whitstaple in Domesday Book. The great forest of Blean extended from near Faversham (where the name Westwood, once " west of the wood ", commemorates it) to the confines of Reculver and Chislet. It was undoubtedly a forest attached to the royal manor of Faversham, and the Hundred of Faversham has stiU two detached portions in the centre part of what was once Blean wood. They are shown on the map as detached parts of the parishes of HernehUl and Dunkirk and he to the south of Swalecliffe. The ancient forest was slowly parted with. Grants were made to individuals of rights of access which presently became proprietary rights over stretches of woodland with known boundaries. It is scarcely possible to prove that the salt works as weU as the wood were once in the royal manor of Faversham but the mere fact that the grant of 858 describes a salt works as being " at Faversham " points in this direction, for there are no suitable places at Faversham proper for a salt works. However high the tide may come up Faversham creek the stream would certainly be diluted with fresh water and so would not be suitable for evaporation for salt. This would presumably apply to the whole of the Swale. There are, in fact, only two places on the north of Kent which are really suitable for salt making, i.e. the Sealsalter-Harwich area and the old mouth of the Wantsum, in which were a great number of saltpans at the time of Domesday Book. On the south coast the best saltpans THE ORIGINS OF WHITSTABLE. 53 were below Lymne in the marsh (see B.C.S. 148 and 411 for early references). The obvious explanation of the apparently discordant facts set out above is that the royal manor of Faversham extended at least as far east as the present detached portions of HernehiU and Dunkirk, and included the coast as weU as the wood. NORTHWOOD.—Long, long ago the good people of Canterbury caUed the Blean by no more dignified a name than " the wood ", and the various coastal settlements were described as " north of the wood " (bi northanuude. B.C.S. 846). In this way more than one of them, e.g. Heme, a manor in Swalechff, and Dodeham, obtained the name " Northwood ", which name survives on the map of Heme to this day. However convenient this vague nomenclature may have been for the people of Canterbury, it must have been a nuisance for those who hved north of the wood and they naturaUy developed their own names, e.g. Seasalter, Harwich, Swalecliffe, etc., aU of which are early names. One of them, however, has lost aU names b u t " Church Street " and this hes just outside the boundary of the urban district of Whitstable to the south. It is the site of a manor house of Northwood, which was later the manor of Northwood alias Whitstaple, and finaUy the manor of Whitstaple only. Much useful information about it is to be found in Mr. Robert GoodsaU's history of Whitstable, Seasalter and Swalecliffe, pubhshed in 1938. The manor of Northwood joined the others, I suppose, at the white staple. We now pass on to consider how a town happened to grow up at this point. THE WHITE STAPLE.—We first hear of this in Domesday Book when it gives name to a Hundred, that is, to the local government and pohce district of those days. The men of the Hundred met fairly frequently and they met in the open ah because public haUs were unknown other than the churches, and these were not big enough, to judge from those which have survived. NaturaUy enough they met on waste ground for no one would want a large assembly walking about over his enclosures. The precise meeting place was often a tree or other landmark. I see no reason to suppose that the white staple of the Whitstaple Hundred was other than a boundary post where the waste of three manors joined, but I cannot prove this point. An ingenious suggestion that " whit staple " reaUy means " huitre staple " or oyster market is quoted by Mr. GoodsaU but, although our Saxon ancestors may have inherited the Roman taste for oysters, I feel sure that they did not caU them by a Norman-French name. The meeting place of the Hundred was naturaUy apt to become also a market place, especiaUy where there was no other market conveniently placed, as was apparently the case in the Hundred of Whitstaple. There were also special reasons for a market place by the white staple. 7 54 THE ORIGINS OF WHITSTABLE. It must have stood very near, or actuaUy upon, the road from the port to Canterbury. As we shah see presently, this port dealt in herrings— an important article of diet for the monks and people of Canterbury to whom Fridays were fish days. There was also the salt, equally needed at Canterbury and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Herrings could, no doubt, be dealt with in the open, but salt would seem to caU for some cover from the weather. In this way a smaU town would soon be formed, for temporary cover would quickly become a permanent shed, and regular occupation of particular market sites by individual salesmen would develop into fenced-in holdings, in which the salesmen could park their pack horses and store their goods. It is likely that a town had aheady developed by the time of Domesday Book. We must not be surprised that it is not mentioned therein because towns are not usuaUy specified unless they were more or less independent units with special rights. The average town was merely a coUection of houses in some manor. These houses paid rent to the manor and their value—from the Conqueror's point of view—was merely a part of the total sum for which the manor could be made responsible. But the absence of Harwich and Northwood from Domesday Book is not so easy to explain, since Seasalter is duly described. We may say at once that Harwich had, so far as our records can teU, aheady been absorbed by the manor of Northwood. It is the apparent absence of this Northwood manor which needs explanation. It is not really absent but is entered under its old name of Doddanham— Dodda's home, corrupted in D.B. to Dodeham. This statement has not hitherto been put forward (except by the writer in the Whitstable Times of AprU 27th, 1940) and must therefore be supported by such proof as is possible. DODEHAM.—Domesday Book teUs us five important things about Dodeham, that is, important for its identification. They are (1) that it was in Faversham Hundred, (2) that it belonged to Fulbert, of Douvre in the Bessin, usuaUy but wrongly known as Fulbert of Dover, (3) that it had a church, (4) that it had half a fishery of 300 herrings and (5), lastly, that it included five town houses or enclosures in Canterbury which paid 7s. lOd. a year to the manor. We wUl take these points one after another. The hkehhood that the Hundred of Faversham extended over the Whitstable area has aheady been discussed. If Dodeham was certainly the same as Northwood there is no more to be said about it, for Dodeham is entered as in that Hundred. It foUows that the truth or otherwise of the suggestion that saltpans " at Faversham " were in this part of the county wiU depend for demonstration on what we make out of Dodeham in Domesday Book. It is in any case significant that we have two separate indications of the hkehhood that Whitstable was once "in THE ORIGINS OF WHITSTABLE. 55 Faversham ". The ownership of Northwood by Fulbert "of Dover", and his successors, is not open to doubt, and there is plenty of evidence in Mr. GoodsaU's book, and there is equaUy no doubt that there was a church there whose advowson belonged to the same famUy. Fulbert was a powerful man and was given many other lands. If we draw up two hsts, one of the lands he is known to have possessed and another of those which are credited to him in Domesday Book, we are at once struck with the fact that the two hsts agree in every particular except that Northwood is not mentioned in Domesday Book, and Dodeham is absent from hsts of later date. The obvious explanation is that the Dodeham of D.B. was the Northwood of later days. This is borne out by the fact that both had a church and there is no church which can possibly be identified with the Fulbert famUy's church of Northwood except Fulbert's Domesday church of Dodeham. Moreover, Dodeham had an interest in a herring fishery and was near enough to Canterbury to possess five considerable enclosures (for 7s. lOd. was a big sum) in that city. Evidently it was near the sea and near the city. Let it include Northwood, and its borough of Harwich, and aU indications are fulfilled. If we do not identify it with Northwood, we can neither explain the absence of that manor from Domesday Book, nor yet find any unoccupied place into which we can fit the herring port of Dodeham. Taking aU these points together, I aUege without hesitation that the Dodeham of Domesday was undoubtedly the manor of Northwood of later ages, and, later still, the manor of Northwood alias Whitstable. It would be very satisfactory if we could trace the name of Dodeham existing after the conquest, but I have no evidence about this except that Mr. GoodsaU records a place caUed Codeham's Corner, which is certainly suggestive, but its exact position is not stated. SUMMARY. (1) That Whitstable originated on the waste ground separating the three settlements of Seasalter, Harwich and Dodeham alias Northwood. (2) That it was attracted to this spot by the salt trade, the herring port, and the Canterbury road, and that somewhere near this road the original white post or staple marked the junction of these three settlements. (3) That it was originaUy part of the royal manor of Faversham. (4) That Harwich was, or became, a part of the manor of Northwood, which was formerly known as Dodeham (Doddanham), and is described under this name in Domesday Book.