St Christopher who bore Our Lord
Across the flood—­O precious Load....

So I prayed, “er I come to Sidingborne,” as Chaucer says.

The author of “Sittingbourne in the Middle Ages” tells us that, “Mediaeval Sittingbourne consisted of three distinct portions.  The chief centre of population was near the church, but there was an important little hamlet called Schamel at the western extremity of the parish on the London Road ... as any traveller from London approached Sittingbourne in the Middle Ages, the first thing to attract his attention was a chapel and hermitage standing on the south side of the road, about three parts of the way up that little hill which rises from Waterlanehead towards the east; this was Schamel Hermitage and the Chapel of St Thomas Becket, to which were attached houses for the shelter of pilgrims and travellers.  A small Inn called “The Volunteers” now stands upon or close to the site of this ancient chapel and this hermitage.”  The chapel and hermitage it seems were first built at Schamel in the time of King John, when they were occupied by a priest named Samuel.  He said Mass daily in the chapel and gave such accommodation as he had to wayfarers, by whose alms he lived.  After his death the chapel fell into disrepair, but in the time of Henry III. it was rebuilt on a larger scale.  A hermit named Silvester, of the “Order of St Austin,” was appointed to the house which had now attached to it four lodgings for pilgrims on the road to Canterbury.  But on Silvester’s death it was realised that the chapel interfered so much with the parish church that before the end of the thirteenth century it was suppressed.  It re-arose, and in Chaucer’s day would seem to have been in a flourishing condition; at any rate it continued till the spoliation.

If indeed Chaucer and his pilgrims slept in Sittingbourne, as one may well believe, it is probable that they slept either at this chapel at Schamel or at the Lion Inn in the town.  This Inn was certainly in existence in his time, and there in 1415 King Henry V. was entertained on his return from Agincourt by the Squire of Milton.  There, too, in all likelihood, Cardinal Wolsey rested in the autumn of 1514, and there Henry VIII., who spoiled the face of England and changed her heart, “paied the wife of the Lyon in Sittingbourne by way of rewarde iiiis. viiid.” for the accommodation given.  This famous Inn stands in the centre of the town, the road passing to the south of it.  Unhappily the church is less interesting, having been almost entirely rebuilt in 1762; but close by it were some old houses which apparently once formed part of another old Inn called the White Hart.  Certainly much of the town must have been devoted to the entertainment of travellers.

From Sittingbourne I wandered out to Borden, lovely in itself and in its situation upon the rising ground under the North Downs.  It possesses a very fine church with a low Norman tower and western door of the same date.  Within is a very nobly carved Norman arch under the belfry.