William Cobbett - From Dover To The Wen

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These extracts taken from Rural Rides, first published 1830

Published in Penguin Books 2009

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Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-93280-4

From Dover to the Wen

1. Voices of Akenfield Ronald Blythe

2. The Wood John Stewart Collis

3. From Dover to the Wen William Cobbett

4. The Pleasures of English Food Alan Davidson

5. Through England on a SideSaddle Celia Fiennes

6. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems Various

7. A Shropshire Lad A. E. Housman

8. Cathedrals and Castles Henry James

9. Walks in the Wheatfields Richard Jefferies

10. The Beauties of a Cottage Garden Gertrude Jekyll

11. Country Churches Simon Jenkins

12. A Wiltshire Diary Francis Kilvert

13. Some Country Houses and their Owners James LeesMilne

14. The Clouded Mirror L. T. C. Rolt

15. Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens Vita SackvilleWest

16. One Green Field Edward Thomas

17. English Folk Songs Ralph Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd

18. Country Lore and Legends Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson

19. Birds of Selborne Gilbert White

20. Life at Grasmere Dorothy and William Wordsworth

From Dover to the Wen is taken from Rural Rides (rst published 1830)

Dover,

On Monday I was balancing in my own mind whether I should go to France or not. Today I have decided the question in the negative, and shall set off this evening for the Isle of Thanet; that spot so famous for corn.

[] In describing the parts of the country over which I have travelled I have often mentioned the chalkridge and also the sandridge, which I had traced, running parallel with each other from about Farnham, in Surrey, to Sevenoaks, in Kent. [] In going up from Chilworth and Albury, through Dorking, Reigate, Godstone, and so on, the two chains, or ridges, approach so near to each other, that, in many places, you actually have a chalkbank to your right and a sandbank to your left, at not more than forty yards from each other. In some places, these chains of hills run off from each other to a great distance, even to a distance of twenty miles. They then approach again towards each other, and so they go on. I was always desirous to ascertain whether these chains, or ridges, continued on thus to the sea. I have now found that they do. And, if you go out into the channel, at Folkestone, there you see a sandcliff and a chalkcliff. Folkestone stands upon the sand, in a little dell about seven hundred or eight hundred yards from the very termination of the ridge. All the way along, the chalkridge is the most lofty, until you come to Leith Hill and Hindhead; and here, at Folkestone, the sandridge tapers off in a sort of flat towards the sea. The land is like what it is at Reigate, a very steep hill; a hill of full a mile high, and bending exactly in the same manner as the hill at Reigate does. The turnpikeroad winds up it and goes over it in exactly the same manner as that at Reigate. The land to the south of the hill begins a poor, thin, white loam upon the chalk; soon gets to be a very fine, rich loam upon the chalk; goes on till it mingles the chalky loam with the sandy loam; and thus it goes on down to the seabeach, or to the edge of the cliff. It is a beautiful bed of earth here, resembling in extent that on the south side of Portsdown Hill rather than that of Reigate. The crops here are always good if they are good any where. A large part of this fine tract of land, as well as the little town of Sandgate (which is a beautiful little place upon the beach itself ), and also great part of the town of Folkestone belong, they tell me, to Lord Radnor, who takes his title of Viscount, from Folkestone. Upon the hill, begins, and continues on for some miles, that stiff red loam, approaching to a clay, which I have several times described as forming the soil at the top of this chalkridge. I spoke of it in the Register of the 16th of August last, page 409, and I then said, that it was like the land on the top of this very ridge at Ashmansworth in the North of Hampshire. At Reigate, you find precisely the same soil upon the top of the hill, a very red, clayey sort of loam, with big yellow flint stones in it. Every where, the soil is the same upon the top of the high part of this ridge. I have now found it to be the same, on the edge of the sea, that I found it on the North East corner of Hampshire.

From the hill, you keep descending all the way to Dover, a distance of about six miles, and it is absolutely six miles of down hill. On your right, you have the lofty land which forms a series of chalk cliffs, from the top of which you look into the sea: on your left, you have ground that goes rising up from you in the same sort of way. The turnpikeroad goes down the middle of a valley, each side of which, as far as you can see, may be about a mile and a half. It is six miles long, you will remember; and here, therefore, with very little interruption, very few chasms, there are eighteen square miles of corn. It is a patch such as you very seldom see, and especially of corn so good as it is here. I should think that the wheat all along here would average pretty nearly four quarters to the acre. A few oats are sown. A great deal of barley, and that a very fine crop.

The town of Dover is like other seaport towns; but really, much more clean, and with less blackguard people in it than I ever observed in any seaport before. It is a most picturesque place, to be sure. On one side of it rises, upon the top of a very steep hill, the Old Castle, with all its fortifications. On the other side of it there is another chalkhill, the side of which is pretty nearly perpendicular, and rises up from sixty to an hundred feet higher than the tops of the houses, which stand pretty nearly close to the foot of the hill.