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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
Hernehill and Dunkirk, and included the coast as well as the wood.
NORTHWOOD.—Long, long ago the good
people of Canterbury called 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. Herne, a manor in Swalecliff, and
Dodeham, obtained the name "Northwood", which name survives on
the map of Herne 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 lived north of the wood and they naturally developed their
own names, e.g. Seasalter, Harwich, Swalecliffe, etc., all of which are
early names. One of them, however, has lost all names but "Church
Street" and this lies 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 finally the manor of Whitstaple only. Much useful
information about it is to be found in Mr. Robert Goodsall's history of
Whitstable, Seasalter and Swalecliffe, published in 1938. The manor
of Northwood joined the others, I suppose, at the white |
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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 police district of those days. The men of the
Hundred met fairly frequently and they met in the open air because
public halls were unknown other than the churches, and these were not
big enough, to judge from those which have survived. Naturally 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" really means "huitre
staple" or oyster market is quoted by Mr. Goodsall but, although
our Saxon ancestors may have inherited the Roman taste for oysters, I
feel sure that they did not call them by a Norman-French name.
The meeting place of the Hundred was naturally apt to
become also a market place, especially 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. |