Saxon Shore 8

 

Site of the summer palace of the Saxon Kings of Kent. Soaring gables, rufous clay tiles, buxom bow frontages, painted clapperboard, and half timbered upper stories crooked with age, crowd along cobbled streets. The jostling shadows, of millennia past, throng the steeply sloping pavements. Silently witnessed, these last seven hundred years, by the watching windows of The Sun Inn.

This scene is lit by a sharp edged winter sun; speaking of an atmosphere cleansed by windy weather. The tide, with an hour still to rise, races to meet me, at the foot of the street. Over-topping the creek. Crossing Conduit Street. Transforming waterfront properties into anxious islands.

North of Scotland, the ninety mile per hour winds, of storms Malik and Corrie, whip the white crested waters, of the Atlantic Ocean, south, into the funnel of the North Sea. The sea bed rises beneath them. The two shores taper inward. Mounding waves ever higher, as they approach the Kent coast. Creating a North Sea storm surge, which today coincides with the time of high tide.

Larger vehicles wade their way tentatively through the temporary inundation. Lower slung cars, and pedestrians, either turn around and reroute, or settle down to wait for the ebb. I back track, to higher ground, and walk parallel with the bank.

The opposite shore appears in glimpses. At the end of an alley, the centenarian steel built Thames sailing barge Repertor, lies snugged down for the winter, spars struck. A survivor from an age, on the fringes of living memory, when such craft still dominated coastal trade on the London river, and beyond. 

Cottages crouch behind a grass covered sea wall. Front steps are stacked with precautionary sand bags, as still the water clambers higher. Submerging the boardwalk of a jetty. Residents periodically emerge to survey its inexorable advance. Hostages to an uncertain future, in these times of climate change and sea level rise.

I retreat to the sanctuary of historic streets, placed, by far sighted mediaeval architects, on a resistant chalk ridge, clothed in brick-earth. Beyond the reach of the sea. Now and then. An eclectic mix of construction styles, eras and materials, to either hand. Ruddy brick and warm wood. . . .

. . . .give way to cool white facades, in the market square. Astride which stands the alice blue Guildhall, raised in the sixteenth century. The sun lit Council meeting chamber above, providing shelter for market traders, in the shade of the colonnades, below. 

With filigree fingers spread, a leaf-shorn tree, sinuous and asymmetric, raises a hand in protest at the march of rectilinear regularity. Beneath it, silhouette stick figures scurry. Mingling with the shadows of a rich past. Ever present, as Faversham bustles about its business.