Ickham 29k & The Cosy Club
Saturday. Time for another long training walk with the gang; once again, we’re meeting at Tina’s place in Ickham, for a 6am start. A cold, still morning; just 1–2°C, with low-lying mist and a light northerly wind of around 5–6 mph. The mist cleared by around 7am, giving way to sunny, clear conditions as the temperature rose — reaching 9°C by 9am. After that, the weather turned, and we had mostly cloudy skies persisting through to midday. The wind shifted gradually from northerly to easterly as the morning progressed, though it stayed gentle at 3–8 mph throughout. A chilly start, but it was a pleasant Spring morning for the walk.
We followed Tina’s Garmin along the trails again. We reversed the route this time, and extended the Stodmarsh segment across the marshes, for a longer 29 km hike across the countryside. The extra distance was deliberate; we are all training for the London to Brighton Ultra Challenge later in the year, and our legs need acclimatising to longer days on the march.
Littlebourne first, then a short loop out to Bekesbourne and Patrixbourne, then back to Littlebourne and on to Wickhambreaux. We followed the trails across farmland to the Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve, and along muddy riverside footpaths to Grove Ferry. We nearly lost one of our party to the river at this point, but luckily I managed to fish her out again. From Grove Ferry, across the fields near Preston, and finally curving round to Wingham before returning to our cars in Ickham. For a celebratory lunch, we all adjourned to The Cosy Club on St Margaret’s Street in Canterbury.
Leaving Littlebourne and heading south-east, the loop out to Bekesbourne is a short one but worth taking for the history alone. The village's Domesday name was simply Burnes — a reference to the local stream — and it later became Livingsbourne, after Levine, the Anglo-Saxon lord of the manor at the time of the Conquest. It only acquired its current name in the thirteenth century, when the manor passed to the Beke family, who also brought with them an unusual administrative arrangement: Bekesbourne became a limb of the Cinque Port of Hastings, obliged to contribute a ship to its fleet. A leading citizen made an annual trip to Hastings to be sworn in as Deputy Mayor, an arrangement that persisted in residual form well into the nineteenth century.
The church of St Peter dates from the twelfth century and retains its Norman north doorway, along with two original chancel windows and an unusual pair of thirteenth-century lancets in the east wall. On the hillside below sits Cobham Court, probably on the site of the original Anglo-Saxon settlement, a house dating from the fifteenth century that was, during the Tudor and Elizabethan periods, the property of the Earls of Cobham, one of whom served as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and held the Cinque Ports Court of Shepway here. But perhaps the most prominent landmark in the parish's history is now gone entirely. After the dissolution of the monasteries, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer acquired the medieval manor and built a palace on the site. It was mostly demolished during the Commonwealth period in the mid-seventeenth century, and what remained — a gateway, domestic offices, porter's lodge and stables — was converted into a private residence, now known as the Old Palace.
A short distance further south brings you to Patrixbourne, and here the architecture demands attention. The church of St Mary contains one of the finest Norman south doorways in Kent — a richly carved Romanesque portal generally mentioned alongside Barfreston and the west door of Rochester Cathedral as representing a distinct school of twelfth-century sculpture in east Kent, with close parallels in Lower Normandy. The carving is concentrated around the south door and a wheel window at the east gable end, and scholars have dated the main fabric to around 1170–1180. The church was built in stone at a period when many comparable village churches were still timber, and its quality reflects the wealth of its early patrons.
The village's name and the church's origins both trace back to the Patrick family, Norman lords from La Lande-Patry in the Calvados region of Normandy. At the time of Domesday, the manor was held by Richard, son of William, as a tenant of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux — half-brother of the Conqueror and one of the largest landholders in post-Conquest England. The Patricks held it thereafter, and it was they who commissioned the church in its present stone form. The male line died out around 1190 with Ingelram Patrick — who left a seal that survives in the Canterbury Cathedral archives, showing a mounted knight brandishing a sword — and the manor passed through several other hands before the church was given to a priory near Rouen, and later to Merton Priory in Surrey.
The church also holds a collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Flemish and Swiss enamelled glass panels, assembled and given by the Marchioness of Conyngham, who lived at Bifrons, the large house whose parkland adjoins the village to the north. Bifrons has its own footnote in the history of mathematics: a John Taylor purchased the house in 1694; his eldest son Brook Taylor FRS, born in 1685, went on to publish the result now known as Taylor's theorem, a foundational element of calculus still taught in every undergraduate mathematics course. The house was later replaced by a Georgian building, sold in 1830 to the 1st Marquess of Conyngham, and demolished in 1945 after wartime requisitioning left it beyond repair. Only a stable block and a gardener's cottage remain.
After the loop back through Littlebourne and the familiar ground of Wickhambreaux, the route opens out across flat farmland towards Stodmarsh, and the landscape changes decisively. The enclosed fields give way to wide, low-lying ground, the hedgerows thin out, and the sky appears to double in size as the valley broadens towards the marshes. This is the transition from the chalk and clayland of east Kent to the river floodplain — a belt of reedbeds, wet meadows and open water that runs along the Great Stour and its tributaries. On a cold April morning, with a low northerly coming off the fields, it has a spare, bleached quality that the villages behind you do not prepare you for.
The path along the Stodmarsh reserve follows the southern bank of the Great Stour, and eventually arrives at Grove Ferry. The name is straightforward enough: this is where a hand-drawn ferry once crossed the river, serving travellers on what was a significant route before the age of bridges. The fishing rights at this point on the river were granted under Henry II and remain in use today, held by the Canterbury and District Angling Association — a continuity of around 850 years that is not unusual for waterways of this kind in England, but still gives pause when you encounter it by the riverbank.
The Great Stour at Grove Ferry is tidal, remaining under tidal influence all the way from Pegwell Bay upstream to the sluice at Fordwich — a stretch of around nineteen miles of navigable water. Grove Ferry sits roughly at the midpoint, and the river can look quite different depending on the time of day: at high water it is wide and purposeful; at low water the mud banks narrow the channel considerably. The footpath here runs close to the water's edge, and the ground can be soft after any period of rain. One member of our party found this out more comprehensively than she would have preferred.
From Grove Ferry, the route cuts north-east across open fields towards Preston-next-Wingham, a village whose name carries its own small history lesson. Preston derives from the Old English prēost-tūn — literally a settlement or estate belonging to priests. The manor was originally known as Coppanstan, and in the ninth century it was acquired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, an event that presumably confirmed, rather than created, its ecclesiastical character. The village sits on a gentle rise above the Little Stour marshes, and the church of St Mildred occupies this elevated position with a certain quiet authority. The original foundation dates to around AD 700; the present structure is early thirteenth century, restored in 1857 by the Gothic Revival architect William White. Its most distinctive possession is a parochial library assembled in 1710 under the auspices of Thomas Bray, containing sixty-seven volumes transported in a case of seasoned oak with iron carrying handles — one of only a handful of such libraries to survive in situ in England.
From Preston the path curves round towards Wingham, arriving from the north-east rather than the Canterbury direction taken on the first walk. This approach gives a different view of the town — you come down into the broad main street from the upper end, and the scale of it becomes legible in a way that the western approach does not quite allow. Wingham obtained a weekly Tuesday market by grant of Henry III in 1252, held at the northern end of the town where the street widens. The character of a small medieval market town is still readable in the streetscape: long plots running back from the road, a row of timber-framed canons' houses on the south side — known as Canon Row, each originally named after one of the endowment places of Wingham College — and domestic buildings spanning every period from the thirteenth century onwards. The last few kilometres back to Ickham along the familiar lanes require little description by this point in a 29 km day. The legs know the way, even if they would rather not.
Thanks to Pandora, Charlotte, Sophie, Tina and Tamara for joining us on the walk today.
