Cliffe-at-Hoo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Cliffe | |
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| OS grid reference | |
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| Parish | Cliffe and Cliffe Woods |
| District | Medway |
| Shire county | Medway unitary authority |
| Region | South East |
| Constituent country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | ROCHESTER |
| Postcode district | ME3 |
| Dial code | 01634 |
| Police | |
| Fire | |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| UK Parliament | Medway to be replaced 2007 by Rochester and Strood |
| European Parliament | South East England |
| List of places: UK • England | |
Cliffe-at-Hoo, known as Cliffe, is a village on the Hoo peninsula in Kent, England, reached from the Medway Towns by a three-mile journey along the B2000. Situated upon a low chalk escarpment overlooking the Thames marshes, Cliffe offers the adventurous rambler views of Southend-on-Sea and London. It forms part of the parish of Cliffe and Cliffe Woods in the borough of Medway.
In 774 Offa, King of Mercia, built a rustic wooden church dedicated to St Helen, a popular Mercian saint who was by legend the daughter of Coel ('Old king Cole') of Colchester.
Cliffe is cited in early records as having been called Clive and Cloveshoo (Cliffe-at-Hoo).
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[edit] The ancient Saxon town of Cloveshoo
Clovesho, or Clofeshoch, was an ancient Saxon town, in Mercia and near London (Bede, ed. Plummer, II, 214), where important councils of the Anglo-Saxon Church are recorded as having been held between 742 and 825, representing the archbishopric of Canterbury and the whole English church south of the Humber.
The location of Cloveshoo has never been successfully identified however, although it is generally thought to have been Cliffe-at-Hoo. Lingard, in his appendix to the "Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church", takes it to be Abingdon, and Kemble (Saxons in England, II, 191) to be Tewkesbury, but Haddan and Stubbs (Councils, III, 121, n.) consider all these conjectures to be based upon unreliable evidence.
Whatever uncertainty exists in determining the place which was known as Clovesho, there is no doubt as to the fact of the councils or to the authenticity of their Acts. The councils of Clovesho of which we have authentic evidence are those of the years 742, 747, 794, 798, 803, 824, and 825.
When Archbishop Theodore held the Council of Hertford between 672/3, in which he declared to the assembled bishops that he had been "appointed by the Apostolic See to be Bishop of the Church of Canterbury", a canon was passed to the effect that in future yearly synods should be held on the 1st of August every year "in the place which is called Clofeshoch" (Bede, H. E., IV, ch. v.). This ruling represents the inauguration of first parliamentary system known to have operated in Britain. "There had never before been a parliament with authority enough to decide on matters concerning all the English peoples." However the slow pace of change during this era meant that such councils were only occasionally required but were significant in that they had the character not only of a church synod but also of the worldly Witenagemot. Such meetings were held at Clovesho for more than 150 years.
It is evident from the records that the councils held at Clovesho and those generally of the Anglo-Saxon period were mixed assemblies at which not only the bishops and abbots, but the kings of Mercia and the chief men of the kingdom were present. They had thus the character not only of a church synod but of the Witenagemot or assembly fairly representative of the Church and realm. The affairs of the Church were decided by the bishops presided over by the archbishop, while the king, presiding over his chiefs, gave to their decisions the co-operation and acceptance of the State. Both parties signed the decrees, but there is no evidence of any ingerence of the lay power in the spiritual legislation or judgments of the Church. While it must be remembered that at this period the country was not yet united into one kingdom, the councils of Clovesho, as far as we may judge from their signatures, represented the primatial See of Canterbury and the whole English Church south of the Humber.
[edit] Councils of Clovesho
Notwithstanding the Hertford council provision, ìt was not until seventy years later that the first Council of Clovesho of which we have an authentic record was assembled. It is true that in the Canterbury Cartulary there is a charter which says that the Privilege of King Wihtred to the churches was "confirmed and ratified in a synod held in the month of July in a place called Clovesho" in the year 716; but the authenticity of this document, though intrinsically probable, is held by Haddan and Stubbs to be dependent upon that of the Privilege of Wihtred.
The first Council of Clovesho, in 742, was presided over by Ethelbald, King of Mercia, and Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury. According to the record of its proceedings (given in Kemble's "Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici", 87), the council "diligently enquired into the needs of religion, the Creed as delivered by the ancient teaching of the Fathers, and carefully examined how things were ordered at the first beginning of the Church here in England, and where the honour of the monasteries according to the rules of justice was maintained". The privilege of King Wihtred assuring the liberty of the Church was solemnly confirmed. Beyond this, no mention is made of particular provisions.
The second Council of Clovesho, held in 747, was one of the most important such gatherings recorded in the history of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Its acts were happily copied by Spelman (Councils, I, 240) from an ancient Cottonian Manuscript now lost. They are printed in Wilkins, I, 94; in Mansi, XII, 395; and in Haddan and Stubbs, III, 360. They state that the council was composed of "bishops and dignitaries of less degree from the various provinces of Britain", and that it was presided over by Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury. According to the Manuscript preserved by William of Malmesbury, "King Ethelbald and his princes and chiefs were present". It was thus substantially representative of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The Acts relate that "first of all, the Metropolitan, as president, brought forth in their midst two letters of the Apostolic Lord, Pope Zachary, venerated throughout the whole world, and with great care these were plainly read, and also openly translated into our own language, according as he himself by his Apostolic authority had commanded". The papal letters are described as containing a fervent admonition to amendment of life, addressed to the English people of every rank and condition, and requiring that those who contemned these warnings and remained obstinate in their malice should be punished by sentence of excommunication. The council then drew up thirty-one canons dealing mostly with matters of ecclesiastical discipline and liturgy. The thirteenth and fifteenth canons are noteworthy as showing the close union of the Anglo-Saxon Church with the Holy See. The thirteenth canon is: "That all the most sacred Festivals of Our Lord made Man, in all things pertaining to the same, viz.: in the Office of Baptism, the celebration of Masses, in the method of chanting, shall be celebrated in one and the same way, namely, according to the sample which we have received in writing from the Roman Church. And also, throughout the course of the whole year, the festivals of the Saints are to be kept on one and the same day, with their proper psalmody and chant, according to the Martyrology of the same Roman Church." The fifteenth canon adds that in the seven hours of the daily and nightly Office the clergy "must not dare to sing or read anything not sanctioned by the general use, but only that which comes down by authority of Holy Scripture, and which the usage of the Roman Church allows". The sixteenth canon in like manner requires that the litanies and rogations are to be observed by the clergy and people with great reverence "according to the rite of the Roman Church". The feasts of St. Gregory and of St. Augustine, "who was sent to the English people by our said Pope and father St. Gregory", were to be solemnly celebrated. The clergy and monks were to live so as to be always prepared to receive worthily the most holy Body and Blood of the Lord, and the laity were to be exhorted to the practice of frequent Communion (Canons xxii, xxiii). Persons who did not know Latin were to join in the psalmody by intention, and were to be taught to say, in the Saxon tongue, prayers for the living or for the repose of the souls of the dead (Can. xxvii). Neither clergy nor monks were in future to be allowed to live in the houses of the people (Can. xxix), nor were they to adopt or imitate the dress which is worn by the laity (Can. xxviii).
The record of the third Council of Clovesho, in 794, consists merely in a charter by which Offa, King of Mercia, made a grant of land for pious purposes. The charter states that it has been drawn up "in the general synodal Council in the most celebrated place called Clofeshoas". At or about the time when the papal legates presided at the Council of Chelsea in 787, Offa had obtained from Pope Adrian I that Lichfield should be created an archbishopric and that the Mercian sees should be subjected to its jurisdiction and withdrawn from that of Canterbury. Consequently at this Council of Clovesho in 794, Higbert of Lichfield, to whom the pope had sent the pallium, signs as an archbishop.
A fourth council was held at Clovesho in 798 by Archbishop Ethelheard with Kenulph, King of Mercia, at which the bishops and abbots and chief men of the province were present. Its proceedings are related in a document by Archbishop Ethelheard (Lambeth Manuscript 1212, p. 312; Haddan and Stubbs, III, 512). He states that his first care was to examine diligently "in what way the Catholic Faith was held and how the Christian religion was practised amongst them". To this inquiry, "they all replied with one voice: 'Be it known to your Paternity, that even as it was formerly delivered to us by the Holy Roman and Apostolic See, by the mission of the most Blessed Pope Gregory, so do we believe, and what we believe, we in all sincerity do our best to put into practice.'" The rest of the time of the council was devoted to questions of church property, and an agreement of exchange of certain lands between the archbishop and the Abbess Cynedritha.
The fifth Council of Clovesho, in 803, is one of the most remarkable of the series, as its Acts contain the declaration of the restitution of the Mercian sees to the province of Canterbury by the authority of Pope Leo III. In 798 King Kenulph of Mercia addressed to the pope a long letter, representing "with great affection and humility" the disadvantages of the new archbishopric which had been erected at Lichfield some sixteen years previously by Pope Adrian, at the prayer of King Offa. King Kenulph in this letter (Haddan and Stubbs, III, 521) submits the whole case to the pope, asking his blessing and saying: "I love you as one who is my father, and I embrace you with the whole strength of my obedience", and promising to abide in all things by his decision. "I judge it fitting to bend humbly the ear of our obedience to your holy commands, and to fulfil with all our strength whatever may seem to your Holiness that we ought to do." Ethelheard, Archbishop of Canterbury, went himself to Rome, and pleaded for the restitution of the sees. In 802 Pope Leo III granted the petition of the king and the archbishop, and issued to the latter a Bull in which by the authority of Blessed Peter he restored to him the full jurisdiction enjoyed by his predecessors. The pope communicated this judgment in a letter to King Kenulph (Haddan and Stubbs, III, 538). This decision was duly proclaimed in the Council of Clovesho held in the following year. Archbishop Ethelheard declared to the synod that "by the co-operation of God and of the Apostolic Lord, the Pope Leo", he and his fellow-bishops unanimously ratified the rights of the See of Canterbury, and that an archbishopric should never more be founded at Lichfield, and that the grant of the pallium made by Pope Adrian, should, "with the consent and permission of the Apostolic Lord Pope Adrian, be considered as null, having been obtained surreptitiously and by evil suggestion". Higbert, the Archbishop of Lichfield, submitted to the papal judgment, retiring into a monastery, and the Mercian sees returned to the jurisdiction of Canterbury.
In 824 and again in 825 the sixth and seventh synods were held at Clovesho, "Beornwulf, King of Mercia, presiding and the Venerable Archbishop Wulfred ruling and controlling the Synod", according to the record of the first, and "Wulfred the Archbishop presiding, and also Beornwulf, King of Mercia", according to the second. The first assembly was occupied in deciding a suit concerning an inheritance, and the second in terminating a dispute between the archbishop and the Abbess Cwenthrytha (Haddan and Stubbs, III, 593, 596).
[edit] 1200—1800
St Helen's church at Cliffe was built about 1260 and was constructed in the local style of alternating layers of Kent ragstone and squared black flint. It is one of the largest parish churches in Kent, and the only dedicated to St Helen, the size of the church revealing its past importance.
Above the porch is a muniments room containing important historical documents.
During the 14th century Cliffe was the site of a farm owned by the monks of Christ's Church, Canterbury, when the village had a population of about 3,000.
In the late middle ages the village of Cliffe supported a port, which thrived until a disastrous fire in 1520 stifled its growth, marking a period of decline, accentuated by the silting of the marshes of the Thames estuary. Nevertheless, during the 16th century, Cliffe-at-Hoo was still considered a town. However, by the middle of the 19th century the population had slumped to about 900.
In 1824, construction of the Thames and Medway Canal was begun, providing work for able-bodied villagers and other labourers who came to the area, increasing the population once again.
The canal project was a short-lived enterprise, however, superseded by the development of the railways, but the route, including the Higham and Strood tunnel (2.25 miles in length, in two sections) was used by South Eastern Railway from 1845, bringing a branch line to Cliffe in 1882.
[edit] Henry Pye
Even in 1895 the number of people contracting malaria was high but casualties begun reducing sharply after the farmer, Henry Pye, came to the area and systematically begun the drainage of the farmland and marshes thus eliminating the fever. He drained such a large area of the marsh and so improved the grazing pastures that he was called 'King of the Hundreds'.
Henry Pye was an innovator in farming practices promoting the use of locally built (Rochester) Aveling and Porter steam engines for use in ploughing and threshing. In 1878, with other farmers Pye met with the South Eastern Railway Company and petitioned for a railway to be built, resulting in the establishment of the 'Hundred of Hoo Railway Company'. The first part of the line was opened in March 1882, running from Cliffe to Sharnal Street.
[edit] Victorian Cliffe
The rise of the Kent cement industry brought a new prosperity to the ancient settlement during the Victorian era.
Alfred Francis (second son of Charles), with his son, established the firm of Francis and Co. at the Nine Elms office at Vauxhall, London, and then built the cement works at Cliffe in about 1860. Francis and Co instituted the Nine Elms cement works . These works were built on Cliffe marsh, to the west of the village where the chalk cliffs came almost to within a mile of the River Thames. The area also proved a useful source of clay.
Alfred Francis died in 1871, but in partnership his son continued to produce 'Portland, Roman, Medina, and Parian cement, Portland stucco and Plaster of Paris', also shipping chalk, flints and fire bricks, from the site.
The riverside location provided ease of transport and wharves were duly built at the mouth of Cliffe creek. A canal was constructed from the works, which gave its name to a tavern built nearby, now long demolished but remembered as the Canal Tavern.
1870-1 saw further developments to the cement works, which were rebuilt and extended, with an elaborate tramway added. Methods of extracting the chalk were basic, involving the labourer being suspended by a rope (around his waist) secured at the cliff top, from which position he would hack out the chalk, so that it fell to the ground below to be collected in a waiting railway wagon.
Further to the north of the Francis and Co works near the river, an explosive works (Curtis and Harvey) opened in 1901. Over the factories' 20-year history 16 people were to lose their lives in explosions.
Francis and Co was taken over about 1900 by the British Portland Cement Company, but after the great war the cement works began to decline, and was finally phased out in 1920-1.
By 1901 the population of Cliffe had exceeded three thousand.
[edit] Alpha cement works
Near the Francis works in 1910 began the Alpha cement works, part of the Thames Portland Cement Company. The Alpha works were about a mile from the river and included an Goshead aerial cableway which ran alongside the road constructed by the soldiers of Cliffe fort, then disused.
Alpha continued after the closure of the Francis works, which it took over in 1934. With this amalgamation an additional railway was added in 1935 to replace the cableway, linking the works with the quayside next to the fort.
The Alpha site, however, became exhausted by 1950, and further digging led to extensive flooding, as quarrying exceeded the depth of the water table. These quarries, still flooded, offer havens for wildlife, and are among the few surviving that have not been used for rubbish infill or otherwise developed.
A second quarry was begun to the north of Salt Lane, which is still the main access road to Cliffe from the cement works area, on the very edge of the marshes.
By the late 1950s the cement industry in the area was owned by the APCM, which had added a further railway line to the Hundred of Hoo railway, giving the cement manufacturers direct access to the main railway network. The works at Cliffe shut on April 1st 1970, with no further space available for quarrying, but the APCM recreation ground in the centre of the village has remained a valuable open space, with pitches for football, cricket, tennis and bowls.
In 1970 the cement industry was replaced by the Marinex gravel company, whose fleet of ships dredged gravel from the Thames estuary.
[edit] Cliffe rectory
Old Cliffe rectory is some two miles inland from St Helen's Church, supposedly to preserve its inhabitants from the malaria on the marshes. It has housed two chancellors of the exchequer, two archbishops, three deans and 11 archdeacons. Nicholas Heath, bishop of Rochester, and archbishop of Worcester also lived at the rectory. The 'living' at Cliffe in the 17th century was described as 'one of the prizes of the church'.
Anne, the daughter of Samuel Annerley, (Lord Privy Seal, 1649) married the rev Samuel Wesley, father of John Wesley, founder of the Wesleyans, also lived at Cliffe rectory.
The new rectory is within sight of the church.
[edit] Rye Farm
The Grade II-listed barn at Rye Farm, in Common Lane, Cliffe dates from the 1570s. It is described as a 16th-century Grade II barn "with archaic details." Beneath its present asbestos roof is a timber framed three bay barn with weatherboarded walls and a traditional hipped roof. It includes an ancient wagon porch.
[edit] Cliffe Fort
Cliffe Fort is a Royal Commission fort built in the 1860s on the edge of the marshes to protect against invasion via the Thames. A Brennan Torpedo station was added in 1890, the rails of which are still visible at low water, and was used as an anti-aircraft battery in World War II. It is now inside a gravel extraction site and is inaccessible and very overgrown, and can only be viewed from the riverside path.
[edit] The RSPB at Cliffe
In 2002 the UK government proposed as an option for the expansion of air travel capacity in South-East England that an airport be built at Cliffe. Estimates of the final cost of the Cliffe option ranged from £11.5bn to £23bn. That figure however did not include the cost of compensation for direct and indirect habitat loss, which would have run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
British Airways stated: "We don't think it is possible to build a new airport in the time scale needed for new runway capacity in the southeast of England."
The RSPB were at the forefront of the consultation process, arguing the proposal would be "the single most destructive development affecting nationally and internationally protected wildlife sites in the UK."
The Society highlighted a number of key issues concerning the overriding significance of the area, and its unique international importance for birds, including large numbers of Bewick's swans, Brent geese, White-fronted geese, Shelducks, Gadwall, Teal, Ringed Plovers, Grey Plovers, Knot and Black-tailed Godwits, and other wildlife. It pointed out:
i. The Cliffe area is heavily protected by UK and European conservation laws.
ii. "Passenger safety - situating a major international airport where planes would take off and land through an area that supports concentrations of up to 200,000 wading birds, ducks and geese, poses a major risk of bird strikes on a scale that could easily down aircraft, with disastrous consequences".
The Government's own Bird strike Avoidance Team has said of Cliffe: "There is a very serious potential bird strike risk at the new airport site. Indeed, it is difficult to envisage a more problematic site anywhere else in the UK."
iii. "Technical challenges - Environment Agency staff have said that if the airport is built at Cliffe there is a real possibility of flooding in London, as well as in the Cliffe/Cooling marshes area and that in the long term a second Thames Barrier may be required in the Gravesend/Tilbury area".
In December 2003, in its Aviation White Paper, the Government dropped the option for an airport at Cliffe. "At last the Government has accepted the blindingly obvious," said the RSPB's Chief Executive, Graham Wynne.
[edit] The Hans Egede
A prominent feature where the marshes meet the river for many years, The Hans Egede was a wooden, auxiliary 3-masted ship, built in 1922 by J. Th. Jorgensen at Thuro, Denmark. It was reported damaged by fire on 21 August 1955. and towed to Dover where the fire was extinguished. In 1957 she passed into the ownership of the Atlas Diesel Co. and was towed out of Dover by the tug Westercock. She then spent some years in the Medway as a coal and/or grain hulk. She was then towed to Cubits Town on the Thames. As the tug Fossa from Gravesend was towing her up Sea Reach the strain on the structure, which had become weakened over the years, proved too much causing her to take in water and sink. After grounding on the Blyth Sands she was beached at Cliffe.
[edit] Trivia
Cliffe marshes stood in for the paddy fields of Vietnam in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket.
[edit] References
- Perry Haines RSPB.
- Shamel Hundred. D.S. Worsdale.
- Isle of Grain Railways, Adrian Gray.
[edit] External links
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
- Cliffe village website
- Andrew Burbidge website
- Listed Buildings on the site of the proposed airport at Cliffe
- High Halstow village website
- Cliffe Fort
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The unitary authority of Medway in Kent, South East England with its suburbs, villages, towns and parishes: |
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Allhallows • Borstal • Brompton • Chatham • Chattenden • Cliffe • Cliffe and Cliffe Woods • Cliffe Woods • Cooling • Cuxton • Frindsbury • Frindsbury Extra • Frindsbury Intra • Gillingham • Halling • Hempstead • High Halstow • Hoo St Werburgh • Isle of Grain • Lordswood • Lower Rainham • Luton • Park Wood • Rochester • Rainham • Rainham Mark • St Mary Hoo • St Mary's Island • Stoke • Strood • Twydall • Upchurch • Upnor • Wainscott • Walderslade • Wigmore • Wouldham |
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| The unitary authority of Medway List of places in Kent |
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