[Illustration: THE KENTISH COAST: _Sheppy to Deal_]
Centuries ago this industry disappeared, and although the Roquefort cheeses we nowadays import from France in great quantities are similar and popular products, nothing of the kind is now made in Sheppey, or anywhere in England.
The “fat-tailed sheep” will nowadays be sought in vain in Sheppey. There are many of the ordinary breeds, but, on the honour of a traveller, none of that type.
This intimate, yet in some ways remote, island off the Kentish mainland is but eleven miles in length by five broad, and would thus seem to afford little scope for variety; but within this small compass is found scenery of very varied description, ranging from the wide-spreading marshes beside the Swale to a high ridge or backbone, on whose highest point stands the village of Minster-in-Sheppey. A peculiar feature of the low, marshy part of the island is found in the ancient mounds known as “cotterels,” usually said to be burial-places of the Danes; they are large and irregular grassy hillocks, which may more probably be the spoil from olden drainage-trenches. Thus heaped up, they formed, either by accident or intention, refuges for sheep in time of floods. Two of these are seen on the way from Kingsferry.
The chief town of the island, the dockyard town and port of Sheerness, is six miles from Kingsferry. On the way to it you pass near Queenborough, originally “Kingborough,” but renamed by Edward the Third in honour of Queen Philippa, when a fortress was also built. Of that castle, in whose design that distinguished Bishop, William of Wykeham, had a hand, nothing now remains, and the railway station, which stands on the site of it, although no doubt a more useful institution nowadays, frankly makes no attempt at romance. Queenborough is now a rather plaintive-looking town of one broad street, devastated by the gruesome odour, resembling putrid meat, emanating from extensive and diabolically prosperous chemical-manure works. It will thus be judged that Queenborough is an excellent place not to visit. The church itself contains nothing of interest except a battered and illiterate brass on the wall, to one “Henry Knight, sometime maior of this Towne, who was Master of a ship to Greenland, and Harpined there 24 Veiages.
