The Historical Development of the Port of Faversham, Kent 1580-1780
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The Historical Development of the Port of Faversham, Kent 1580-1780 The Kent Archaeological Field School Director; Paul Wilkinson, PhD, MIfA, FRSA. The Office, School Farm Oast, Graveney Road Faversham, Kent. ME13 8UP Tel: 01795 532548 or 07885 700 112. e-mail: [email protected] www.kafs.co.uk Introduction “Faversham; a fair and flourishing sea-port town, giv- whaling fleets. All of the front-rank towns of the kingdom ing title to an extensive hundred in the Lathe of Scray, were either ports or had easy river access to the sea (Selley in the county of Kent, is situated on a navigable arm 1962: 199). of the Swale, in a fruitfull part of the county, nine miles from Canterbury, and forty-seven from London” Besides the ships of the Royal Navy and merchantmen (Edward Jacob, 1774, A History of Faversham). trading overseas, there were large numbers of small craft trafficking in the waters about Britain. “There are sup- Faversham, whose maritime development is the subject of posed to be about eighteen hundred ships and vessels in this study, was extremely fortunate in having an 18th-cen- the coal trade and about nine hundred more in what they tury historian of Jacob’s stature to write comprehensively call the Northern trade”, wrote a naval officer in 1774 on the town. (Ashton, 1924: 200). One theme which emerges from his work is the economic North Kent was endowed with one passable road (Watling prosperity to which Faversham had long been accustomed. Street) and numerous waterways. It possessed an exten- This prosperity had developed before the building of the sive coastline along the Thames south shore and to the Abbey in 1174, and it only remained for the commercial east, a navigable river from Sandwich to Fordwich (and stimulus of the London agricultural food market, the mak- thence to Canterbury), and to the west the Medway River ing of gunpowder, the development of brewing, and the from Rochester to Maidstone. oyster fishery to enable Faversham to expand even further in importance from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Fortuitously “the water transport was available where it was most needed” (Thirsk 1967: 199). Contemporaries And yet, apart from glimpses by Jacob, the extent of were aware of this favourable circumstance, and noted that prosperity, and whether just based on Faversham’s particularly “the benefits of water carriage (from Kent) to mercantile activity, was unknown The flesh to cover the and from the Metropolitical City, or Chief Mart” (Harris, known bare bones of Faversham’s maritime history had as 1719: 357). yet to be ascertained. There is no comprehensive study of Faversham’s port development after Jacob. Throughout the year coastal hoys operated a weekly schedule from these North Kent ports, and Edward Jacob For the period under study (1580-1780) England was described Faversham’s maritime activity in 1774: relatively empty; its population in 1700 was barely 5 mil- lion; millions of acres were waste heath, bog or fen (Pen- “The principal trade now carried on from this port is by nington, 1970: 61). Roads were worse than the Romans six hoys, who go alternately every week to London, with had left them. The harvest was still the heartbeat of the corn of all sorts, amounting, in very plentiful years, to forty economy and industry fed off the soil: timber, hides, hops, thousand quarters per annum. Colliers also, (which supply flax, madder, horn, bone, were among the essential raw the town, and the county round it with coals) of upwards of materials (Clark, 1947: 5). And most industry was cottage a hundred tons burthen, and larger vessels, which import fir industry: spinning, knitting, weaving, tanning, smithying. timber of all kinds, and iron, from Polish Prussia, Norway, and Sweden, frequently resort hither; the principal proprie- Family life and work danced in step with the phases of tors or merchants being chiefly inhabitants of this town. the agricultural year (Chambers and Mingay, 1966: 54). Here are also some other vessels employed in carrying wool, Harvesting, fruit-picking, or fishing - work was seasonal. apples, pears, and cherries, to London and other parts, in the And yet the critical watershed had been passed; people did season” (Jacob, 1774: 66). not starve en masse in England any more, grain was in- creasingly being exported, shortages were brief, local and Jacob’s excellent history provides a sound spring-board usually of a particular crop, and the effect was cushioned from which to study the previous and subsequent history by the better transport by sea of supplies (Porter, 1982: of the port and town. Edward Jacob wrote impressively 30-45). from first-hand experience about a prosperous and improv- ing provincial port and town, and the publication in 1774 Throughout the 18th century the principle highway of (when he was 64) of his History brought Faversham well England was the sea. Before canals or railways, and while to the forefront of towns in north Kent. roads remained impassable, coastal shipping remained the cheapest, safest and speediest means of conveying Faversham was well-placed to take advantage of Eng- freight. Hence ports were vital, not just for trade, but land’s coastal maritime trade, and England, out of all also as nurseries of the Royal Navy, the fisheries, and the Europe, was well suited geographically for such coasting 1 2 trade, for it had more usable coastline than any other coun- life of the country, and to ignore “a principal source of try. The twenty-one Head Ports of England, with their Britain’s wealth” is to ignore the development of that eco- Member Ports and creeks, formed a maritime spider’s nomic life (Defoe, 1726: 54). web with London at its centre. In 1768 Baldwin’s London Directory, in its 11th edition, itemised some 580 places in The carriage of coal by sea enabled the coal industry to de- England and Wales to which goods could be sent by water. velop, and carriage by sea of corn and other commodities Earlier, Griffiths in 1746 gave a list of London quays from allowed London to develop into the metropolis it became. which goods could be shipped for the English counties, The influence of London’s food market on the economy of and more than a century earlier, in 1637, Taylor gave simi- south-east England is a debatable point, and only through lar directions in his Carriers Cosmographie. the study of outports, such as Faversham, will the issue be resolved. N.J. Williams said in 1988, “the trade of the All these guides emphasise the importance of London as a outports is one of the most neglected aspects of England’s centre of the coasting trade, but the extent of that influence commercial development” (Williams, 1988: 1). can only be gauged by the study of commodities shipped to and from London and the outports. East coast ports felt London drew its commodities from a wide area, and as the influence of the metropolis market more than those London expanded a corresponding expansion of and im- on the south and west coasts. Southampton and Bristol provement in water transport was essential. received goods and trade from a large area and were local centres of distribution, almost playing the role of London Agriculture relied almost exclusively on the coasting trade in miniature. for the disposal of its produce. In Kent some 30 ports or landing places served this market, and including the tidal Coal and agricultural produce provided the largest inward reaches of the Medway and Swale, very few places were shipments to London, but comprehensive figures of ship- further than 15 miles from the sea. ments to London in the 18th century are not available, and again it is only by studying the outport Port Books that an Whilst land communications remained defective, this estimate of shipments to London can be made. And esti- large number of ports widely scattered around the Kent mate it must be; before the 19th century record-keeping coast was essential for dealing with the problems of in- was erratic and its reliability was not easy to test, and al- ternal transport. It is only when the railways in the mid- though statistics may give shadow and depth to the picture, 19th century opened up the hinterland of these ports and they cannot paint it. brought goods, as it were, to their back doors that their coasting trade declined. The economy of the period under study was truly agrarian: it is widely accepted that “before the onset of modern in- Faversham, second largest town of the region, and its chief dustrial growth agriculture provided everywhere the major coastal port, showed a steady increase in population and source of subsistence and employment” (Moffit 1925: 22). prosperity throughout the period under study. In the early But, despite its agrarian base, early modern society was years of Elizabeth’s reign Faversham was already “well changing from subsistence to commercial enterprises in peopled and flourished in wealth” (Lambarde, 1576: 231). a way that “if gradual, was revolutionary” (Everitt 1965: Celia Fiennes found “a very large town and good buildings 60-1). Some of the reasons were the increase in population of bricks” when she visited Faversham in 1695 (Fiennes, in London and the provinces, the expansion of agricultural 1696: 100). specialisation, and the improvement of all forms of trans- port and communication. In 1560 a Market Hall was built and in 1574 the hall be- came the Guildhall. In 1635 a leaden pump was installed Faversham was well placed on the “inner-ring road” of in the Market Place at the north end of the Guildhall the national maritime routes, which enabled it to take where, throughout the period under study, a fish market advantage of its proximity to London and the continent.