64 THE DOVER ROAD 



and faithless Danes, and (much later) the French. 

 This defensible tower at Northfleet was largely rebuilt 

 in 1628, but a part of it belongs to the end of the 

 fourteenth century, and it even retains fragments of 

 an earlier building, contemporary with the terrible 

 Sea-rovers who sailed up the estuary of the Thames, 

 burning and destroying everything as they passed. 



A significant sign of the quasi-military uses of 

 this extremely interesting tower is the tall stone 

 external staircase that runs up its northern face from 

 the churchyard to the first-floor level. The small 

 doorway that opens at the head of this staircase into 

 the first floor was originally the only entrance to the 

 tower, and before the churcli could be finally taken the 

 enemy would have had to storm these stairs, exposed to 

 a fire of cloth-yard shafts from arrow-slits, and of 

 heavy stones cast down upon them from the roof. 



XV 



Northfleet adjoins, and is now continuous with, 

 Gravesend. It is a busy place, engaged in the 

 excavation of chalk and flints, and in ship-building. 

 Here, too, were " Rosherville Gardens," or shortly, 

 " Rosherville." A suburb of that name is here now. 

 but the Rosherville of the Early and Middle Victorians 

 is a thing of the past, and the place has been sold to 

 an oil company. 



Jeremiah Rosher was the inventor and sponsor of 

 those once-famed Gardens. It was so far back as 

 the 1830's that he conceived the grand idea of building 

 a new towii between Northfleet and Gravesend, on an 

 estate he owned here, beside the Thames. The idea 

 remained an idea only, for although a pier was built 

 and the Gardens formed, Rosher never lived to see his 

 " ville," in the sense of being a town. But his Gardens 

 were a hugely-compensating success. It is not given 



