DENTON 79 



Now mourn ev'ry Eye that hath feeii him difplay 

 The Arts of the Game, and the Wiles of his play ; 

 For the great Bowler, Death, at one critical Cast 

 Has ended his length, and clofe rubb'd him at laft. 



F. W. pofuit, MDCCT.XXVI. 



And having duly noted this elegy of a truly admirable 

 man, we may leave Milton, pausing but to look down 

 upon the estuary of the Thames, where the great liners 

 pass to and fro the most distant parts of the world, 

 and also to consider the humours of a hundred years 

 ago, when, as now, Milton was in the corporate 

 jurisdiction of Gravesend, and w^hen it sufficed both to 

 employ one watchman between them. This w^atchman 

 was also Common Crier, and w^as supported, not by a 

 salary, but (like a hospital) by voluntary contributions. 

 And he did not do badly by the grateful Gravesenders, 

 for he collected, one year with another, £60, w^hich, 

 added to the market-gardening business he also 

 carried on, must have made quite a comfortable 

 income. 



A little way beyond Milton, w^here the road curves 

 round to the right, there will be seen on the left an 

 eighteenth-century mansion, standing in extensive 

 grounds. Immediately wdthin the lodge-gates is what 

 looks like a small church, surrounded by trees. It is 

 older and far more interesting than it seems to be. 

 Until 1901 it was, in fact, a roofless ruin ; but it was 

 then restored by Mr. George M. Arnold, who then 

 owned Denton Court, the name of the house. The 

 church, now used as a private chapel by the owner of 

 Denton Court, was in fact Denton Chapel, the place of 

 worship of the parish of Denton, which was ecclesias- 

 tically separate from Milton until 1879. Denton is a 

 place so small that few maps condescend to notice it, 

 but it is an ancient place, first named in a.d. 950, as 

 " Denetune," when the manor w^as given by one 

 Byrhtric to the Priory of St. Andrew at Rochester, 

 which built this chapel of St. Mary. It was on the 

 dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry the 

 Eighth that it fell into ruin. 



