228 THE DOVER ROAD 



in B.C. 54. King John's army of sixty thousand men 

 encamped here in 1213, to withstand the French 

 invasion, and Simon de Montfort, somewhat later, 

 at the head of disaffected Barons ; Henrietta Maria 

 held her first Drawing Room here in a tent, while 

 on her way to be married to Charles the First at 

 Canterbury ; and, centuries afterwards, a great army 

 encamped on Barham Downs in readiness for 

 Napoleon's projected invasion. But on none of these 

 occasions were any earthworks thrown up, and the 

 fosses and ditches that still remain to be explored 

 are of undoubted Roman construction. 



Here, amid these long lines of Roman entrenchments, 

 occurs again the mysterious name of " Coldharbour, " 

 a perplexing place-name that is found no less than 

 170 times in England, in situations the most diverse 

 and in districts widely scattered. At least twenty-six 

 of these Coldharbours are to be found on the ordnance 

 maps of Kent, and six of them on, or closely adjoining, 

 the Dover Road. Their situation, scattered thus along 

 the old military via of Watling Street, adds greatly 

 to the force of the argument that this singular name 

 has some connection with Roman times, but what 

 connection, and what is the real meaning of the name, 

 not all the acumen and ingenuity of archaeologists has 

 ever been able to satisfactorily explain. The fact of 

 the great majority of Coldharbours lying by the site of 

 Roman roads or camps has led to the ingenious theory 

 that they first acquired their name in Saxon times when, 

 the country being wasted with ruthless and decimating 

 wars, the Roman villas still remaining were destroyed, 

 and great desolate tracts of country created. Travellers 

 (this theory goes on to say) could find no other shelter 

 on their journeys save the ruined walls of the once 

 magnificent palaces that the Romans had left ; and as 

 they crouched, shivering, to leeward of these ruinated 

 and roofless remains of a decayed civilization, and tried 

 to warm themselves at fires painfully and laboriously 

 made of leaves and sticks, they called them " cold 



