COLDH ARBOURS 229 



harbours." Unhappily for this theory, the places 

 called " Coldharbour " are by no means always 

 situated in exposed situations, and no remains of 

 buildings have been discovered on their actual site, 

 although their neighbourhood is frequently found to be 

 rich in Roman remains. A suggestion has been made 

 that " cold " is a variant of " cool," and that, far from 

 being the miserable refugees of forlorn travellers, the 

 Coldharbours were really the " Mount Pleasants " and 

 " Belle Vues " of ancient times, to which our remote 

 forbears resorted for "a breath of air." We should 

 probably be within our rights in deriding this suggestion 

 as a theory made to fit a fertile imagination, but it is 

 not safe, in the presence of such an apparently insoluble 

 problem, to do more than present a few of the 

 derivations advanced. It would be equally rash to 

 assume that the stations of the " colubris arbor," the 

 Roman serpent-standard, gave their name to these 

 places, although the idea is plausible enough. 



Many Coldharbours are in exceedingly exposed 

 places, as indeed here, on Barham Downs,* and many 

 more are in quite sheltered situations, in places where 

 dense woodlands once spread, giving work and shelter 

 to charcoal-burners. This fact has led to the formula- 

 tion of another theory, one which holds that these 

 strangely named places were, prosaically enough, 

 " coal-harbours," or storage-places for charcoal. It 

 is much to be desired that some leisured antiquary 

 would devote himself to the elucidation of the name 

 and the rescuing of the purpose of these Coldharbours 

 from the mists of a remote and romantic antiquity. 

 The other Kentish Coldharbours to be found near 



* An excellent story is told of the cold that rages up here in the winter. 

 Tt belongs to coaching times, and was told by a coachman who had a new 

 guard with him one frosty night, when the temperature was going down 

 to Ir." ; a cockney guard who was unused to exposure, and who, moreover, 

 had not the experience which led the Jehu to wrap himself up in layers of 

 flannel, a many-caped coat, and three or four waistcoats. " Ain't it cold ? " 

 asked the guard several times, climbing over the coach roof with numbed 

 hands and blue nose. " Cold ! " returned the coachman, " not at all." 

 " That's all very well," says the guard, " but your eyes are watering like 

 hanythink." " Oh ! are they ? " rejoins the coachman, " I suppose that's 

 the perspiration I " 



