Back in the day...
Harty really is a separate island, and until comparatively recently, the neighbourhood was known as the "Isles of Sheppey", which included the main island and the smaller ones of Elmley and Harty. Harty was known as Hertei in 1086; Heartege in 1100; Herteye in 1242 and Harty by 1610. It is separated from Sheppey by Capel Fleet, over which there is now a causeway. In the 1893 floods it was reported that the Fleet had grown to a width of 100 yards. In Edward Hasted's day it was tidal - the sea flowed through Windmill Creek, Capel Fleet and Mussels Creek - with a ferry across the Fleet.
As late as 1893 the Ferry House was reported as being at the bottom of the road from Capel Hill on the left hand side. This ferry replaced a bridge which Hasted referred to as the "Tremseth Bridge broken by the violence of the sea in the 21st year of Edward 1". The dry bed either side of the Fleet indicates that once the arm of the Swale between Sheppey and Harty was up to a mile wide. During the Great War the Royal Engineers erected a bailey bridge across the East Swale Estuary from Harty to Oare (Faversham). a fantastic collection of photographs of this can be seen at the Ferry House Inn.
Visiting Harty, with its spectacular views across to Faversham, Whitstable, Herne Bay and the North Downs, one cannot but feel the remoteness of the place. Why was a church built in such an isolated location? See Harty from the seaward side and one realises it stands on the channel of the East Swale, once a tributary of the Medway, where merchant ships and men O’ war would pass its door on every tide. It saw stone-age man navigate his early boats; the coming of the Romans, who settled in the Ospringe area; the Saxons built their ancient port of Cilling directly opposite; the Danish invaders settled here; and Henry VIII provisioned his fleet in the East Swale sending an armada of over 25,000 men to attack Calais, (shown on a map now in the British Library).
Schooners, Thames barges and oyster smacks filled the East Swale until the early years of the 20th century. Barges traded to beaches and landings at Warden, Leysdown, Harty and Elmley, bringing up manure to enrich the land and taking away haystacks. The late Freda Peckham who was born in 1901 remembered them sailing up Windmill Creek to discharge at her father's farm landing. The remains of Corona, New World and Lizard, are hulked on the Harty foreshore. Today, the vista of sail on the water is enhanced by the fleet of smacks and barges preserved at Faversham.
In times of threat Harty's position was a strategic one: with its long views down the North Kent coast and out into the Thames Estuary channels the approach of invading hordes could he signalled to the mainland. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells us:
AD 835 "In this year the heathen (Danes) devastated Sheppey"
AD 855 "the heathen for the first time wintered in Sheppey."
AD 1016 In May King Edmund persued the Cnut into Kent "and the host fled before him with their horses into Sheppey." King Edmund followed them into Essex where he was killed across the Estuary at Ashingdon. The final mention in the Chronicles comes in AD 1052 when Harold joined forces with Godwine, to attack Kent.
In later years, Harty was a place of some importance as the sea route from London was by way of Queenborough and the Swale. Harty was then the last port of call. In the 13th century many pilgrims visited the church, crossing by the ferry after visiting the abbey at Faversham and continuing after resting to pay homage to St. Sexburga at Minster Abbey. It is therefore quite possible that there was an inn on this spot in those days.
One of the previous owners of the Ferry House Inn, a Mr. F. Cook, found an Elizabethan silver penny and some East India Company tokens when working in the cellar. The East Indian merchant ships almost all called at the Ferry House Inn. The building had two stairways, one leading to the rooms used by the seamen, and it was said that the landlady would stand at the bottom of the stairs so that none could escape payment.
The inn has for many years been a popular rendezvous for yachtsmen in the Swale, and is a favourite place to visit by holidaymakers.
According to a directory for 1901, the parson lived at Parsonage Farm, Eastchurch. The area of Harty was listed as 2642 acres of land, 345 acres of tidal water and 694 acres of foreshore. The assessable value was 927, the soil clay, the subsoil clay and gravel, crops corn and seeds, good grazing and oyster beds. Next to the church was school accommodation for 50 pupils and the dwellings were as follows:
Brewers Farm, Elliotts Farm, The School, School House, The Church, Sayers Court, Park Farm, 14 cottages, The Ferry House Inn, Mocketts Farm, Long Farm and Telegraph Cottage. The school was closed in 1937, the ferry boat fell to pieces about 1941 and has never been replaced. The remains of an old winch, used for flushing way the silt, still stands on the hard as a reminder of ancient history.
Harty is now the scene of extensive farming, a quite backwater beloved by ornithologists and naturalists, a place of peace and solitude where rare birds nest and wild flowers abound in this remote corner of Sheppey.
By kind permission of the late Lisa Tyler, Sheppey Local History Society
No trip to Harty is complete without a visit to the beautiful early Norman Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, often described as Kent’s remotest place of worship. Still lit by oil-lamps and candles, it contains treasures including well known 14th century Flemish chest with a design of two knights in a friendly jousting contest. Stolen from the church in 1987 and returned within days by reason of it being so well documented. Open daily from dawn to dusk.
HARTY RECORDS
The Parish records of Harty since 1599 are held partly at KCC Archives and partly in the archives of Canterbury Cathedral. From 1599 to 1812 (records for 1641 to 1662 are missing) some 139 marriages, 363 Baptisms and 460 burials were held at Harty.
The minister in 1599 was Abraham Greengrasse, who functioned until his death in 1612. The year 1609 was a particularly bad year on Harty, with 16 burials, including that of Mrs Greengrasse. Richard Hilles succeeded as curate. Among the marriages he performed were Christopher Reede to Mildred Napleton, and Valentine Smith to Arms Hurst, both in 1614.
Baptiste Piggott took over from 1615 to 1622, and Leonard Smith is recorded as churchwarden. The year 1515/16 was a bad one for burials, as was 1624/25 when Richard Daley was curate, having taken over after the brief tenure of NathanieI Nelson. Among the parishioners from this period are Snode, Throughly, Drayton, Thomas and Martin. A George Moore is shown as being a sidesman in the 1630's. Richard Daley served Harty as curate for 40 years, one of his churchwardens for all but four of those years being Richard Harding, the other, Leonard Smith serving 42 years, and the records show there were 53 marriages, 88 baptisms and 116 burials in the 25 years between 1616 to 1640. There were 19 marriages, 62 baptisms and 79 burials in the years 1663-1687. Ministers John TayIor (1664-1669), Thomas Webb (l670-1679) and churchwardens John Beale, Stephen Saffery and Robert Morrison have come and gone. In 1679 we find Thomas Web as curate, with Thomas Moore and Henry Andrews then John Huggens as churchwardens. Parishoners include Thomas Woollatt and Ann Loos, who married on 17/5/1674; Simon Russell and Rebeckah Busholt who married on 26/8/1674; and the Rev'd Henry Nicholls (also vicar of Boughton Aluph) who married Mrs Martha Gardener of Rochester on 22/10/1682. Philip Ashby married Elizabeth Rabbet on 28 April 1684 and their son Thomas was baptised a less than respectable six months later.
Among early 18th century names are Robert Eaton, curate from 1696 to 1701, John Nicholls from 1701 to 1735 and Joseph Marthwait from 1736 to 1754. Over that period Thomas Moore, Joshua Fleet, John Mockett, James Mockett, John Saffery and Thomas Mockett, William Goodwin, John Randall, Thomas Randall and Joshua Steele served as churchwardens In 1701 Richwater was a labourer, as were John Gold, John Jenkins, John Dix and William Stonard. Thomas Curd and John Kent were servants. William Bax married Martha Luckoss in 1748, and William Mitchell married Mary Williams, daughter of John Williams, a "looker." The unfortunate Esther was the baseborn daughter of Susannah Watson:
In 1755 James Allenson was appointed curate and during his 25 year tenure William Loud, another Thomas Randall and Thomas Denne served as his churchwardens. During this period Thomas Woollet was the ferryman, maintaining the ferryboat across to Harty Ferry south-side, with William Smeed recorded as holding this post in 1764. An unfortunate incident occurred in 1766, the burial on 15 September of "Henry Warn. Drowned oversetting the ferry boat." The previous year the burial of James Barton took place, recorded as "a boy on board a vessel." The prominent families of the time were John and Mary Pullen, and William and Mary Mitchell, whose many children occupied the ministers in baptisms and burials.
John Robertson served for four years as curate from 1780, then there seems to have been a long interregnum, during which time Samuel Langley appears as officiating curate. The curiously named Morduant Leathers was appointed as curate in 1787. The reason for such a high proportion of burials on Harty was the numbers of drowned seamen washed ashore on the island. On Tuesday 2nd September 1785 a burial was held by Coroner’s Warant of a corpse which was found and picked upon the Harty-Shore and supposed to have been from Norway. Another was from a man’s body lost off Shellness The infant Mary Hudson was buried “aged about 9 months and having been basely begotten of one Thomas Stickings and Mary Hudson, spinster”. You will be pleased to learn that they later did the decent thing.
Local families included Thomas and Mary Holmes, William and Mary Gipps and Elizabeth Ann and John Rutland, whose children Amelia, Frederick, Ephraim, Alfred, Sophia, Alfred Francis and Louise were baptised in rotation. The number of marriages had fallen to an average of one every three years, but with an average of a burial a year - many of these being drowned seamen. Of the 19 burials conducted between 1788 and 1812 one was of William Cripps "who being a lunatic poisoned himself;" and six others were drownings, including William Cambo from Whitstable, John Waters from Rye and Richard West, while the remainder were described simply as "drowned man name unknown."
A Dr Martins was appointed to Harty in 1805; H. Jones served as officiating curate during an interregnum, in 1811, then Francis William Robe was appointed as curate in 1812. Of the "new" registers, opened by the Rev'd Robe, two of them - the Baptisimal Register which commenced in 1813 and the Burials Register which commenced in 1814 - remain in use today.
The ferry to the mainland was Harty's most importent link of communication: the rights to the ferry were, and still are 'held by the landlord of the "Ferry House” Inn. Originally the priest would have come to Harty from the South-shore using the ferry. The Sheppey Church Magazine records that in 1899 the Rev'd Castle was based on the mainland, Leysdown vicarage having fallen into decay. "By the providence of God" wrote Mr Castle "not a single service has been missed and some very rough passages had to be made. Once we were an hour and a half getting over; on another occasion we were lost in the water for two hours in a dense fog, but we have always accomplished the passage." To Mr Marshall (the ferryman) to Mr S. Studd and Mr Bradshaw, Mr Castle extended his grateful thanks for their ready and courageous help. His churchwardens were Mr S Studd and Mr Albert Love of Capel Hill Farm who served from Easter 1875 to 1921. Later in 1899 when the ferryman Marshall died aged 80, his obituary recorded that he "was well known to a large number of people who had occasion to cross over to the island by way of Harty Ferry from the mainland. Many and many a rough voyage he had experienced.
The population of Harty according to the census of 1891 was 125. By 1899 it was some 90 persons. One wedding, two baptisms, five confirmations and no burials were recorded. The total collection for all purposes was £14 8s 4d. The population in 1911 was 87 and by 1921 it had risen to 96 persons. Few people now live on the island. The school has closed and is derelict, but the church and the "Ferry House" Inn remain in remarkably healthy condition.
As late as 1893 the Ferry House was reported as being at the bottom of the road from Capel Hill on the left hand side. This ferry replaced a bridge which Hasted referred to as the "Tremseth Bridge broken by the violence of the sea in the 21st year of Edward 1". The dry bed either side of the Fleet indicates that once the arm of the Swale between Sheppey and Harty was up to a mile wide. During the Great War the Royal Engineers erected a bailey bridge across the East Swale Estuary from Harty to Oare (Faversham). a fantastic collection of photographs of this can be seen at the Ferry House Inn.
Visiting Harty, with its spectacular views across to Faversham, Whitstable, Herne Bay and the North Downs, one cannot but feel the remoteness of the place. Why was a church built in such an isolated location? See Harty from the seaward side and one realises it stands on the channel of the East Swale, once a tributary of the Medway, where merchant ships and men O’ war would pass its door on every tide. It saw stone-age man navigate his early boats; the coming of the Romans, who settled in the Ospringe area; the Saxons built their ancient port of Cilling directly opposite; the Danish invaders settled here; and Henry VIII provisioned his fleet in the East Swale sending an armada of over 25,000 men to attack Calais, (shown on a map now in the British Library).
Schooners, Thames barges and oyster smacks filled the East Swale until the early years of the 20th century. Barges traded to beaches and landings at Warden, Leysdown, Harty and Elmley, bringing up manure to enrich the land and taking away haystacks. The late Freda Peckham who was born in 1901 remembered them sailing up Windmill Creek to discharge at her father's farm landing. The remains of Corona, New World and Lizard, are hulked on the Harty foreshore. Today, the vista of sail on the water is enhanced by the fleet of smacks and barges preserved at Faversham.
In times of threat Harty's position was a strategic one: with its long views down the North Kent coast and out into the Thames Estuary channels the approach of invading hordes could he signalled to the mainland. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells us:
AD 835 "In this year the heathen (Danes) devastated Sheppey"
AD 855 "the heathen for the first time wintered in Sheppey."
AD 1016 In May King Edmund persued the Cnut into Kent "and the host fled before him with their horses into Sheppey." King Edmund followed them into Essex where he was killed across the Estuary at Ashingdon. The final mention in the Chronicles comes in AD 1052 when Harold joined forces with Godwine, to attack Kent.
In later years, Harty was a place of some importance as the sea route from London was by way of Queenborough and the Swale. Harty was then the last port of call. In the 13th century many pilgrims visited the church, crossing by the ferry after visiting the abbey at Faversham and continuing after resting to pay homage to St. Sexburga at Minster Abbey. It is therefore quite possible that there was an inn on this spot in those days.
One of the previous owners of the Ferry House Inn, a Mr. F. Cook, found an Elizabethan silver penny and some East India Company tokens when working in the cellar. The East Indian merchant ships almost all called at the Ferry House Inn. The building had two stairways, one leading to the rooms used by the seamen, and it was said that the landlady would stand at the bottom of the stairs so that none could escape payment.
The inn has for many years been a popular rendezvous for yachtsmen in the Swale, and is a favourite place to visit by holidaymakers.
According to a directory for 1901, the parson lived at Parsonage Farm, Eastchurch. The area of Harty was listed as 2642 acres of land, 345 acres of tidal water and 694 acres of foreshore. The assessable value was 927, the soil clay, the subsoil clay and gravel, crops corn and seeds, good grazing and oyster beds. Next to the church was school accommodation for 50 pupils and the dwellings were as follows:
Brewers Farm, Elliotts Farm, The School, School House, The Church, Sayers Court, Park Farm, 14 cottages, The Ferry House Inn, Mocketts Farm, Long Farm and Telegraph Cottage. The school was closed in 1937, the ferry boat fell to pieces about 1941 and has never been replaced. The remains of an old winch, used for flushing way the silt, still stands on the hard as a reminder of ancient history.
Harty is now the scene of extensive farming, a quite backwater beloved by ornithologists and naturalists, a place of peace and solitude where rare birds nest and wild flowers abound in this remote corner of Sheppey.
By kind permission of the late Lisa Tyler, Sheppey Local History Society
No trip to Harty is complete without a visit to the beautiful early Norman Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, often described as Kent’s remotest place of worship. Still lit by oil-lamps and candles, it contains treasures including well known 14th century Flemish chest with a design of two knights in a friendly jousting contest. Stolen from the church in 1987 and returned within days by reason of it being so well documented. Open daily from dawn to dusk.
HARTY RECORDS
The Parish records of Harty since 1599 are held partly at KCC Archives and partly in the archives of Canterbury Cathedral. From 1599 to 1812 (records for 1641 to 1662 are missing) some 139 marriages, 363 Baptisms and 460 burials were held at Harty.
The minister in 1599 was Abraham Greengrasse, who functioned until his death in 1612. The year 1609 was a particularly bad year on Harty, with 16 burials, including that of Mrs Greengrasse. Richard Hilles succeeded as curate. Among the marriages he performed were Christopher Reede to Mildred Napleton, and Valentine Smith to Arms Hurst, both in 1614.
Baptiste Piggott took over from 1615 to 1622, and Leonard Smith is recorded as churchwarden. The year 1515/16 was a bad one for burials, as was 1624/25 when Richard Daley was curate, having taken over after the brief tenure of NathanieI Nelson. Among the parishioners from this period are Snode, Throughly, Drayton, Thomas and Martin. A George Moore is shown as being a sidesman in the 1630's. Richard Daley served Harty as curate for 40 years, one of his churchwardens for all but four of those years being Richard Harding, the other, Leonard Smith serving 42 years, and the records show there were 53 marriages, 88 baptisms and 116 burials in the 25 years between 1616 to 1640. There were 19 marriages, 62 baptisms and 79 burials in the years 1663-1687. Ministers John TayIor (1664-1669), Thomas Webb (l670-1679) and churchwardens John Beale, Stephen Saffery and Robert Morrison have come and gone. In 1679 we find Thomas Web as curate, with Thomas Moore and Henry Andrews then John Huggens as churchwardens. Parishoners include Thomas Woollatt and Ann Loos, who married on 17/5/1674; Simon Russell and Rebeckah Busholt who married on 26/8/1674; and the Rev'd Henry Nicholls (also vicar of Boughton Aluph) who married Mrs Martha Gardener of Rochester on 22/10/1682. Philip Ashby married Elizabeth Rabbet on 28 April 1684 and their son Thomas was baptised a less than respectable six months later.
Among early 18th century names are Robert Eaton, curate from 1696 to 1701, John Nicholls from 1701 to 1735 and Joseph Marthwait from 1736 to 1754. Over that period Thomas Moore, Joshua Fleet, John Mockett, James Mockett, John Saffery and Thomas Mockett, William Goodwin, John Randall, Thomas Randall and Joshua Steele served as churchwardens In 1701 Richwater was a labourer, as were John Gold, John Jenkins, John Dix and William Stonard. Thomas Curd and John Kent were servants. William Bax married Martha Luckoss in 1748, and William Mitchell married Mary Williams, daughter of John Williams, a "looker." The unfortunate Esther was the baseborn daughter of Susannah Watson:
In 1755 James Allenson was appointed curate and during his 25 year tenure William Loud, another Thomas Randall and Thomas Denne served as his churchwardens. During this period Thomas Woollet was the ferryman, maintaining the ferryboat across to Harty Ferry south-side, with William Smeed recorded as holding this post in 1764. An unfortunate incident occurred in 1766, the burial on 15 September of "Henry Warn. Drowned oversetting the ferry boat." The previous year the burial of James Barton took place, recorded as "a boy on board a vessel." The prominent families of the time were John and Mary Pullen, and William and Mary Mitchell, whose many children occupied the ministers in baptisms and burials.
John Robertson served for four years as curate from 1780, then there seems to have been a long interregnum, during which time Samuel Langley appears as officiating curate. The curiously named Morduant Leathers was appointed as curate in 1787. The reason for such a high proportion of burials on Harty was the numbers of drowned seamen washed ashore on the island. On Tuesday 2nd September 1785 a burial was held by Coroner’s Warant of a corpse which was found and picked upon the Harty-Shore and supposed to have been from Norway. Another was from a man’s body lost off Shellness The infant Mary Hudson was buried “aged about 9 months and having been basely begotten of one Thomas Stickings and Mary Hudson, spinster”. You will be pleased to learn that they later did the decent thing.
Local families included Thomas and Mary Holmes, William and Mary Gipps and Elizabeth Ann and John Rutland, whose children Amelia, Frederick, Ephraim, Alfred, Sophia, Alfred Francis and Louise were baptised in rotation. The number of marriages had fallen to an average of one every three years, but with an average of a burial a year - many of these being drowned seamen. Of the 19 burials conducted between 1788 and 1812 one was of William Cripps "who being a lunatic poisoned himself;" and six others were drownings, including William Cambo from Whitstable, John Waters from Rye and Richard West, while the remainder were described simply as "drowned man name unknown."
A Dr Martins was appointed to Harty in 1805; H. Jones served as officiating curate during an interregnum, in 1811, then Francis William Robe was appointed as curate in 1812. Of the "new" registers, opened by the Rev'd Robe, two of them - the Baptisimal Register which commenced in 1813 and the Burials Register which commenced in 1814 - remain in use today.
The ferry to the mainland was Harty's most importent link of communication: the rights to the ferry were, and still are 'held by the landlord of the "Ferry House” Inn. Originally the priest would have come to Harty from the South-shore using the ferry. The Sheppey Church Magazine records that in 1899 the Rev'd Castle was based on the mainland, Leysdown vicarage having fallen into decay. "By the providence of God" wrote Mr Castle "not a single service has been missed and some very rough passages had to be made. Once we were an hour and a half getting over; on another occasion we were lost in the water for two hours in a dense fog, but we have always accomplished the passage." To Mr Marshall (the ferryman) to Mr S. Studd and Mr Bradshaw, Mr Castle extended his grateful thanks for their ready and courageous help. His churchwardens were Mr S Studd and Mr Albert Love of Capel Hill Farm who served from Easter 1875 to 1921. Later in 1899 when the ferryman Marshall died aged 80, his obituary recorded that he "was well known to a large number of people who had occasion to cross over to the island by way of Harty Ferry from the mainland. Many and many a rough voyage he had experienced.
The population of Harty according to the census of 1891 was 125. By 1899 it was some 90 persons. One wedding, two baptisms, five confirmations and no burials were recorded. The total collection for all purposes was £14 8s 4d. The population in 1911 was 87 and by 1921 it had risen to 96 persons. Few people now live on the island. The school has closed and is derelict, but the church and the "Ferry House" Inn remain in remarkably healthy condition.