Rascally Robert and some honey from the bees

I welcomed this rainy, blowsy Saturday with good spirits and a proper decadent lie-in. Specifically, a few cigarettes, several cups of tea and a bowl of cereal taken sitting in bed with my laptop on my knee and the dog curled up the floor beside me. Bliss. But warm spirits not withstanding, winter has returned temporarily and when I left the house to meet my mother I wished I was wearing my dog walking hat.

I'd just about warmed up in the car by the time we picked up my sister and her little girl before travelling the short distance to Eastchurch for a public open day at Shurland Hall.

Shurland Hall gets its name from the De Shurland family who were granted the land and first built on it in the 12th Century. According to local legend, the 14th century Sir Robert De Shurland was a bad lot. Rich, arrogant and generally a thoroughly dislikeable man, he took the law into his own hands after a trivial falling out and killed a monk. Fearing retribution – divine or otherwise – the reprobate Sir Robert decided to ask the King for a pardon and the opportunity to do so presented itself when the King’s ship happened to be anchored nearby some time in the late 1320s.

Royal pardon granted, the rascally Sir Robert somehow got into an argument with a witch on the ride back home. She was furious with him, cursed him them and there, saying that his favourite horse, Grey Dolphin, would be the death of him. He laughed in her face and scoffed at her curse, but those were superstitious times and even the haughty Sir Robert was concerned. As soon as he got home he killed Grey Dolphin and cut off his head. There was no way, he thought, that a dead horse could be the cause of his demise.

Curse and pardon both long forgotten, Sir Robert was walking on the beach a year later when he tripped and fell over something on the shore, stabbing his foot as he did so and dying soon afterwards from blood poisoning. What had caused Sir Robert to stumble? Why, nothing other than the skull of the faithful and blameless Grey Dolphin of course.

Although probably not cursed, the current Shurland Hall has stood derelict for many years. This Hall was originally built a couple of hundred years after Sir Robert met his fate. It was constructed during the reign of Henry VIII and was visited by the King and his short-lived new bride, Anne Boleyn, during their honeymoon in 1532. 450 years later, my mother was a teacher at the nearby Eastchurch Primary School and I can remember my sister and me scrambling up the crumbling walls and climbing through the holes where the windows should have been when we were children. In fact the Hall was in such a poor state of repair that it has been on English Heritage’s “Buildings at Risk Register” for a long time.

Happily, the stunning house is in the process of being restored using traditional methods and materials, and it was fabulous to see the progress that’s been made. We climbed the beautiful oak spiral staircase right up onto the roof – complete with turrets – and were rewarded with magnificent views right around the tip of the island. Boy, was it breezy up there. The restoration project is well underway but still some distance from completion, and aspects of what we saw today (stacks of plaster board, joists, laths, sawdust, rolls of lead and such) reminded me of the work we carried out at the barn. I had wondered if the restored house was going to be lived in or run as a visitor attraction; I was delighted to find that Shurland Hall will return to domestic use and will be sold as a 5-bedroom house when the work is finished later this year. What a place to live that would be. I’d better start buying those lottery tickets…

After all of that climbing and general admiration of a wonderful piece of history that’s being restored to life, we were all feeling a bit peckish and decided to visit the nearby Flynn’s Bee Farm for some sustenance of a sweet kind. The farm itself not only produces honey but makes all kinds of hive-related health and beauty products for skin problems and such which it ships all over the world. We had a lovely cream tea in the tiny tea rooms and spent a happy hour or so browsing the crafts and wildlife-related stuff that was on show. I bought loads of things, needless to say, mostly edible and including a jar of authentic Sheppey honey. No bees around today at the bee farm though; they’re sensibly tucked up in their hives waiting for proper spring to return.


You can read more about the history of Shurland Hall here: http://www.eastchurchpc.kentparishes.gov.uk/default.cfm?pid=2886

Flynn’s Bee Farm – www.flynnsbeefarm.co.uk


The photograph of Shurland Hall was taken by Sherry Wildish