The village earned its’ name, and indeed probably its’ existence, by being at a point where it was possible to wade across the Wantsum channel which once separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of Kent.

I only had time to look at the immediate vicinity of the church. I was surprised at how many houses with Dutch gables there were. Must be a reason for it....watch this space.

Cute little wonky cottage.

This is Church Cottage - right next to the church.

St. Nicholas’ church. Above the porch is a parvis room reached by a lovely wooden ladder, whilst over the door is a large Royal Arms.

The nave has some most unusual Norman carving, and has obviously been much altered. There are some nice little green-men type carvings on the capitals.

The north – Bridges – chapel includes a chest tomb that appears to be a 20th century rebuild.

The Bridges Chapel houses memorials to the family, remembering especially Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate 1913-30 and his only son Edward, Secretary to the Cabinet.

Robert Bridges was a trained doctor working in London hospitals until 1882, a classicist and poet who served as Poet Laureate from 1913 until his death in 1930. Educated at Eton and Corpus Christi college, Bridges edited and published the poems of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins after his premature death.

London Snow By Robert Bridges

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

All night it fell, and when full inches seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,

‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’

With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,

A country company long dispersed asunder:

When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.

For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

The fine brass chandelier was donated in 1757.

There is an exceptionally good early Jacobean pulpit with a cartouche darted, it is unusual in that it is attached to the wall, and a carving by and memorial to the renowned 20th century sculptor Alec Miller.

Among the memorials is a brass to William Henaker, who died in 1609. It says that he lived to the age of thirty-nine ‘or thereabouts’ and then died and was buried.

In 1983 a workman inside the church put his foot through a hole in the tiled floor while he was replacing a light bulb. Investigations led to the discovery of hundreds of human bones, equivalent to 15 or 20 bodies in an unsuspected burial area inside the church. When the bones were re-interred and before the pit was made safe, the vicar put in a time capsule comprising a biscuit tin wrapped in a plastic bag. It contains A 20p coin, a picture postcard of the village, a parish guide and a copy of the parish magazine.

Beautifully carved crucifix by local man, Alec Miller, who is buried here.

John William Denne Hilton-Johnson of Sarre Court, born in 1845 in Southampton, he was a Lieutenant 21st Hussars in 1872, eventually rising to Major.

Various monuments to the Gillow family.

Thomas Evernden of Bartletts.

Geoffrey Stephen Allfree, Lieutenant Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, drowned on active service aboard HMS Hermione in 1918. He is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

One of the eight children of the Reverend Francis Allfree, Vicar of St. Nicholas- at- Wade with Sarre, Geoffrey Allfree was born in the parish in January 1889. He was privately educated at Alexander House College, a boarding school on the High Street in Broadstairs. After leaving school Allfree served an apprenticeship as a deck officer in the merchant navy and made the return journey to Australia and back at least once, as the record of his arrival at Sidney, New South Wales in July 1908 on the cargo ship the Waipara shows. In 1910, aged 21, Allfree was awarded his Master’s Mate Certificate by the Board of Trade, which qualified him to act as a mate on foreign going steamships.

When war broke out, he volunteered in October 1914 and was commissioned a Sub-Lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. He served initially in the Royal Naval Division, despite its name an infantry division formed of surplus to requirement reservists and volunteers from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

Shipped to Egypt en route for the Gallipoli landings in 1915 and by then promoted to Lieutenant; one of Allfree’s brother officers in the Royal Naval Division was the famous poet Rupert Brooke, who died before reaching Gallipoli in April 1915 of sepsis from an infected mosquito bite on the Greek island of Skyros. By 1916 and the Gallipoli campaign over, Allfree had been transferred to sea-service and was commanding His Majesty’s Motor Launch 286 the following summer.

The following year, in September 1918, Allfree lost his life whilst in command of HMML 247; an identical, New Jersey built craft. A four-boat flotilla of Motor Launches had entered St Ives Bay for shelter during a strong southerly gale, which rapidly escalated to hurricane force winds. In the eye of the storm, the Motor Launches started engines and tried desperately to work their way into deeper water. Allfree’s launch developed engine trouble, one mile off Clodgy Point, and started to drift helplessly towards Oar Rock. The St. Ives’ lifeboat raced to reach the stricken ship, but arrived minutes too late by which time the launch had blown up on impact with the rock, presumably as its depth charges detonated. All the crew, bar one survivor, were killed in the explosion or subsequently drowned.

Allfree’s body was never recovered and he is commemorated on both the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and the Birchington and Acol War Memorial in Kent.