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The Stour at Plucks Gutter
Plucks Gutter is a small hamlet in Kent, where the Little Stour and Great Stour rivers meet. During the Middle Ages, the two rivers met the Wantsum Channel at Stourmouth, but the combined rivers now (called the River Stour downstream from Plucks Gutter) flow onward to the sea via Sandwich to Pegwell Bay near Ramsgate, leaving Plucks Gutter some six miles in a straight line and ten by river from the English Channel.
This was navigable by large vessels to Canterbury until the 1600s, but a series of events caused the two mile wide channel here to silt up, and this is what is left
The hamlet is named after a Dutch Drainage Engineer called Ploeg, whose grave can be seen in All Saints Church, West Stourmouth. Ploeg being the Dutch for a plough, the hamlet almost certainly takes its origins from the Dutch Protestant tradition of draining marshland by creating a ploughed ditch. No doubt, the Dutchman was named after his craft.
History
Just a mile upstream from the Dog and Duck Inn[1] Plucks Gutter is 'Blood Point', the scene of King Alfred's famous defeat of a Viking invasion force and often taken to be the Royal Navy's first successful engagement of an enemy. In 1821-23, a notorious North Kent Gang of smugglers made use of Pluck's Gutter. One account from a Revenue Customs Officer recalls how they travelled some fourteen miles, on foot, through Trenleypark Wood to Stodmarsh, Then via Grove Corner to Pluck's Gutter where they crossed the river by the ferry and onward northeast to Mount Pleasant near Acol then up to Marsh Bay – the former name for what is modern-day Westgate-on-Sea
The Stour at Plucks Gutter
Plucks Gutter is a small hamlet in Kent, where the Little Stour and Great Stour rivers meet. During the Middle Ages, the two rivers met the Wantsum Channel at Stourmouth, but the combined rivers now (called the River Stour downstream from Plucks Gutter) flow onward to the sea via Sandwich to Pegwell Bay near Ramsgate, leaving Plucks Gutter some six miles in a straight line and ten by river from the English Channel.
This was navigable by large vessels to Canterbury until the 1600s, but a series of events caused the two mile wide channel here to silt up, and this is what is left
The hamlet is named after a Dutch Drainage Engineer called Ploeg, whose grave can be seen in All Saints Church, West Stourmouth. Ploeg being the Dutch for a plough, the hamlet almost certainly takes its origins from the Dutch Protestant tradition of draining marshland by creating a ploughed ditch. No doubt, the Dutchman was named after his craft.
History
Just a mile upstream from the Dog and Duck Inn[1] Plucks Gutter is 'Blood Point', the scene of King Alfred's famous defeat of a Viking invasion force and often taken to be the Royal Navy's first successful engagement of an enemy. In 1821-23, a notorious North Kent Gang of smugglers made use of Pluck's Gutter. One account from a Revenue Customs Officer recalls how they travelled some fourteen miles, on foot, through Trenleypark Wood to Stodmarsh, Then via Grove Corner to Pluck's Gutter where they crossed the river by the ferry and onward northeast to Mount Pleasant near Acol then up to Marsh Bay – the former name for what is modern-day Westgate-on-Sea