In the year 1786 a young sailor, Captain Lamb, of the well known Rye family, was commanding the 'Slag' revenue cutter and busily engaged in hunting smugglers and privateers off this bit of coast. He loved and was in turn beloved by a certain fair maid, the only child and heiress of a Mr. Boys, of Elford, near Hawkhurst. This gentleman, possibly for financial reasons, resolutely opposed the match, and in those days there was of course nothing more to be said, action was the only alternative.
There seems, however, to have been no thought of this till the girl's parents inadvertently laid the train for it. Now at the very head of the glen there is a charming old Early Georgian house, known as Fairlight Place, with beech groves on either flank and gardens between them which open out a glorious view over the Channel. Either for her health's sake or to get her out of the young man's way, the maiden was dispatched, under the care of a trusty servant, for a period of retirement to this sequestered retreat, then a farmhouse.
But the gallant Captain on his cutter, by some means or other, discovered the whereabouts of his lady love and meetings were easily contrived. The girl used to repair, unbeknown to her unsuspecting guardian, if such she were, to this conspicuous ledge near the top of the woody cliff, and then by signals to her hero's vessel on the sea below, arrange their stolen interviews.
The upshot of it all was that the couple ran away and got married, quite regularly and prosaically, at St.Clement Danes in the Strand. Of course the lady ought to have flung herself over the cliff and the Captain to have died fighting upon the deck of a privateer immediately after. Some old guide books, despairing of any allurement in the true story, or perhaps not knowing it, have, provided various tragedies of this nature for the tourist.
The father never, I think, forgave the girl, which does give a further touch of romance to the incident. But the young man, if not rich enough to be a worthy suitor in the parental eyes, had enough to build a house at Salehurst and live there happily and comfortably with his wife for twenty-eight years, when he was washed off a yacht in Southampton Water and drowned.
The lady survived him some years, while their only child, a daughter, married a Mr. Ferris and many of their descendants are living today. The story, though only moderately dramatic, is worth noting if only for the fact that the preliminaries to the elopement had so romantic and picturesque a setting, and further that the unconvincing name, "Lovers' Seat," has a really genuine origin, and that many generations in their thousands have visited it, with the tale generally distorted as the impelling cause.
Lover or no lover, it should on no account be missed. The spot is still thus regarded by sentimental couples in the same amorous condition as the gallant skipper and the squire's daughter.
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