Gibbet and Hanging Cage - The Ship Inn, Hythe Road, Dymchurch, Kent, UK
Posted by: 
Dragontree
N 51° 01.738 E 000° 59.926
31U E 359667 N 5654952
In the north east corner of the garden of The Ship Inn in Dymchurch is a gibbet and hanging cage.
Waymark Code: WME7JA
Location: South East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/14/2012
Views: 10
Dymchurch has a long history of smuggling and crime due to its position by the sea. Once it was where illegal acts took place covered by the sea mist or darkness of night. It was the smugglers, wreckers, sheep stealers, excise men and other criminals who were caught, who were hung here on the gibbet and/or left in the cage to die.
The Bailiff, Jurats and Lords of the Level were in charge of administrating punishment.
Doctor Syn is a fictional vicar associated with Dymchurch. He pursues his young, Spanish wife and her lover, intent on revenge through a series of novels involving smuggling and adventure. Below is an extract from The Scarecrow Rides: visit link
'Now listen to the swaying rookery above your head, for these black-feathered carrion have inherited their lofty homes from ancestors who actually picked the flesh from the bones upon the gibbet, saw the black coated figure of Doctor Syn and heard his resonant voice exhorting the congregation from the top deck of the great pulpit in the little church beneath them. And you can hear his story also from the gulls, for every day he would walk along the sea wall, having discarded his clasped Bible for a brass telescope, and as the salt tang filled his lungs he would change his tune from the hymns to capstan songs, especially one old shanty that he was for ever singing when his mind floated off across the ocean wastes:
"Oh, here's to the fee that have walked the plank-
Yo ho! for the dead mans throttle
And here's to the corpses afloat in the tank
And the dead man's teeth in the bottle." '